Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
It is, of course, great news, but unfortunately Hancock had to go and spoil it with his lie about Brexit allowing the UK to approve a Covid vaccine more quickly EU countries. Do you wonder that journalists are sceptical about government announcements when members of the government simply make stuff up?
The salient fact is that the UK can act on it's own while the 27 have delegated it to the commission thereby preventing individual decisions. Apparently Germany is all ready to go but will only act with the other 27
There is no doubt that the UK would not have been able to do thus if it had joined the EU procurement scheme
The UK can act on its own, but so could the other 27. They chose not to. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
And WTF does participation in the EU procurement scheme have to do with vaccine approval?
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Where did the lib Dems come from in this discussion?
He was responding to a lib dem
I don't think @IanB2 is an official LD spokesperson, indeed I vaguely recall that he is no longer an active member.
Certainly there were plenty in the Tory party politicising the vaccine yesterday.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Where did the lib Dems come from in this discussion?
He was responding to a lib dem
I think it is a stretch that because a LD or anyone from any party says anything on here about anything that it maybe policy of the party they support.
You only have to see the spats between HYUFD and Philip to see the conundrums that might lead to.
And I'm just wondering about some of the self opinionated twaddle I may have posted over the years.
It was a silly comment from Charles (not least because I am no longer a member), but it's small beer. His highhanded attitude washes over me - the last time he tried to pull expertise on a medical matter was his absolute insistence, early in the virus crisis, that the 'amount' of virus you 'caught' at first infection couldn't possibly be significant in terms of the severity of the subsequent infection; a position that appears to have been established as wrong both by subsequent events and by people even more expert than he.
Disappointed to know you are no longer a member; yours are some of the post I most enjoy reading.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Where did the lib Dems come from in this discussion?
He was responding to a lib dem
I think it is a stretch that because a LD or anyone from any party says anything on here about anything that it maybe policy of the party they support.
You only have to see the spats between HYUFD and Philip to see the conundrums that might lead to.
And I'm just wondering about some of the self opinionated twaddle I may have posted over the years.
It was a silly comment from Charles (not least because I am no longer a member), but it's small beer. His highhanded attitude washes over me - the last time he tried to pull expertise on a medical matter was his absolute insistence, early in the virus crisis, that the 'amount' of virus you 'caught' at first infection couldn't possibly be significant in terms of the severity of the subsequent infection; a position that appears to have been established as wrong both by subsequent events and by people even more expert than he.
Disappointed to know you are no longer a member; yours are some of the post I most enjoy reading.
That is most kind, but hopefully those two facts aren't correlated! I'd still count myself as a supporter, and I haven't sent my card back cut in half, or anything like that. I simply think the party has lost its way, hasn't been well managed for quite some time, has no strategy to get out of its hole worth supporting, and doesn't deserve my £, at least for the time being. The idea that, in theory at least, I am free to vote for whichever candidate I think is best without having to worry about party loyalty is actually quite liberating.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
How disappointing. They must hate the idea of such a stellar Boris success story.
To be fair, at the Press Conference. yesterday two journalists raised the query of was the speed due to the separation of the MHRA from the EMA. One was the Express which obviously has an agenda. To his credit, Boris didn't gasp the 'opportunity'.
Well the head of the authorization team said that it was actually quicker as we were still in transition, too many people ignoring facts to spin this in their preferred direction.
How does that logic work? Either the UK can use a clause of EU law to enable rapid authorization, or it is not subject to EU law. Both of them have the same result.
I’m just relaying what I thought I heard, it was the clearest press conference I’ve seen during the whole of the pandemic but there is always a lot of info to grasp.
There is no doubt that Hancock was over-exuberant yesterday but the EU showed a petulant bitterness which was equally unseemly. I'm pleased for the British who will be vaccinated next week and a little irritated that here in Spain it's unlikely to happen for me at 66 before February at best.
I doubt a 66 yo without pre existing conditions will get it in the UK before Easter, not sure on spanish plans, I’ve got to wait for the ‘right’ one to become available but as it stands I believe there are a number which are accceptable.
It is an absolute certianty that a 66 year old in the UK will be vaccinated before Easter.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
A parody of what actually happened. It was merely questioned by a German who wondered why the UK should want to take sole credit for something when it was a US/German company led by a Turkish scientist and produced in Belgium? And his conclusion 'why was so difficult for the British to say it was a great example of international cooperation' ........was the most sensible comment made by any politician anywhere yesterday.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Then stay away from here - the Boris haters have completely lost their minds on him & Brexit. Stirring up the anti-vaxxers is just part of the game, with Jo Public as collateral damage.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
And even the 'wordsmith' is moot. There are two options really: BJ is extremely limited in his ability to express himself and the sub, sub Wooster persona is all he can manage, or he actually thinks that the Reach for the Sky, bandits at 12 o'clock bullshit is particularly resonant. Neither is very encouraging.
Channelling his inner-Churchill again?
Like many in this country I am a massive fan of the colossus that was WS Churchill and have read many biographies on him, including the incoherent crap that was entitled "The Churchill factor". The fat clown aka Boris Johnson is about as far away from the great man in every regard that it is possible to be. He cannot channel his inner Churchill because he doesn't have one, except in the wet dreams of his most gullible of suggestible fanbois.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
Hypothetically if Trump wins a recount in sufficient states surely he becomes "projected" winner.
Same as Gore 2000.
But given every competitive state has certified, this preventing further recounts and making the bar for a legal challenge considerably higher than it was in 2000, I don't think it's the same at all.
What's the point of having the rules be on projected EC votes if Betfair will say that literally any legal challenge, no matter how ridiculous, will prevent payment? What if Trump continues to bring lawsuits after Dec 14th, or after Inauguration, trying to reverse the results?
It is Betfair's job to determine when the projected winner has become essentially certain, and it's quite reasonable for people to say we are at or well past that point.
The market can't reasonably stay open after Dec 14th, or as soon as projection before Dec 14th is certain.
There is some ambiguity currently what the projection will be on Dec 14th. There shouldn't be, its outrageous that there is, but there is. If Trump wins lawsuits between now and Dec 14th, if Trump then wins recounts between now and Dec 14th then he could become the "projected" winner between now and Dec 14th.
He shouldn't, it would be an outrageous, but he could. There are 11 days to go and then his will be finalised.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Where did the lib Dems come from in this discussion?
He was responding to a lib dem
I think it is a stretch that because a LD or anyone from any party says anything on here about anything that it maybe policy of the party they support.
You only have to see the spats between HYUFD and Philip to see the conundrums that might lead to.
And I'm just wondering about some of the self opinionated twaddle I may have posted over the years.
It was a silly comment from Charles (not least because I am no longer a member), but it's small beer. His highhanded attitude washes over me - the last time he tried to pull expertise on a medical matter was his absolute insistence, early in the virus crisis, that the 'amount' of virus you 'caught' at first infection couldn't possibly be significant in terms of the severity of the subsequent infection; a position that appears to have been established as wrong both by subsequent events and by people even more expert than he.
Disappointed to know you are no longer a member; yours are some of the post I most enjoy reading.
That is most kind, but hopefully those two facts aren't correlated! I'd still count myself as a supporter, and I haven't sent my card back cut in half, or anything like that. I simply think the party has lost its way, hasn't been well managed for quite some time, has no strategy to get out of its hole worth supporting, and doesn't deserve my £, at least for the time being. The idea that, in theory at least, I am free to vote for whichever candidate I think is best without having to worry about party loyalty is actually quite liberating.
We`re in the same position then. Out of interest, do you, on balance, see our place in the coalition government as something to be proud of or to be ashamed of?
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
How disappointing. They must hate the idea of such a stellar Boris success story.
To be fair, at the Press Conference. yesterday two journalists raised the query of was the speed due to the separation of the MHRA from the EMA. One was the Express which obviously has an agenda. To his credit, Boris didn't gasp the 'opportunity'.
Well the head of the authorization team said that it was actually quicker as we were still in transition, too many people ignoring facts to spin this in their preferred direction.
How does that logic work? Either the UK can use a clause of EU law to enable rapid authorization, or it is not subject to EU law. Both of them have the same result.
I’m just relaying what I thought I heard, it was the clearest press conference I’ve seen during the whole of the pandemic but there is always a lot of info to grasp.
There is no doubt that Hancock was over-exuberant yesterday but the EU showed a petulant bitterness which was equally unseemly. I'm pleased for the British who will be vaccinated next week and a little irritated that here in Spain it's unlikely to happen for me at 66 before February at best.
I doubt a 66 yo without pre existing conditions will get it in the UK before Easter, not sure on spanish plans, I’ve got to wait for the ‘right’ one to become available but as it stands I believe there are a number which are accceptable.
It is an absolute certianty that a 66 year old in the UK will be vaccinated before Easter.
Where is there a published time line for each of the groups? Would be silly to actually publish one and become a victim to fortune.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
How disappointing. They must hate the idea of such a stellar Boris success story.
To be fair, at the Press Conference. yesterday two journalists raised the query of was the speed due to the separation of the MHRA from the EMA. One was the Express which obviously has an agenda. To his credit, Boris didn't gasp the 'opportunity'.
Well the head of the authorization team said that it was actually quicker as we were still in transition, too many people ignoring facts to spin this in their preferred direction.
