In a new survey by Ipsos MORI, half of Britons (49%) are favourable towards the incoming President of the United States, Joe Biden, only 18% view him negatively. A similar proportion (47%) expect the USA to use its influence around the world mostly for good over the next four years under Biden’s presidency.
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"use its influence around the world mostly for good" is sweet, though. Not how foreign policy works.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55732296
Up to 33 million now...i had some idea of this before, but it really os jaw dropping and Navalny has an excellent presentation, with hint of Jon Oliver, taking the piss out of purchases such as 1000 euro bog brushes.
Not that you'd easily know it.
Edit: Apologies if the capital B triggers anyone.
25-24 and 35-44 went Con.
Edit for homophone
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9168883/Merkel-furious-media-criticised-Germanys-dismal-vaccination-program-Trudeau-reveals.html
The team behind the vaccine from Oxford and AstraZeneca is undertaking feasibility studies to reconfigure the technology, the newspaper said, citing a confirmation from the Oxford University.
A university spokesman told the newspaper that Oxford is carefully assessing the impact of new variants on vaccine immunity and evaluating the processes needed for rapid development of adjusted Covid-19 vaccines.
Separately, British prime minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that the nation’s medicines regulator will be ready and able to give approval to new versions of Covid-19 vaccines designed to counter new variants of the coronavirus that may appear.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/20/oxford-scientists-preparing-new-vaccine-versions-combat-emerging/
And in '79 the youngsters did indeed go Con. Just.
Got to be careful of those pandas. They consume, open fire, and depart.
Not everything in foreign policy is as nakedly a tussle for national advantage as trade disputes.
Think we in US should get SOME credit for
>> electing woman as Speaker of US House and thus third in line of presidential succession
>> giving majority of popular vote to a woman for President, in 2016
>> giving popular majority AND electing woman as Vice President in 2020
Though I think Biden will run for re-election in 2024, and win, certainly Kamala Harris is a hot prospect, as is Nicky Haley for the Republicans. Just to mention two obvious potential POTUS of the not-so-distant future.
2017: Woman saved from losing premiership by bonkers electoral system
When it comes to giving credit for voting for women (a dubious concept in its own right), I'm not sure recent history shows the UK in as positive light as some might think.
Queen Mary aside, the female monarchs have tended to be a lot less trouble than the male. When was the last notably good King? You probably have to go back to Henry V. We could do worse than to skip Charles, William and George and give the crown to Charlotte.
They know it as well, given both the big parties here have procedures designed to limit the choice of their members (via different mechanisms) and we saw the troubles that arose when one of the parties ignored the point of that part of the rules by allowing a choice of someone the MPs did not want. Though some of Boris's cronies got pretty whingy about the idea he might not get put before the Members, given the MP screening process, whatever one thinks of him the Members and MPs both backed him last time.
And we're back to bonkers electoral system. It's the bleeding wound at the heart of our politics.
You raise an important problem, and, I think, propose the wrong solution.
If you jumped to Lib Dem from that, I can't really help you.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/
Capitalism's strength is that a free market brings choice to the consumer. Why do we have such barriers to entry in politics? If Westminster were an industrial sector, the duopoly would have been broken apart ages ago. We have an economy geared towards the consumer, but a politics geared towards the producers. And it's not working.
Ultra’s on the right and Left would raise other questions about democracy, such who owns and controls the media, who appoints the judiciary, to whom and what are the military beholden.
And that is sort of close to the point you just made, how is a mould broken? Considering the potential to vote for Farage, and support for him in media, why do they end up voting Conservative at GE instead? How could a Farage of the left break through? Why can’t greens breakthrough in mainland Britain or Ireland in parliamentary elections. The answer to that is really straightforward, introduce the electoral system they have in Germany here, and the sectarian and tribal mould would shatter.
Also made me think again at their best, even if boring, what a good idea it is to have this level of televised daily scrutiny from the media. It is long overdue for this to be brought over here.
Which, if they all come in, means we can be a net vaccine provider as part of aid around the globe. And Boris can travel that globe delivering vaccines and getting photo ops in jab-poor South Africa, Colombia, Indonesia and France.
I'M FROM DELAWARE
by Todd Chappelle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yJT98Q-v9U
Above all, father and son, they did their duty to their country (by their lights) the best they could, in times of crisis and peril. What's not to like?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9168531/Coronavirus-cases-DIDNT-fall-ten-days-Englands-lockdown-major-study-claims.html
Where PB leads....we have talked about how we thought it was likely the case that the first few days of lockdown don't do anything to squashing COVID and why 2 week firebreak is flawed.
