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The latest Brexit betting from the Smarkets exchange – politicalbetting.com
The latest Brexit betting from the Smarkets exchange – politicalbetting.com
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The latest Brexit betting from the Smarkets exchange – politicalbetting.com
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Lab 41+4
Con 37 - 2
States from you guv in the times.
No fieldwork given but from this week.
Must be Johnson acting the clown at pmqs.
https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1341675925440770048?s=20
Because they wanted to wait until xmas eve to announce the next set of lockdowns?
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
This government - to their credit - is reluctant to lock people into their houses as it is a substantial diminution of personal liberty.
There becomes a point at which it is unavoidable.
When that is becomes a matter of judgement.
That is "why" they haven't expanded Tier 4 beyond the current areas, but keep it under review.
National lockdown from Boxing Day is needed.
Well, really it is needed now, but that is too much to hope for.
But:
- The age distribution of those needing critical care in hospital peaks twenty years younger than that of deaths. So if it's grandparents-to-great-grandparents who are peak deaths, it's parents-to-grandparents who are peak ICU. If we immunise all up to age 60, we halve the numbers in ICU (until we get another doubling, at which point we have the same numbers, but all under 60). If we immunise all up to age 50, it's reduced to about a quarter of those currently in ICU; two doublings, and we have the same number, but all in their forties, thirties, twenties, and children. Looking at the figures, there's a chunky drop-off below age 40; about 8% are under 40. That allows us 3.6 doublings before we get back to the same number.
- Children are indeed, mercifully, a lot less likely to be badly affected. But not immune. Which does, over our entire population, point to thousands of kids (mostly with no health conditions) needing to be in intensive care to recover - if we let it run through them. Hundreds of them dead. Tens of thousands of those who didn't need hospitalisation ending up with long covid.
This is, of course, amongst millions who will be either asymptomatic, mildly affected, or moderately affected.
As a country, we may indeed prefer to sacrifice those rather than disrupt the education and socialisation of the rest of them for another two or three months. But if so, it should be done with eyes open, rather than a belief that they are unaffected.
- Younger adults still die. Just in far lower numbers. I was a bit surprised to see the ONS stats pointing to covid being the biggest single killer of adults in their twenties and adults in their thirties during April. Between a quarter and a third of all deaths for people in England and Wales of those age categories were covid, causing a big spike in their death rates.
How does this line up with them being a small number of the total covid deaths? Simply because there are usually very few deaths of any reason for those in their twenties or thirties, so the number of covid deaths caused a real spike. It's why we see the deaths of younger people as especially tragic when they happen - burying your children is something no parent should ever have to do. And considerably more parents than normal buried their young adult children in April; fortunately, we stopped the spread before it got really bad. So, again, we should make decisions with eyes wide open: let it loose in those age categories and the raw number of deaths will indeed be far less than now. It's just that they will overwhelmingly be deaths in age categories where we don't usually see anywhere near that number of deaths.
Johnson is clearly the most dishonest, incompetent, corrupt and unserious prime minister of recent times. He doesn't bother to hide it. If any of those things mattered to the 40% of the people that intend to vote for Johnson, Starmer would win, because he is none of those things.
Given that, there is nothing Starmer can do to win those people over. Johnson will always outdo him on incompetence, dishonesty and corruption.
Even if others who back your politics will say it too.
Midterm polls don't matter.
Ignorant, arrogant.
The 40% currently don’t trust Labour and/or Starmer - or believe they don’t share their values - and so they vote the “devil they know”.
Giving up on them means Labour will never return to government.
I’d like to see Labour attack the Tories from the cultural “right” - on patriotism, appeals to the benefits of hard work, crime, probity in public office, respect for the armed forces etc.
Labour generally speaking are still talking to the Guardian reading classes.
I wonder if Philip would be saying the same if it was showing a Tory lead, dishonesty yet again tut tut
Incidentally there is a completely objective measure for this, which is if an agreement is notified to the WTO.
He’s a “pundit” and our democracy is plagued with these glib, mendacious arseholes.
But he was Sec-Gen of the ACRE European Parliamentary grouping for nearly a decade, and that’s actually notable unto itself. I don’t find his appointment particularly disturbing.
(Unlike Lebedev, or Goldsmith)
1: Renegotiated the awful May deal that Barnier, the EU, Hunt, May and everyone else said could not be renegotiated. Removed the backstop that couldn't be removed.
2: Won an 80 seat majority.
3: Got Brexit done.
4: Got an incredible testing program set up doing hundreds of thousands of tests per day.
5: Got a world leading Covid strain monitoring system set up that was able to identify and alert the world to this new strain.
6: First country in the world to have vaccinations.
7: Furlough etc
Just off the top of my head. But yes keep bashing everything, it's all shit in this country isn't it? Never change.
And in particular waiting till Saturday evening, just as shoppers across the land returned home exhausted from buying megaturkeys for family Christmases or buying toys for nieces and nephews because they'd be spending Christmas at mum's. Lockdown came eight hours too late.
There’s an occasional tweet, but not much more.
The Major govt was also thought to be mired in corruption - pretty tame stuff compared with these days - and Blair/Brown hammered them day in, day out.