How does that logic work? Either the UK can use a clause of EU law to enable rapid authorization, or it is not subject to EU law. Both of them have the same result.
I’m just relaying what I thought I heard, it was the clearest press conference I’ve seen during the whole of the pandemic but there is always a lot of info to grasp.
There is no doubt that Hancock was over-exuberant yesterday but the EU showed a petulant bitterness which was equally unseemly. I'm pleased for the British who will be vaccinated next week and a little irritated that here in Spain it's unlikely to happen for me at 66 before February at best.
I doubt a 66 yo without pre existing conditions will get it in the UK before Easter, not sure on spanish plans, I’ve got to wait for the ‘right’ one to become available but as it stands I believe there are a number which are accceptable.
It is an absolute certianty that a 66 year old in the UK will be vaccinated before Easter.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Then stay away from here - the Boris haters have completely lost their minds on him & Brexit. Stirring up the anti-vaxxers is just part of the game, with Jo Public as collateral damage.
Duh, very silly post, particularly bit about anti-vaxxers. No one has "lost their minds on him" except the gullible fools that still support him like loyal puppies . He is the most hopelessly inept PM in my living memory and I was a Tory supporter and activist for many years. He has no leadership skills, zero values and cannot express himself in a serious or coherent manner in parliament. History will not be kind to him, and neither should anyone in the current time who has half a brain. No-one should show him any sympathy for doing a job that he is massively unsuited to as he lied and cheated his way to get it.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Where did the lib Dems come from in this discussion?
He was responding to a lib dem
I think it is a stretch that because a LD or anyone from any party says anything on here about anything that it maybe policy of the party they support.
You only have to see the spats between HYUFD and Philip to see the conundrums that might lead to.
And I'm just wondering about some of the self opinionated twaddle I may have posted over the years.
It was a silly comment from Charles (not least because I am no longer a member), but it's small beer. His highhanded attitude washes over me - the last time he tried to pull expertise on a medical matter was his absolute insistence, early in the virus crisis, that the 'amount' of virus you 'caught' at first infection couldn't possibly be significant in terms of the severity of the subsequent infection; a position that appears to have been established as wrong both by subsequent events and by people even more expert than he.
Disappointed to know you are no longer a member; yours are some of the post I most enjoy reading.
That is most kind, but hopefully those two facts aren't correlated! I'd still count myself as a supporter, and I haven't sent my card back cut in half, or anything like that. I simply think the party has lost its way, hasn't been well managed for quite some time, has no strategy to get out of its hole worth supporting, and doesn't deserve my £, at least for the time being. The idea that, in theory at least, I am free to vote for whichever candidate I think is best without having to worry about party loyalty is actually quite liberating.
We`re in the same position then. Out of interest, do you, on balance, see our place in the coalition government as something to be proud of or to be ashamed of?
As a member I believe the coalition government has proven how much better they work than majority governments, yes there were mistakes and a lack of ambition from Clegg but it was 1000 times better than what has followed.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's tedious in the extreme and seems to have gone on for ever.
Bit worrying that Fauci has said the UK regulator didn't do approval as carefully. Can't really see how he can make that judgment though. And as long as all the regulators come to the same decision - should be okay.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Then stay away from here - the Boris haters have completely lost their minds on him & Brexit. Stirring up the anti-vaxxers is just part of the game, with Jo Public as collateral damage.
Duh, very silly post, particularly bit about anti-vaxxers. No one has "lost their minds on him" except the gullible fools that still support him like loyal puppies . He is the most hopelessly inept PM in my living memory and I was a Tory supporter and activist for many years. He has no leadership skills, zero values and cannot express himself in a serious or coherent manner in parliament. History will not be kind to him, and neither should anyone in the current time who has half a brain. No-one should show him any sympathy for doing a job that he is massively unsuited to as he lied and cheated his way to get it.
ROFL - I'll put you down as a maybe but only if you keep taking the pills.
Bit worrying that Fauci has said the UK regulator didn't do approval as carefully. Can't really see how he can make that judgment though. And as long as all the regulators come to the same decision - should be okay.
Hypothetically if Trump wins a recount in sufficient states surely he becomes "projected" winner.
Same as Gore 2000.
But given every competitive state has certified, this preventing further recounts and making the bar for a legal challenge considerably higher than it was in 2000, I don't think it's the same at all.
What's the point of having the rules be on projected EC votes if Betfair will say that literally any legal challenge, no matter how ridiculous, will prevent payment? What if Trump continues to bring lawsuits after Dec 14th, or after Inauguration, trying to reverse the results?
It is Betfair's job to determine when the projected winner has become essentially certain, and it's quite reasonable for people to say we are at or well past that point.
The market can't reasonably stay open after Dec 14th, or as soon as projection before Dec 14th is certain.
There is some ambiguity currently what the projection will be on Dec 14th. There shouldn't be, its outrageous that there is, but there is. If Trump wins lawsuits between now and Dec 14th, if Trump then wins recounts between now and Dec 14th then he could become the "projected" winner between now and Dec 14th.
He shouldn't, it would be an outrageous, but he could. There are 11 days to go and then his will be finalised.
Hillary Clinton could bring a court case saying the 2016 result should be overturned and she should retrospectively be made President. The Supreme Court could rule in her favour, and retrospectively overrule everything Trump did. There is therefore some ambiguity current who the winner of the 2016 election was. There shouldn't be, it's outrageous that there is, but there is. If Hillary brings and wins that lawsuit then she would become the winner.
Clearly you wouldn't argue that Betfair should never pay out on the 2016 election result, because it's unthinkable that such a case would be brought or won. Given every competitive state has certified their results and no viable cases are currently in court, why do you think there is sufficient ambiguity for Betfair to keep the market open?
Related: Why will you stop thinking that there is any ambiguity this time once Dec 14th takes place? Trump can keep bringing lawsuits to have EC slates ruled out or whatever. There is never 0.000% chance of a result changing. It is Betfair's job to decide when the chance is low enough, and I don't see how every competitive state certified already doesn't put us past that.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Where did the lib Dems come from in this discussion?
He was responding to a lib dem
I think it is a stretch that because a LD or anyone from any party says anything on here about anything that it maybe policy of the party they support.
You only have to see the spats between HYUFD and Philip to see the conundrums that might lead to.
And I'm just wondering about some of the self opinionated twaddle I may have posted over the years.
It was a silly comment from Charles (not least because I am no longer a member), but it's small beer. His highhanded attitude washes over me - the last time he tried to pull expertise on a medical matter was his absolute insistence, early in the virus crisis, that the 'amount' of virus you 'caught' at first infection couldn't possibly be significant in terms of the severity of the subsequent infection; a position that appears to have been established as wrong both by subsequent events and by people even more expert than he.
Disappointed to know you are no longer a member; yours are some of the post I most enjoy reading.
That is most kind, but hopefully those two facts aren't correlated! I'd still count myself as a supporter, and I haven't sent my card back cut in half, or anything like that. I simply think the party has lost its way, hasn't been well managed for quite some time, has no strategy to get out of its hole worth supporting, and doesn't deserve my £, at least for the time being. The idea that, in theory at least, I am free to vote for whichever candidate I think is best without having to worry about party loyalty is actually quite liberating.
No not correlated in any way. I also enjoy lots who support other parties, @kinabalu in particular for instance.
In terms of your other comments about the party; I agree with them all. Unlike HYUFD I don't feel bound to vote for the LDs just because I am a member, so I have no scruples about being a member and not voting for them, although obviously not to do so is a very rare event. It has occurred though. Once when the person was, in my opinion, a pillock and I have abstained in Police Commissioner elections on principle.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
I wouldn't think that the MRHA would be susceptible to political pressure, but it does seem that the European Agency has asked for more detail. Are they gilding the lily, or just being more thorough? Time will tell.
Or did the MRHA simply take the line that with several thousand dying every week plus a significant number of long term impaired health, is even a couple of weeks gathering and analysing further data too much cost?
A risk, but a risk worth taking, is a reasonable position. Vaccine complications are rare, but on the other hand quite damaging to confidence. Not an easy decision.
You know far more about this than my but FWIW my perception is that the key to this early decision has been the real time sharing of data as it came in by Pfizer and others so that a lot of the work had been done by the time that the government asked them to make the formal decision. I don't know if the EMA did the same but if they started later they will finish later, that is inevitable.
With over 10k a day deaths being recorded worldwide I do agree that cautious risk taking is appropriate but no doubt they will be watching the outcome of this first wave of vaccinations very carefully.
In the first press conference the scientists presented exactly how they had achieved a faster overall approval.
Bit worrying that Fauci has said the UK regulator didn't do approval as carefully. Can't really see how he can make that judgment though. And as long as all the regulators come to the same decision - should be okay.
They're probably just playing politics as they have to justify and explain to their own countrymen why they wont get their vaccines as quickly.
Bit worrying that Fauci has said the UK regulator didn't do approval as carefully. Can't really see how he can make that judgment though. And as long as all the regulators come to the same decision - should be okay.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Then stay away from here - the Boris haters have completely lost their minds on him & Brexit. Stirring up the anti-vaxxers is just part of the game, with Jo Public as collateral damage.
Duh, very silly post, particularly bit about anti-vaxxers. No one has "lost their minds on him" except the gullible fools that still support him like loyal puppies . He is the most hopelessly inept PM in my living memory and I was a Tory supporter and activist for many years. He has no leadership skills, zero values and cannot express himself in a serious or coherent manner in parliament. History will not be kind to him, and neither should anyone in the current time who has half a brain. No-one should show him any sympathy for doing a job that he is massively unsuited to as he lied and cheated his way to get it.
Theresa May was far worse which is why she lost Cameron's majority, lost votes in the Commons 33 times, couldn't get her "Meaningful Vote" through the Commons, lost the first vote on a Finance Bill since the seventies and even suffered the largest defeat in the Commons on a government motion in the era of universal suffrage. She still wouldn't resign and went kicking and screaming to defeat dragging the Tories down to Liberal Democrat levels of less than 9% in the polls in a nationwide election.
Johnson on the other hand has outmaneuvered his political opponents time and again. Whih is why you're seething.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
How disappointing. They must hate the idea of such a stellar Boris success story.
To be fair, at the Press Conference. yesterday two journalists raised the query of was the speed due to the separation of the MHRA from the EMA. One was the Express which obviously has an agenda. To his credit, Boris didn't gasp the 'opportunity'.
Well the head of the authorization team said that it was actually quicker as we were still in transition, too many people ignoring facts to spin this in their preferred direction.
How does that logic work? Either the UK can use a clause of EU law to enable rapid authorization, or it is not subject to EU law. Both of them have the same result.
I’m just relaying what I thought I heard, it was the clearest press conference I’ve seen during the whole of the pandemic but there is always a lot of info to grasp.
There is no doubt that Hancock was over-exuberant yesterday but the EU showed a petulant bitterness which was equally unseemly. I'm pleased for the British who will be vaccinated next week and a little irritated that here in Spain it's unlikely to happen for me at 66 before February at best.
I doubt a 66 yo without pre existing conditions will get it in the UK before Easter, not sure on spanish plans, I’ve got to wait for the ‘right’ one to become available but as it stands I believe there are a number which are accceptable.
It is an absolute certianty that a 66 year old in the UK will be vaccinated before Easter.
Only one? Or do you mean "any"?
All 66 year olds who want one, the logistical operation which has been prepared is incredible.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Then stay away from here - the Boris haters have completely lost their minds on him & Brexit. Stirring up the anti-vaxxers is just part of the game, with Jo Public as collateral damage.
One of the great pleasures of PB is the view from the Costa Blanca. A Felix 'like' is as informative as the post he's liking. There used to be a journalist called John Junor who would 'splutter over his cornflakes'. Daft as a brush but he never a doubt what 'middle england' was thinking
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
How disappointing. They must hate the idea of such a stellar Boris success story.
To be fair, at the Press Conference. yesterday two journalists raised the query of was the speed due to the separation of the MHRA from the EMA. One was the Express which obviously has an agenda. To his credit, Boris didn't gasp the 'opportunity'.
Well the head of the authorization team said that it was actually quicker as we were still in transition, too many people ignoring facts to spin this in their preferred direction.
How does that logic work? Either the UK can use a clause of EU law to enable rapid authorization, or it is not subject to EU law. Both of them have the same result.
I’m just relaying what I thought I heard, it was the clearest press conference I’ve seen during the whole of the pandemic but there is always a lot of info to grasp.
There is no doubt that Hancock was over-exuberant yesterday but the EU showed a petulant bitterness which was equally unseemly. I'm pleased for the British who will be vaccinated next week and a little irritated that here in Spain it's unlikely to happen for me at 66 before February at best.
I doubt a 66 yo without pre existing conditions will get it in the UK before Easter, not sure on spanish plans, I’ve got to wait for the ‘right’ one to become available but as it stands I believe there are a number which are accceptable.
It is an absolute certianty that a 66 year old in the UK will be vaccinated before Easter.
How does Betfair Exchange actually make most of its money? Is it primarily from the commission on winnings?
They get first sight of any arbitrage opportunities within a market though, so it would be rude not to take those, wouldn't it?
They could also exploit arbitrage opportunities across logically connected markets, even more so as they control the settling of the markets and hence can ensure that those logical connections actually hold. Whereas a third party takes the risk of markets getting settled at different times or one being cancelled but not the other.
Finally, I'd suspect that most punters still want to just back rather than lay, and do so immediately rather than taking the risk of putting up a bet for someone else to take later. What do Betfair do to address that imbalance (if it exists)? Do they actually act as bookmaker within the exchange as well, by laying outcomes at somewhat unfavourable odds?
Hypothetically if Trump wins a recount in sufficient states surely he becomes "projected" winner.
Same as Gore 2000.
But given every competitive state has certified, this preventing further recounts and making the bar for a legal challenge considerably higher than it was in 2000, I don't think it's the same at all.
What's the point of having the rules be on projected EC votes if Betfair will say that literally any legal challenge, no matter how ridiculous, will prevent payment? What if Trump continues to bring lawsuits after Dec 14th, or after Inauguration, trying to reverse the results?
It is Betfair's job to determine when the projected winner has become essentially certain, and it's quite reasonable for people to say we are at or well past that point.
The market can't reasonably stay open after Dec 14th, or as soon as projection before Dec 14th is certain.
There is some ambiguity currently what the projection will be on Dec 14th. There shouldn't be, its outrageous that there is, but there is. If Trump wins lawsuits between now and Dec 14th, if Trump then wins recounts between now and Dec 14th then he could become the "projected" winner between now and Dec 14th.
He shouldn't, it would be an outrageous, but he could. There are 11 days to go and then his will be finalised.
Hillary Clinton could bring a court case saying the 2016 result should be overturned and she should retrospectively be made President. The Supreme Court could rule in her favour, and retrospectively overrule everything Trump did. There is therefore some ambiguity current who the winner of the 2016 election was. There shouldn't be, it's outrageous that there is, but there is. If Hillary brings and wins that lawsuit then she would become the winner.
Clearly you wouldn't argue that Betfair should never pay out on the 2016 election result, because it's unthinkable that such a case would be brought or won. Given every competitive state has certified their results and no viable cases are currently in court, why do you think there is sufficient ambiguity for Betfair to keep the market open?
Related: Why will you stop thinking that there is any ambiguity this time once Dec 14th takes place? Trump can keep bringing lawsuits to have EC slates ruled out or whatever. There is never 0.000% chance of a result changing. It is Betfair's job to decide when the chance is low enough, and I don't see how every competitive state certified already doesn't put us past that.
The projection is in the context of the Electoral College vote and specifically excluding faithless electors. That hasn't happened yet.
After December 14th it has happened. That is the finishing line, that is when it becomes official. Betfair said they reserve the right for it to be official and it is official on 14 December 2020.
Until December 14th it is theoretically possible for the Electoral College projection to change. After December 14th it isn't possible, the Electoral College will have already met.
PS your Hillary comparison is facetious. Hillary conceded. Trump has cases before the courts, it isn't hypothetical they are there already.
Bottom line: Biden didn't do much better on average than Dem candidates for House and Senate.
Reading this, it's no surprise that most voters stick with the same party for both President and the Senate/House. But there do appear to be flaws in the analysis.
Firstly, it's based on a subset of states only, since not all of them had concurrent elections.
Secondly, it's using the term "outperformance" to analyse the absolute difference in vote share between Presidential and Senate/House results. More meaningful would be the difference in SWING between last time and this time? Maybe (as we see in the UK) there's always a difference between how some people vote at different levels - this is particularly likely where there's a popular incumbent who draws support across the aisle, for example.
What I'd be interested to know is whether more people swung DEM at the 2020 Presidential compared to 2016, now having seen Trump's performance in office and during the campaign? This the analysis simply doesn't tell us - because it can't, the electoral cycles being out of sync.
Nevertheless the data in this article does suggest there was overperformance by Biden - look at the graph for the House Democrats, and by eye I'd put the average outperformance at 1% of the vote. For the Senate it's less clear, but there's a batch of Trump outperformances that are at fractions of a % almost on the line; there's probably a net 0.5% outperformance for Biden. And he is fortunate that he outperformed in some of the key states such as Michigan, Georgia, NC (delivering a near miss), Ohio, Minnesota. Trump chalked up his apparent larger overperformances mostly where it wasn't much use - Hawaii, California, Montana, New York, WV, RI, Alabama.
That extra 0.5% to 1.0% of the total vote, focused where it mattered, will have been important.
Yes, not all states had senate elections, but everywhere voted for the House - so it's probably OK to compare national House vote share with presidential vote share - although not all House seats had both D and R candidates to vote for so it's still not entirely comparable (8 races with no Dem and 19 with no Republican). Biden's lead in the national vote is currently 4.4% Democrat's House national vote lead is currently 2.9%
So Biden is outperforming House Dems by 1.5% in terms of vote share lead. In 2016 Clinton outperformed House Dems by 3.2% in terms of vote share lead.
As for the senate: Georgia seems to be the only state where Biden's slightly better performance actually gained him any EC votes. OTOH Collins' big overperformance vs Trump in Maine cost the Democrats a critical Senate seat.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
I heard it too on the radio and switched off. I simply can't listen to him anymore.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
How disappointing. They must hate the idea of such a stellar Boris success story.