Starmer is largely silent on this stuff.
It’s possible that he is spending this Covid year cleaning up internal mess and staking out a few primary positions (like on Scottish Indy).
But if he wants to win he needs a full reboot in the Spring.
You talk about meritocracy... he's engineered the most remarkable transformation in British politics.
He's at least achieved something (however disastrous it turns out!) - he's a better choice than those who just donate a ton of cash.
I kind of respect your ability to spout so much nonsense minute after minute, day after day. I just hope they are paying you well.
The market I really want is "The UK to be trading with the EU on WTO terms on 1st Jan 2021".
I would certainly lay that at 2.96. I'd do it for quite big money.
So those with glass houses Mr Battery. How much are you paid for being here? What is your going rate?
2. Against the worst opposition leader ever
3. Really? Oven ready deal that never existed
4. It was a shambles
5. No he didn't. Nothing to do with Boris
6. Again nothing to do with Boris
7. Give you that one, although failed to cater for those millions that fall through the cracks, in particular for the extension of the furlough when they had time to cater for say those small limited companies.
I would have given you Nightingale hospitals and ventilators.
https://twitter.com/NMMackenzie/status/1341690159574765573?s=20
The only person on this site I ever thought could have been paid by CCHQ as he never seemed to vary from the party line was Scott_P. But then obviously since BJ took over its been clear that isn't the case.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55420366
He said: "This bill contains $85.5m for assistance to Cambodia, $134m to Burma, $1.3bn for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment, $25m for democracy and gender programmes in Pakistan, $505m to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama."
The president questioned why the Kennedy Center, a performing arts complex in Washington DC, was set to receive $40m when it is not open, and more than $1bn has been allocated to museums and galleries in the capital.
Mr Trump concluded: "Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists and special interests, while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it. It wasn't their fault. It was China's fault.
"I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000 or $4,000 for a couple.
I’m not sure there is a “right” or “wrong” here. There is a spectrum and where on the spectrum you think is right is a value judgement
Do I have a contract with the SNP Mr Battery?
Whatever one might think of Norman Tebbitt's politics, he deserves admiration for the way he cared for his wife. Makes you ponder on what "In sickness and in health until death do us part" means for some, how precious our lives are and how a moment can change everything.
If you ask Peter Hitchens, for example, he would say never lockdown.
(I disagree with him, btw)
Hiring someone to spam this blog would seem entirely in character.
I've no doubt its a major "feather in the cap" for British science, the British government though is much less clear.
https://twitter.com/PolishEmbassyUK/status/1341446085080977408?s=20
First, the doctors & nurses and all essential service staff should be in the first tier.
If the Govt wants in-person teaching in schools, then teachers should absolutely be in the top tier. And I would also put bus drivers and bin-men and anyone out and about, providing essentials services in this category.
I can understand why fifty-year old or forty-year old teachers are irritated -- because they are pretty low priority in the vaccine queue, yet being asked to risk their lives daily.
Instead, the priority is (almost) exclusively by age. This means that a large number of people who are retired, staying safe in the houses, posting endless rubbish on pb.com & getting whacking great big home deliveries from Waitrose are actually high in the queue.
There was a whole gaggle of them on pb.com the other day, bragging they would soon be vaccinated, so they could bugger off on their skiing holidays again and re-infect everyone (the vaccine protects you but does not mean that you can't infect others)
The priority list should be
1. Essential Service Workers (Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, Bus Drivers, etc),
2. The Elderly and the Shielders,
.....
10 The Politicians who Fucked Up from Johnson to Drakeford,
11 The Wankers who went on Summer Holidays in 2020,
12. The Skiiers.
It's all a conspiracy, Elvis is really alive, moon landings were faked!
When I was doing my Articles, our senior partner was in Brighton for the Conference. Nobody knew if he had survived or not - until they saw him sat on the stage. He'd never thought to phone to say he was OK....
I am no Boris fan but can you imagine Corbyn running all this. He couldn't even decide which way to fall on Brexit. I was watching an old episode of Mock the Week last night and the predominantly left wing comedians were incredulous that he made a decision on Brexit and his decision was that we was neutral!! I wouldn't trust Corbyn to run a school fete.
I suspect it means “smart German entrepreneur saw opportunity and paid Lufthansa to fly 80 tonnes of fresh food to the U.K.”
Corbyn has gone.
It already has (and well beyond).
It’s a reaction to the combination of already high infection levels, dangerously high speed of spread, and overloading hospitals in the areas selected for Tier 4 - which is deemed to be at least partly down to the newly identified strain.
As and when other areas join them in the unfortunate combination of circumstances, they, too, will enter Tier 4. Or higher.
He just stays neutral and abstains when there's a vote before him, but months after the vote you can rely upon him to take a side in hindsight. Unless he might be called to vote himself again.
It's no use saying, "b-b-but Boris is a Bad Man!", and then just shrugging your shoulders as if nothing more could be done if that doesn't work.
Hard questions need to be asked. That's going to take the existing Labour activist base to some uncomfortable places.
And that calls for very good leadership.
They have got it wrong, time after time.
Well done, Sir.