To be fair, at the Press Conference. yesterday two journalists raised the query of was the speed due to the separation of the MHRA from the EMA. One was the Express which obviously has an agenda. To his credit, Boris didn't gasp the 'opportunity'.
Well the head of the authorization team said that it was actually quicker as we were still in transition, too many people ignoring facts to spin this in their preferred direction.
How does that logic work? Either the UK can use a clause of EU law to enable rapid authorization, or it is not subject to EU law. Both of them have the same result.
I’m just relaying what I thought I heard, it was the clearest press conference I’ve seen during the whole of the pandemic but there is always a lot of info to grasp.
There is no doubt that Hancock was over-exuberant yesterday but the EU showed a petulant bitterness which was equally unseemly. I'm pleased for the British who will be vaccinated next week and a little irritated that here in Spain it's unlikely to happen for me at 66 before February at best.
I doubt a 66 yo without pre existing conditions will get it in the UK before Easter, not sure on spanish plans, I’ve got to wait for the ‘right’ one to become available but as it stands I believe there are a number which are accceptable.
It is an absolute certianty that a 66 year old in the UK will be vaccinated before Easter.
Only one? Or do you mean "any"?
All 66 year olds who want one, the logistical operation which has been prepared is incredible.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's a deeply depressing scenario but the truth is that everything in UK politics has been looked at through this lens for at least 3 years already.
So every day we see childish and immature abuse from those who really should know better ("de Piffle" was one of this morning's highlights), an obstinate refusal to give credit to the government for anything, a reluctance to find fault in the EU for everything (how's the budget going by the way?) and a total disregard for collateral damage to our society and cohesiveness.
On the other side there is a reluctance to accept that Brexit has downsides as well as up and that some of the people who seem keenest on Brexit are raving lunatics with a deeply distorted view of the world and their own, self selected and self approved facts and a total disregard for collateral damage to our society and cohesiveness.
Bit worrying that Fauci has said the UK regulator didn't do approval as carefully. Can't really see how he can make that judgment though. And as long as all the regulators come to the same decision - should be okay.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said: “If you go quickly and you do it superficially, people are not going to want to get vaccinated.
"We have the gold standard of a regulatory approach with the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).
"The UK did not do it as carefully. They got a couple of days ahead. I don’t think that makes much difference.
A key problem with the article is that the "simple", "well known" original rules, are not the original rules, they are a partial snapshot as the author knows, indeed he has said the rules must be read in the whole. So why not include a line such as "Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled." which seems exceedingly relevant?
Simply because it weakens the case of a delay down to a frustration and annoyance, nothing more serious than that.
You`re not quoting fully either. That sentence comes from this whole, stand-alone paragraph:
"If there is any material change to the established role or any ambiguity as to who occupies the position, then Betfair may determine, using its reasonable discretion, how to settle the market based on all the information available to it at the relevant time. Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled."
There is no material change or ambiguity. If BF try to use this as an excuse they will be complicit in a conspiracy theory.
There is ambiguity. Some people think Trump should be the projected winner and the issue is before the courts.
Exactly the same as Florida 2000 legally.
The merits of the lawsuit are different but that's for the courts to determine.
Not exactly the same. Here, we're talking about several states where the margin of victory is in the thousands, and a record 39-1 court losses dismissed with prejudice, as opposed to a single state result turning on a few hundred genuinely disputed votes.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Where did the lib Dems come from in this discussion?
He was responding to a lib dem
I think it is a stretch that because a LD or anyone from any party says anything on here about anything that it maybe policy of the party they support.
You only have to see the spats between HYUFD and Philip to see the conundrums that might lead to.
And I'm just wondering about some of the self opinionated twaddle I may have posted over the years.
It was a silly comment from Charles (not least because I am no longer a member), but it's small beer. His highhanded attitude washes over me - the last time he tried to pull expertise on a medical matter was his absolute insistence, early in the virus crisis, that the 'amount' of virus you 'caught' at first infection couldn't possibly be significant in terms of the severity of the subsequent infection; a position that appears to have been established as wrong both by subsequent events and by people even more expert than he.
Disappointed to know you are no longer a member; yours are some of the post I most enjoy reading.
That is most kind, but hopefully those two facts aren't correlated! I'd still count myself as a supporter, and I haven't sent my card back cut in half, or anything like that. I simply think the party has lost its way, hasn't been well managed for quite some time, has no strategy to get out of its hole worth supporting, and doesn't deserve my £, at least for the time being. The idea that, in theory at least, I am free to vote for whichever candidate I think is best without having to worry about party loyalty is actually quite liberating.
We`re in the same position then. Out of interest, do you, on balance, see our place in the coalition government as something to be proud of or to be ashamed of?
I don't object in principle (not least because I was in council coalition myself - one widely seen as relatively successful) but the practical reality of how it was delivered clearly disappointed.
There is a lot of good stuff that came out of that period - the resilience, application and attention to detail from many of the LibDem ministers was exemplary, and the party can be proud of the changes it championed within government, such as the pension freedom reforms, equal marriage, and the localism act.
The party's strategic mistake was not positioning itself as the champion of (rectifying) inter-generational unfairness. Prior to 2010 the LDs had a very strong position with younger voters; one wrecked by Clegg's idiocy over tuition fees. There's an alternative history where the LibDems continued to bang on about the rough deal the next generation is getting - knitting together its approach to policy across the economy, housing, the environment, taxation, reform, Brexit - and continued to ride this wave instead of ceding the ground to Corbyn. In that alternative universe the LDs would have insisted on abolishing tuition fees (a minor trifle compared to current government spending!) and we'd now have STV elections for local government.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
I am still waiting for the scientific paper on how Long Covid effects the mind so that one endlessly uses crappy metaphors and analogies.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's a deeply depressing scenario but the truth is that everything in UK politics has been looked at through this lens for at least 3 years already.
Five and a half years since the 2015 election that started it all.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
I am still waiting for the scientific paper on how Long Covid effects the mind so that one endlessly uses crappy metaphors and analogies.
That appears to be innate.
He was emitting them years ago like a farmer's trailer scattering liquid shite across the polity.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
While I agree with you, Charles, proceeding with the vaccination program (as opposed to approving the vaccine) is his decision.
A key problem with the article is that the "simple", "well known" original rules, are not the original rules, they are a partial snapshot as the author knows, indeed he has said the rules must be read in the whole. So why not include a line such as "Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled." which seems exceedingly relevant?
Simply because it weakens the case of a delay down to a frustration and annoyance, nothing more serious than that.
You`re not quoting fully either. That sentence comes from this whole, stand-alone paragraph:
"If there is any material change to the established role or any ambiguity as to who occupies the position, then Betfair may determine, using its reasonable discretion, how to settle the market based on all the information available to it at the relevant time. Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled."
There is no material change or ambiguity. If BF try to use this as an excuse they will be complicit in a conspiracy theory.
There is ambiguity. Some people think Trump should be the projected winner and the issue is before the courts.
Exactly the same as Florida 2000 legally.
The merits of the lawsuit are different but that's for the courts to determine.
Not exactly the same. Here, we're talking about several states where the margin of victory is in the thousands, and a record 39-1 court losses dismissed with prejudice, as opposed to a single state result turning on a few hundred genuinely disputed votes.
As I said Trumps cases are facetious but that is for the courts to determine, just as they did in 2000. The courts are doing their job and justice should prevail, only 11 days of this insanity to go.
The projection can theoretically change between now and 14/12/20, it becomes "official" only on 14/12/20 (or some have said 08/12/20) at which point it will be impossible for the projection to change anymore.
This government increasingly make me think of Flanders and Swann's Song of Patriotic Prejudice... "The English, the English, the English are best, I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest." Except they don't seem to appreciate the song's satirical intent.
I fear this will lead Betfair to slim down their politics offering. Hopefully the more with it Smarkets will pick up the slack.
It shouldn't, they just need to stick to their own rules in the markets they create.
WHY PUT IN PROJECTED ELECTORS, IF THE CRITERIA IS ACTUAL ELECTORS ? And I really don't like the way Smarkets operates - seeding your own exchange creates all sorts of conflicts of interests.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
And even the 'wordsmith' is moot. There are two options really: BJ is extremely limited in his ability to express himself and the sub, sub Wooster persona is all he can manage, or he actually thinks that the Reach for the Sky, bandits at 12 o'clock bullshit is particularly resonant. Neither is very encouraging.
The bandits are at every point on the clock face, around the cabinet table.
I fear this will lead Betfair to slim down their politics offering. Hopefully the more with it Smarkets will pick up the slack.
It shouldn't, they just need to stick to their own rules in the markets they create.
WHY PUT IN PROJECTED ELECTORS, IF THE CRITERIA IS ACTUAL ELECTORS ? And I really don't like the way Smarkets operates - seeding your own exchange creates all sorts of conflicts of interests.
Read the paragraph in full, it says why.
They're excluding faithless electors. They're not saying the TV channels decide since they explicitly refer to waiting for it to be official if need be. It isn't official yet.
How does Betfair Exchange actually make most of its money? Is it primarily from the commission on winnings?
They get first sight of any arbitrage opportunities within a market though, so it would be rude not to take those, wouldn't it?
They could also exploit arbitrage opportunities across logically connected markets, even more so as they control the settling of the markets and hence can ensure that those logical connections actually hold. Whereas a third party takes the risk of markets getting settled at different times or one being cancelled but not the other.
Finally, I'd suspect that most punters still want to just back rather than lay, and do so immediately rather than taking the risk of putting up a bet for someone else to take later. What do Betfair do to address that imbalance (if it exists)? Do they actually act as bookmaker within the exchange as well, by laying outcomes at somewhat unfavourable odds?
As far as I can tell, assuming they are not lying, then:
They seed markets to get a minimum level of liquidity started. Positions are not substantial from this. They "cross match" different lines to account for arbitrage within some but not all markets. So if they could lay the Presidential runners at 100.5% the system could do that depending on how the market was formed. It couldnt back Trump and Biden at 99.5% because it wouldnt know whether other outcomes were possible. Across "logically" connected markets they can "cross match" where the market is identical, but its only done on the most common and liquid markets such as football match odds and asian handicap lines, they are very unlikely to have ever set anything up on politics like that. They do occasionally hedge Sportsbook volume into the exchange, quite likely to have done that on the election. Beyond the above they dont take positions. Other exchanges, in particular Smarkets, run a very different model.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's a deeply depressing scenario but the truth is that everything in UK politics has been looked at through this lens for at least 3 years already.
Five and a half years since the 2015 election that started it all.
That wasn't the start. But it was the pernicious remainer Parliament of 2017-19 that must bear a lot of responsibility for where we are now. There's plenty of blame to go around of course and the fantasists in the ERG have more than played their part. If that Parliament had accepted Mrs May's deal I think the country would undoubtedly be in a much better place. For me, Rory Stewart had this spot on and articulated it well. All our MPs should have listened.
I fear this will lead Betfair to slim down their politics offering. Hopefully the more with it Smarkets will pick up the slack.
It shouldn't, they just need to stick to their own rules in the markets they create.
WHY PUT IN PROJECTED ELECTORS, IF THE CRITERIA IS ACTUAL ELECTORS ? And I really don't like the way Smarkets operates - seeding your own exchange creates all sorts of conflicts of interests.
Read the paragraph in full, it says why.
They're excluding faithless electors. They're not saying the TV channels decide since they explicitly refer to waiting for it to be official if need be. It isn't official yet.
Why has my Hawaii bet been settled then ? There are lawsuits going on which have actually delayed certification. Yet it was settled instantly for Biden, on the exit poll - not even a vote count there.
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
I didn’t see it, so cannot comment.
But imagine a scenario where officials spell out to the clown various risks, then offer him the chance to be the first in the world to start vaccinating people. How much consideration do any of us seriously think Bozo would give before giving the go ahead?
We just have to take the apparently excellent news on trust, for now.
IT’S NOT HIS FUCKING DECISION
Apologies for both shouting and swearing
That is an unbelievable irresponsible approach to adopt and I hope to God it’s not LibDem strategy
The MHRA is an independent regulator. I was surprised how fast they moved, but it’s a good thing
The last thing we need is idiots trying to politicise vaccines
Then stay away from here - the Boris haters have completely lost their minds on him & Brexit. Stirring up the anti-vaxxers is just part of the game, with Jo Public as collateral damage.
Duh, very silly post, particularly bit about anti-vaxxers. No one has "lost their minds on him" except the gullible fools that still support him like loyal puppies . He is the most hopelessly inept PM in my living memory and I was a Tory supporter and activist for many years. He has no leadership skills, zero values and cannot express himself in a serious or coherent manner in parliament. History will not be kind to him, and neither should anyone in the current time who has half a brain. No-one should show him any sympathy for doing a job that he is massively unsuited to as he lied and cheated his way to get it.
Theresa May was far worse which is why she lost Cameron's majority, lost votes in the Commons 33 times, couldn't get her "Meaningful Vote" through the Commons, lost the first vote on a Finance Bill since the seventies and even suffered the largest defeat in the Commons on a government motion in the era of universal suffrage. She still wouldn't resign and went kicking and screaming to defeat dragging the Tories down to Liberal Democrat levels of less than 9% in the polls in a nationwide election.
Johnson on the other hand has outmaneuvered his political opponents time and again. Whih is why you're seething.
Despite his hyperbole, Nigel does have a point.
Mrs M saw herself as the new Mrs T, and although her political skills fell well short, you could at least see her trying to fill the same shoes, with her resolute determination to stick to her lines in the face of all common sense.
Bozo sees himself as the new Churchill, yet has none of the same attributes - indeed in almost every way he's an anti-Churchill, such that if the two of them ever met there'd be a puff of smoke and then an empty room.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
It all depends on one's definition of a wordsmith. Johnson is more a word-wrangler or even word-mangler.
Johnson the writer, like Johnson the statesman seems to be another over hyped product for his self-salesmanship portfolio.
He is better at politics than he is a writer/journalist!
P.S. Very informative header from PtP.
That's PR for you. Pompous arse has transformed into 'wordsmith'
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's a deeply depressing scenario but the truth is that everything in UK politics has been looked at through this lens for at least 3 years already.
Five and a half years since the 2015 election that started it all.
That wasn't the start. But it was the pernicious remainer Parliament of 2017-19 that must bear a lot of responsibility for where we are now. There's plenty of blame to go around of course and the fantasists in the ERG have more than played their part. If that Parliament had accepted Mrs May's deal I think the country would undoubtedly be in a much better place. For me, Rory Stewart had this spot on and articulated it well. All our MPs should have listened.
Those who wanted closer integration with Europe should have listened yes. They're getting a harder Brexit as they aided and abetted the Hard Brexiteers.
Brexiteers who thought Mays deal wasn't what they were voting for rejecting it seem to have got what they want though. Rejecting the deal was surely the right move for them?
I have no regrets May's deal was rejected. I'm delighted it was.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's a deeply depressing scenario but the truth is that everything in UK politics has been looked at through this lens for at least 3 years already.
Five and a half years since the 2015 election that started it all.
That wasn't the start. But it was the pernicious remainer Parliament of 2017-19 that must bear a lot of responsibility for where we are now. There's plenty of blame to go around of course and the fantasists in the ERG have more than played their part. If that Parliament had accepted Mrs May's deal I think the country would undoubtedly be in a much better place. For me, Rory Stewart had this spot on and articulated it well. All our MPs should have listened.
UK supermarkets pay back £1.3 billion of covid relief to HMRC
I think they should have divvied it up between their frontline staff and delivery drivers who have taken on significant personal risk for the benefit of the country for very low pay. Returning it to HMRC is certainly better than paying the board big bonuses with it at least.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
Newsnight totally lost it last night on the vaccine announcement....a great day with great news....wall to wall should we be worried, is it dangerous, why have the government done this so quickly, it is too quick, have they done the proper checks, the Europeans are taking longer, thus we should have too, isn't good to be first.
How disappointing. They must hate the idea of such a stellar Boris success story.
To be fair, at the Press Conference. yesterday two journalists raised the query of was the speed due to the separation of the MHRA from the EMA. One was the Express which obviously has an agenda. To his credit, Boris didn't gasp the 'opportunity'.
Well the head of the authorization team said that it was actually quicker as we were still in transition, too many people ignoring facts to spin this in their preferred direction.
How does that logic work? Either the UK can use a clause of EU law to enable rapid authorization, or it is not subject to EU law. Both of them have the same result.
I’m just relaying what I thought I heard, it was the clearest press conference I’ve seen during the whole of the pandemic but there is always a lot of info to grasp.
There is no doubt that Hancock was over-exuberant yesterday but the EU showed a petulant bitterness which was equally unseemly. I'm pleased for the British who will be vaccinated next week and a little irritated that here in Spain it's unlikely to happen for me at 66 before February at best.
I doubt a 66 yo without pre existing conditions will get it in the UK before Easter, not sure on spanish plans, I’ve got to wait for the ‘right’ one to become available but as it stands I believe there are a number which are accceptable.
It is an absolute certianty that a 66 year old in the UK will be vaccinated before Easter.
Only one? Or do you mean "any"?
All 66 year olds who want one, the logistical operation which has been prepared is incredible.
Let’s hope so can I view it anywhere?
I dont know if they will publish it, GPs were sent elements of it yesterday.
I fear this will lead Betfair to slim down their politics offering. Hopefully the more with it Smarkets will pick up the slack.
It shouldn't, they just need to stick to their own rules in the markets they create.
WHY PUT IN PROJECTED ELECTORS, IF THE CRITERIA IS ACTUAL ELECTORS ? And I really don't like the way Smarkets operates - seeding your own exchange creates all sorts of conflicts of interests.
Read the paragraph in full, it says why.
They're excluding faithless electors. They're not saying the TV channels decide since they explicitly refer to waiting for it to be official if need be. It isn't official yet.
Why has my Hawaii bet been settled then ? There are lawsuits going on which have actually delayed certification. Yet it was settled instantly for Biden, on the exit poll - not even a vote count there.
Becaue there's no ambiguity for Hawaii. There is for the others, absurdly.
Bottom line: Biden didn't do much better on average than Dem candidates for House and Senate.
Reading this, it's no surprise that most voters stick with the same party for both President and the Senate/House. But there do appear to be flaws in the analysis.
Firstly, it's based on a subset of states only, since not all of them had concurrent elections.
Secondly, it's using the term "outperformance" to analyse the absolute difference in vote share between Presidential and Senate/House results. More meaningful would be the difference in SWING between last time and this time? Maybe (as we see in the UK) there's always a difference between how some people vote at different levels - this is particularly likely where there's a popular incumbent who draws support across the aisle, for example.
What I'd be interested to know is whether more people swung DEM at the 2020 Presidential compared to 2016, now having seen Trump's performance in office and during the campaign? This the analysis simply doesn't tell us - because it can't, the electoral cycles being out of sync.
Nevertheless the data in this article does suggest there was overperformance by Biden - look at the graph for the House Democrats, and by eye I'd put the average outperformance at 1% of the vote. For the Senate it's less clear, but there's a batch of Trump outperformances that are at fractions of a % almost on the line; there's probably a net 0.5% outperformance for Biden. And he is fortunate that he outperformed in some of the key states such as Michigan, Georgia, NC (delivering a near miss), Ohio, Minnesota. Trump chalked up his apparent larger overperformances mostly where it wasn't much use - Hawaii, California, Montana, New York, WV, RI, Alabama.
That extra 0.5% to 1.0% of the total vote, focused where it mattered, will have been important.
Yes, not all states had senate elections, but everywhere voted for the House - so it's probably OK to compare national House vote share with presidential vote share - although not all House seats had both D and R candidates to vote for so it's still not entirely comparable (8 races with no Dem and 19 with no Republican). Biden's lead in the national vote is currently 4.4% Democrat's House national vote lead is currently 2.9%
So Biden is outperforming House Dems by 1.5% in terms of vote share lead. In 2016 Clinton outperformed House Dems by 3.2% in terms of vote share lead.
As for the senate: Georgia seems to be the only state where Biden's slightly better performance actually gained him any EC votes. OTOH Collins' big overperformance vs Trump in Maine cost the Democrats a critical Senate seat.
That comparison with Clinton's performance suggests that the article's authors may indeed have a point, tbf.
The other factor missing is the strong tendency of US voters to give their presidents second terms - a factor we simply don't have in the UK, where seeing a government in office normally repels a chunk of those who first elected it. I think we look at Trump through our own lens and wonder why someone so abysmal wasn't more easily ejected from office, when in US terms being denied re-election is actually a big deal.
Strange that what ended such tragedies was Rupert Murdoch and his money. Not often associated with positive outcomes.
When, in the 80s, the issues of violence and avoidable disasters such as this came to the point of unavoidable reform.... the clubs, across the UK, claimed that rebuilding their stadia from scratch was impossible and would bankrupt them.
It is difficult to understand, if you are only used to modern ones, how pretty much every ground was a death trap, back then.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
I am still waiting for the scientific paper on how Long Covid effects the mind so that one endlessly uses crappy metaphors and analogies.
That appears to be innate.
He was emitting them years ago like a farmer's trailer scattering liquid shite across the polity.
I fear this will lead Betfair to slim down their politics offering. Hopefully the more with it Smarkets will pick up the slack.
It shouldn't, they just need to stick to their own rules in the markets they create.
WHY PUT IN PROJECTED ELECTORS, IF THE CRITERIA IS ACTUAL ELECTORS ? And I really don't like the way Smarkets operates - seeding your own exchange creates all sorts of conflicts of interests.
Read the paragraph in full, it says why.
They're excluding faithless electors. They're not saying the TV channels decide since they explicitly refer to waiting for it to be official if need be. It isn't official yet.
Why has my Hawaii bet been settled then ? There are lawsuits going on which have actually delayed certification. Yet it was settled instantly for Biden, on the exit poll - not even a vote count there.
Becaue there's no ambiguity for Hawaii. There is for the others, absurdly.
Where's the ambiguity for Arizona, Mark Kelly has been sworn in to the senate on the same certified election certificate that yields Biden the electoral college votes there.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
And even the 'wordsmith' is moot. There are two options really: BJ is extremely limited in his ability to express himself and the sub, sub Wooster persona is all he can manage, or he actually thinks that the Reach for the Sky, bandits at 12 o'clock bullshit is particularly resonant. Neither is very encouraging.
The bandits are at every point on the clock face, around the cabinet table.
He's fine when he's making a prepared and rehearsed speech, IIRC. Off the cuff, or even in a discussion, such as a press conference, he can be dreadful. As an example, last night's.
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
It all depends on one's definition of a wordsmith. Johnson is more a word-wrangler or even word-mangler.
Johnson the writer, like Johnson the statesman seems to be another over hyped product for his self-salesmanship portfolio.
He is better at politics than he is a writer/journalist!
P.S. Very informative header from PtP.
That's PR for you. Pompous arse has transformed into 'wordsmith'
If PB has taught us nothing else, we ought to be well aware that people who write for a living have some very wacko views. And an over inflated view of themselves.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's a deeply depressing scenario but the truth is that everything in UK politics has been looked at through this lens for at least 3 years already.
Five and a half years since the 2015 election that started it all.
That wasn't the start. But it was the pernicious remainer Parliament of 2017-19 that must bear a lot of responsibility for where we are now. There's plenty of blame to go around of course and the fantasists in the ERG have more than played their part. If that Parliament had accepted Mrs May's deal I think the country would undoubtedly be in a much better place. For me, Rory Stewart had this spot on and articulated it well. All our MPs should have listened.
May lost her majority for trying to address long term care which her base didn’t like, if she’d left it in the long grass things would have been different.
‘The U.S. Is No Longer a More “Developed” Country Than Us’ https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/02/the-us-is-no-longer-a-more-developed-country-than-us-442407 ...It’s a shocking development for a country that has, for decades, largely viewed the United States almost like an older sibling—a model of success and progress that Koreans were proud to emulate. Now, many Koreans see the U.S. as a failing country, deeply divided and unable to meet basic challenges. The shift began after President Donald Trump’s 2016 win, when many Koreans were shocked to see him claim the presidency after a string of scandals. But the clincher has been America’s bungled response to Covid-19, followed by Trump and the GOP’s recent efforts to contest the legitimate results of the 2020 U.S. election. For Koreans, the past year has exposed the deep problems within the American system, from hyperpartisanship and deep distrust in government to a poor health care system—issues that have long been familiar to Americans, but not to Koreans, many of whom have maintained the idea of American exceptionalism far longer and livelier than many Americans...
Bottom line: Biden didn't do much better on average than Dem candidates for House and Senate.
Reading this, it's no surprise that most voters stick with the same party for both President and the Senate/House. But there do appear to be flaws in the analysis.
Firstly, it's based on a subset of states only, since not all of them had concurrent elections.
Secondly, it's using the term "outperformance" to analyse the absolute difference in vote share between Presidential and Senate/House results. More meaningful would be the difference in SWING between last time and this time? Maybe (as we see in the UK) there's always a difference between how some people vote at different levels - this is particularly likely where there's a popular incumbent who draws support across the aisle, for example.
What I'd be interested to know is whether more people swung DEM at the 2020 Presidential compared to 2016, now having seen Trump's performance in office and during the campaign? This the analysis simply doesn't tell us - because it can't, the electoral cycles being out of sync.
Nevertheless the data in this article does suggest there was overperformance by Biden - look at the graph for the House Democrats, and by eye I'd put the average outperformance at 1% of the vote. For the Senate it's less clear, but there's a batch of Trump outperformances that are at fractions of a % almost on the line; there's probably a net 0.5% outperformance for Biden. And he is fortunate that he outperformed in some of the key states such as Michigan, Georgia, NC (delivering a near miss), Ohio, Minnesota. Trump chalked up his apparent larger overperformances mostly where it wasn't much use - Hawaii, California, Montana, New York, WV, RI, Alabama.
That extra 0.5% to 1.0% of the total vote, focused where it mattered, will have been important.
Yes, not all states had senate elections, but everywhere voted for the House - so it's probably OK to compare national House vote share with presidential vote share - although not all House seats had both D and R candidates to vote for so it's still not entirely comparable (8 races with no Dem and 19 with no Republican). Biden's lead in the national vote is currently 4.4% Democrat's House national vote lead is currently 2.9%
So Biden is outperforming House Dems by 1.5% in terms of vote share lead. In 2016 Clinton outperformed House Dems by 3.2% in terms of vote share lead.
As for the senate: Georgia seems to be the only state where Biden's slightly better performance actually gained him any EC votes. OTOH Collins' big overperformance vs Trump in Maine cost the Democrats a critical Senate seat.
So the Dems need Biden and Hillary style centrism to win rather than the AOC radical left, certainly at Presidential level
This "Brexit gave us the vaccine sooner" story being put out by the Tories. We know that it isn't true. The CEO of the regulator - who approved the vaccine - set out in simple detail why it isn't true. And yet the Tories keep saying that it is true.
One of two things is happening: 1. ManCock, Rees-Mogg et al genuinely are stupid enough to think they know more about vaccine regulations than the CEO of the vaccines regulator 2. ManCock et al know that the regulator is telling the truth, but know that the Brexiteer public are stupid enough to listen to self-evident lies and believe they are truths.
At least one poster on here appears to the a target for option 2. Again, the Regulator has said the Brexit claim is not true. Stop saying that it is true because you want it to be true. This isn't Peter Pan, we don't get to see Tinkerbell regardless of how many times and how genuinely we say that we believe in faries.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's a deeply depressing scenario but the truth is that everything in UK politics has been looked at through this lens for at least 3 years already.
Five and a half years since the 2015 election that started it all.
That wasn't the start. But it was the pernicious remainer Parliament of 2017-19 that must bear a lot of responsibility for where we are now. There's plenty of blame to go around of course and the fantasists in the ERG have more than played their part. If that Parliament had accepted Mrs May's deal I think the country would undoubtedly be in a much better place. For me, Rory Stewart had this spot on and articulated it well. All our MPs should have listened.
May lost her majority for trying to address long term care which her base didn’t like, if she’d left it in the long grass things would have been different.
Johnson hasn't and won't make that mistake.
Which goes to show that Johnson is a more effective politician, but a worse statesman than May.
And that gap, between what's easy in the short term and what's best in the longer term, has always been there. But the ruthlessness of the Johnson approach is new, at least at the top level. (Something like it has been part of a lot of local council campaigns for longer.) And it works brilliantly. In the short term.
‘The U.S. Is No Longer a More “Developed” Country Than Us’ https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/02/the-us-is-no-longer-a-more-developed-country-than-us-442407 ...It’s a shocking development for a country that has, for decades, largely viewed the United States almost like an older sibling—a model of success and progress that Koreans were proud to emulate. Now, many Koreans see the U.S. as a failing country, deeply divided and unable to meet basic challenges. The shift began after President Donald Trump’s 2016 win, when many Koreans were shocked to see him claim the presidency after a string of scandals. But the clincher has been America’s bungled response to Covid-19, followed by Trump and the GOP’s recent efforts to contest the legitimate results of the 2020 U.S. election. For Koreans, the past year has exposed the deep problems within the American system, from hyperpartisanship and deep distrust in government to a poor health care system—issues that have long been familiar to Americans, but not to Koreans, many of whom have maintained the idea of American exceptionalism far longer and livelier than many Americans...
I first went to work in SE Asia in the mid-nineties - then everyone looked to America for the best. No longer - now its Korea (and to an extent, Japan, but old memories etc.).
"We have the gold standard of a regulatory approach with the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).
"The UK did not do it as carefully......
"Brave" from the country that gave us the FAA and the Boeing 737 MAX.
To be fair every country will do this, we did it to the Russian and Chinese vaccines, and would have done it to the US if they had got there before us.
"We have the gold standard of a regulatory approach with the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).
"The UK did not do it as carefully......
"Brave" from the country that gave us the FAA and the Boeing 737 MAX.
He's been working close to Trump for too long! Although, to be fair, the FDA has high standards, and, although a long time ago, spotted the problem with Thalidomide. The bog-up over which, of course, led to the standards we now have in the MHRA and EMA.
Presumably every UK newsworthy event in the next 24 months will be attributed to Brexit, either as good news from the leavers or as bad newsfrom the remainers.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
It's a deeply depressing scenario but the truth is that everything in UK politics has been looked at through this lens for at least 3 years already.
Five and a half years since the 2015 election that started it all.
That wasn't the start. But it was the pernicious remainer Parliament of 2017-19 that must bear a lot of responsibility for where we are now. There's plenty of blame to go around of course and the fantasists in the ERG have more than played their part. If that Parliament had accepted Mrs May's deal I think the country would undoubtedly be in a much better place. For me, Rory Stewart had this spot on and articulated it well. All our MPs should have listened.
May lost her majority for trying to address long term care which her base didn’t like, if she’d left it in the long grass things would have been different.
So you're just totally ignoring other issues that blew her credibility like the fact that she called an early election despite having a majority then didn't bother to turn up to the debates?
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
I am still waiting for the scientific paper on how Long Covid effects the mind so that one endlessly uses crappy metaphors and analogies.
That appears to be innate.
He was emitting them years ago like a farmer's trailer scattering liquid shite across the polity.
Oratorical dung spreader is the term.
Is this some sort of venting?
Boris is an amusing and interesting speaker, highly skilled at both entertaining and persuading his audience. His use of the English language is vivid if not always precise. Is it so hard to recognise that whist maintaining that he lacks deeper insight, long term planning, often says what he thinks people want to hear, is lacking in consistency and has few, if any, fundamental principles?
"The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has claimed the UK was the first country in the world to clinically approve a coronavirus vaccine because the country has “much better” scientists than France, Belgium or the US.
Williamson said he was not surprised the UK was the first to roll out the immunisation because “we’re a much better country than every single one of them”."
Why must he use such ridiculous analogies though, searchlights this time, when do we launch the barrage balloons to stop a third wave. It doesn’t add to the message let’s have some plain fair English to convey difficult concepts.
I did think Johnson was particularly poor in using the searchlight analogy, but only caught the first few minutes, as had a busy evening session.
"A searchlight picking out an invisible enemy" or something on those lines. No amount of light can help see something truly invisible!
Like most of our politicians he has no understanding of science, he is a wordsmith and nothing more. Ignorance expressed in tortured wartime rhetoric.
And even the 'wordsmith' is moot. There are two options really: BJ is extremely limited in his ability to express himself and the sub, sub Wooster persona is all he can manage, or he actually thinks that the Reach for the Sky, bandits at 12 o'clock bullshit is particularly resonant. Neither is very encouraging.
The bandits are at every point on the clock face, around the cabinet table.
He's fine when he's making a prepared and rehearsed speech, IIRC. Off the cuff, or even in a discussion, such as a press conference, he can be dreadful. As an example, last night's.
I fear this will lead Betfair to slim down their politics offering. Hopefully the more with it Smarkets will pick up the slack.
It shouldn't, they just need to stick to their own rules in the markets they create.
WHY PUT IN PROJECTED ELECTORS, IF THE CRITERIA IS ACTUAL ELECTORS ? And I really don't like the way Smarkets operates - seeding your own exchange creates all sorts of conflicts of interests.
Read the paragraph in full, it says why.
They're excluding faithless electors. They're not saying the TV channels decide since they explicitly refer to waiting for it to be official if need be. It isn't official yet.
Why has my Hawaii bet been settled then ? There are lawsuits going on which have actually delayed certification. Yet it was settled instantly for Biden, on the exit poll - not even a vote count there.
Becaue there's no ambiguity for Hawaii. There is for the others, absurdly.
Where's the ambiguity for Arizona, Mark Kelly has been sworn in to the senate on the same certified election certificate that yields Biden the electoral college votes there.
IANAL but as I understand it since Kelly has been sworn in the deadline to file lawsuits against him has lapsed so the result is official now.
The deadline for lawsuits for the Electoral College is either 08/12/20 or 14/12/20 depending upon who you ask, so it will be official then.
The law gives the opportunity for post-certification challenge, hence the 08/12/20 "anchor" date.
Betfair seem to have got themselves into a bit of a pickle when they stopped settling states according to projections, following their own rules, after President Trump did not concede immediately it was obvious that he had lost. Now they just seem to be hoping something will turn up.
'Never attribute to malice anything that can more readily be explained by incompetence.'
Yes, I think Betfair have screwed up, and are looking now for a face-saving out. I expect they will get one on December 14th, but that doesn't alter the fact that they had perfectly sensible market rules and changed them after the event.
F1: considered backing Russell at 3.6 to win qualifying but decided against it.
If Verstappen or Bottas wins that's great. If one of those is second then I'm also ahead. If Albon or Perez wins or comes second I get something extra.
Preference is very much for a Verstappen-Bottas 1-2. So long as one of them is at least 2nd I think that'll be ok.
Comments
And WTF does participation in the EU procurement scheme have to do with vaccine approval?
Certainly there were plenty in the Tory party politicising the vaccine yesterday.
May 2021 "Huge jump in the number of nesting yellow spotted fagtails" -> Tory MP tweets "Birds prefer Brexit Britain"
There is some ambiguity currently what the projection will be on Dec 14th. There shouldn't be, its outrageous that there is, but there is. If Trump wins lawsuits between now and Dec 14th, if Trump then wins recounts between now and Dec 14th then he could become the "projected" winner between now and Dec 14th.
He shouldn't, it would be an outrageous, but he could. There are 11 days to go and then his will be finalised.
Something about the name Williamson in politics
Can't really see how he can make that judgment though. And as long as all the regulators come to the same decision - should be okay.
Clearly you wouldn't argue that Betfair should never pay out on the 2016 election result, because it's unthinkable that such a case would be brought or won. Given every competitive state has certified their results and no viable cases are currently in court, why do you think there is sufficient ambiguity for Betfair to keep the market open?
Related: Why will you stop thinking that there is any ambiguity this time once Dec 14th takes place? Trump can keep bringing lawsuits to have EC slates ruled out or whatever. There is never 0.000% chance of a result changing. It is Betfair's job to decide when the chance is low enough, and I don't see how every competitive state certified already doesn't put us past that.
In terms of your other comments about the party; I agree with them all. Unlike HYUFD I don't feel bound to vote for the LDs just because I am a member, so I have no scruples about being a member and not voting for them, although obviously not to do so is a very rare event. It has occurred though. Once when the person was, in my opinion, a pillock and I have abstained in Police Commissioner elections on principle.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/940421/2020-12-02_slides_for_Data_briefing.pdf
Form that -
Johnson on the other hand has outmaneuvered his political opponents time and again. Whih is why you're seething.
They get first sight of any arbitrage opportunities within a market though, so it would be rude not to take those, wouldn't it?
They could also exploit arbitrage opportunities across logically connected markets, even more so as they control the settling of the markets and hence can ensure that those logical connections actually hold. Whereas a third party takes the risk of markets getting settled at different times or one being cancelled but not the other.
Finally, I'd suspect that most punters still want to just back rather than lay, and do so immediately rather than taking the risk of putting up a bet for someone else to take later. What do Betfair do to address that imbalance (if it exists)? Do they actually act as bookmaker within the exchange as well, by laying outcomes at somewhat unfavourable odds?
After December 14th it has happened. That is the finishing line, that is when it becomes official. Betfair said they reserve the right for it to be official and it is official on 14 December 2020.
Until December 14th it is theoretically possible for the Electoral College projection to change. After December 14th it isn't possible, the Electoral College will have already met.
PS your Hillary comparison is facetious. Hillary conceded. Trump has cases before the courts, it isn't hypothetical they are there already.
Biden's lead in the national vote is currently 4.4%
Democrat's House national vote lead is currently 2.9%
So Biden is outperforming House Dems by 1.5% in terms of vote share lead.
In 2016 Clinton outperformed House Dems by 3.2% in terms of vote share lead.
As for the senate: Georgia seems to be the only state where Biden's slightly better performance actually gained him any EC votes.
OTOH Collins' big overperformance vs Trump in Maine cost the Democrats a critical Senate seat.
I simply can't listen to him anymore.
Very amused by Peter's email address. Is he still waiting for a payout on Arkle?
So every day we see childish and immature abuse from those who really should know better ("de Piffle" was one of this morning's highlights), an obstinate refusal to give credit to the government for anything, a reluctance to find fault in the EU for everything (how's the budget going by the way?) and a total disregard for collateral damage to our society and cohesiveness.
On the other side there is a reluctance to accept that Brexit has downsides as well as up and that some of the people who seem keenest on Brexit are raving lunatics with a deeply distorted view of the world and their own, self selected and self approved facts and a total disregard for collateral damage to our society and cohesiveness.
It's not much of a prospect.
Here, we're talking about several states where the margin of victory is in the thousands, and a record 39-1 court losses dismissed with prejudice, as opposed to a single state result turning on a few hundred genuinely disputed votes.
There is a lot of good stuff that came out of that period - the resilience, application and attention to detail from many of the LibDem ministers was exemplary, and the party can be proud of the changes it championed within government, such as the pension freedom reforms, equal marriage, and the localism act.
The party's strategic mistake was not positioning itself as the champion of (rectifying) inter-generational unfairness. Prior to 2010 the LDs had a very strong position with younger voters; one wrecked by Clegg's idiocy over tuition fees. There's an alternative history where the LibDems continued to bang on about the rough deal the next generation is getting - knitting together its approach to policy across the economy, housing, the environment, taxation, reform, Brexit - and continued to ride this wave instead of ceding the ground to Corbyn. In that alternative universe the LDs would have insisted on abolishing tuition fees (a minor trifle compared to current government spending!) and we'd now have STV elections for local government.
The projection can theoretically change between now and 14/12/20, it becomes "official" only on 14/12/20 (or some have said 08/12/20) at which point it will be impossible for the projection to change anymore.
WHY PUT IN PROJECTED ELECTORS, IF THE CRITERIA IS ACTUAL ELECTORS ?
And I really don't like the way Smarkets operates - seeding your own exchange creates all sorts of conflicts of interests.
They're excluding faithless electors. They're not saying the TV channels decide since they explicitly refer to waiting for it to be official if need be. It isn't official yet.
They seed markets to get a minimum level of liquidity started. Positions are not substantial from this.
They "cross match" different lines to account for arbitrage within some but not all markets. So if they could lay the Presidential runners at 100.5% the system could do that depending on how the market was formed. It couldnt back Trump and Biden at 99.5% because it wouldnt know whether other outcomes were possible.
Across "logically" connected markets they can "cross match" where the market is identical, but its only done on the most common and liquid markets such as football match odds and asian handicap lines, they are very unlikely to have ever set anything up on politics like that.
They do occasionally hedge Sportsbook volume into the exchange, quite likely to have done that on the election.
Beyond the above they dont take positions.
Other exchanges, in particular Smarkets, run a very different model.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/dec/03/rangers-football-forgotten-tragedy-ibrox-stadium-disaster-glasgow
UK supermarkets pay back £1.3 billion of covid relief to HMRC
Mrs M saw herself as the new Mrs T, and although her political skills fell well short, you could at least see her trying to fill the same shoes, with her resolute determination to stick to her lines in the face of all common sense.
Bozo sees himself as the new Churchill, yet has none of the same attributes - indeed in almost every way he's an anti-Churchill, such that if the two of them ever met there'd be a puff of smoke and then an empty room.
Brexiteers who thought Mays deal wasn't what they were voting for rejecting it seem to have got what they want though. Rejecting the deal was surely the right move for them?
I have no regrets May's deal was rejected. I'm delighted it was.
Mark Kelly has been sworn in on the same ballots that Biden won with !
The other factor missing is the strong tendency of US voters to give their presidents second terms - a factor we simply don't have in the UK, where seeing a government in office normally repels a chunk of those who first elected it. I think we look at Trump through our own lens and wonder why someone so abysmal wasn't more easily ejected from office, when in US terms being denied re-election is actually a big deal.
When, in the 80s, the issues of violence and avoidable disasters such as this came to the point of unavoidable reform.... the clubs, across the UK, claimed that rebuilding their stadia from scratch was impossible and would bankrupt them.
It is difficult to understand, if you are only used to modern ones, how pretty much every ground was a death trap, back then.
Along came the television rights money.....
Science improves when it is put under pressure, even by people who are wrong.
Radomir Tylecote"
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/03/censoring-anti-vaxxers-would-be-a-terrible-own-goal/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/02/the-us-is-no-longer-a-more-developed-country-than-us-442407
...It’s a shocking development for a country that has, for decades, largely viewed the United States almost like an older sibling—a model of success and progress that Koreans were proud to emulate. Now, many Koreans see the U.S. as a failing country, deeply divided and unable to meet basic challenges. The shift began after President Donald Trump’s 2016 win, when many Koreans were shocked to see him claim the presidency after a string of scandals. But the clincher has been America’s bungled response to Covid-19, followed by Trump and the GOP’s recent efforts to contest the legitimate results of the 2020 U.S. election. For Koreans, the past year has exposed the deep problems within the American system, from hyperpartisanship and deep distrust in government to a poor health care system—issues that have long been familiar to Americans, but not to Koreans, many of whom have maintained the idea of American exceptionalism far longer and livelier than many Americans...
One of two things is happening:
1. ManCock, Rees-Mogg et al genuinely are stupid enough to think they know more about vaccine regulations than the CEO of the vaccines regulator
2. ManCock et al know that the regulator is telling the truth, but know that the Brexiteer public are stupid enough to listen to self-evident lies and believe they are truths.
At least one poster on here appears to the a target for option 2. Again, the Regulator has said the Brexit claim is not true. Stop saying that it is true because you want it to be true. This isn't Peter Pan, we don't get to see Tinkerbell regardless of how many times and how genuinely we say that we believe in faries.
Which goes to show that Johnson is a more effective politician, but a worse statesman than May.
And that gap, between what's easy in the short term and what's best in the longer term, has always been there. But the ruthlessness of the Johnson approach is new, at least at the top level. (Something like it has been part of a lot of local council campaigns for longer.) And it works brilliantly. In the short term.
The bog-up over which, of course, led to the standards we now have in the MHRA and EMA.
Boris is an amusing and interesting speaker, highly skilled at both entertaining and persuading his audience. His use of the English language is vivid if not always precise. Is it so hard to recognise that whist maintaining that he lacks deeper insight, long term planning, often says what he thinks people want to hear, is lacking in consistency and has few, if any, fundamental principles?
Williamson said he was not surprised the UK was the first to roll out the immunisation because “we’re a much better country than every single one of them”."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/03/gavin-williamson-britains-a-much-better-country-than-all-of-them
The deadline for lawsuits for the Electoral College is either 08/12/20 or 14/12/20 depending upon who you ask, so it will be official then.
The law gives the opportunity for post-certification challenge, hence the 08/12/20 "anchor" date.
Yes, I think Betfair have screwed up, and are looking now for a face-saving out. I expect they will get one on December 14th, but that doesn't alter the fact that they had perfectly sensible market rules and changed them after the event.
F1: considered backing Russell at 3.6 to win qualifying but decided against it.
If Verstappen or Bottas wins that's great. If one of those is second then I'm also ahead. If Albon or Perez wins or comes second I get something extra.
Preference is very much for a Verstappen-Bottas 1-2. So long as one of them is at least 2nd I think that'll be ok.