Traveled across DE on the interstate from MD to NJ. Always scared me just a little - sometimes a lot.
These are NOT the "little people" they are top political appointees, directly responsible to the President and answerable to him. AND most especially speaking in HIS name.
Worse problems yours truly ever had boss-wise, were with those who did NOT tell you the score straight up.
Tootled down to Dover, which is a small town whose cottage industry happens to be state government (of a small state). Then headed west to the Maryland line, which was about ten miles away, and crossed Chesapeake Bay with what seemed like a hundred thousand cars heading back from the beach to metro DC.
One of the items on my life's ambitions, as yet unrealized, is to visit the Cape Fenwick lighthouse, the seaward terminus of the Delaware-Maryland border, one of the starting points for Mason and Dixon when they surveyed this portion of their famous line.
Admittedly, it's a pretty pathetic ambition. But so it goes.
IMO he has a much greater chance of simply disappearing into Siberia, than of being free and able to run in the next election.
The Imperial college data is lagging behind and it's clear that lockdowns do work and so do firebreaks. In c. 3 weeks Imperial college data will catch up. There is now a clear and definite downturn in infection rates.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/democratic-senators-swearing-in/index.html
Jon Ossoff finally becomes a Senator, four months after I tipped him on here as a good bet. Smug? No, it's just that all pb punters know that warm glow when a bet comes off.
I’m 34 and have voted in five GEs and two UK-wide referendums. My record is:
2005 - Lost
2010 - Won
2011 - Won
2015 - Lost
2016 - Won
2017 - Lost
2019 - Won
Obviously you can argue that I did win in 2015, but it wasn’t just about Europe it was about Osbrown economics.
Personally I don’t think my generation and the next one have been shafted by democracy. We’ve been shafted by Gordon Brown, George Osborne and the Bank of England.
Thankfully, talk of negative rates appears to have subsided.
I thought the figures for last few days might suggest that the vaccine was starting to have an impact on the overall number of deaths. But Israel added a load more yesterday so perhaps not.
Most of the power's out here. Didn't think the winds would be that high but wondering if the storm's damaged power lines. Excitingly, as you may've noticed, the computer and internet are still (currently) up. Less excitingly, the lights and heating are not.
Edited extra bit: on the plus side, the solar lantern (which isn't broken and can only be recharged from the plug...) I bought some months ago is proving of some practical use right now.
Out of curiosity, what is the point of a solar lantern you can only recharge from the plug?
1) Lockdowns "work"
2) Initial days of lockdowns can generate increases in cases (and by extension argue against "firebreaks"
For two reasons.
1) the issue of behaviour outside of the lockdown. A pre-announced lockdown may lead to behaviour prior to the lockdown that contributes to increased transmission. And even without pre-announcing (in the context of a 'firebreak', there is the potential impact of adverse behaviour once the lockdown is lifted (if the lockdown period hasn't clamped down sufficiently on case numbers). It should also be noted that advocates of the "firebreak" policy were arguing for a number of scheduled short lockdowns to allow businesses to "plan" around them. Of course this makes them pre-announced and would result, not just in businesses planning around them, but also people planning their social calendar around them.
2) Potential for increased (or at least accelerated) intra household transmission in the first few days, particularly if the lockdown involves home schooling. Lockdowns result in people within households spending more time together, increasing the likelihood of transmission where one individual is entering the lockdown infected.
In the long run (and this of course depends on the extent, and is made harder by more transmissable variants), lockdowns should 'work' by ultimately preventing transmission between households. Those households which enter lockdown uninfected will exit it in the same way. Those entering it infected will burn themselves out. But this is not inconsistent with a lack of immediate short term infectiveness.
https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/1352156166466498560
Although actually, Johnson is (for once) right about this. The EU isn’t a country and it shouldn’t be exchanging diplomats. As for their claims that the UK is a signatory to the Lisbon Treaty, in case they haven’t noticed, we’ve left and are no longer a signatory.
Moreover, the Lisbon Treaty was signed over the strenuous objections of the party currently in power, partly because of this idea that the EU should have its own foreign service, and we all know no parliament can bind its successors.
It’s the EU that are behaving like petulant toddlers here, and are in any case wrong about their status. They’re showing themselves at their pompous, stuck up, unselfaware and stupid worst, as over, say, that illegal ban on our beef.
And that’s the reason why although the EU isn’t likely to break up, it’s also never likely to be really popular.
All to the detriment of the country.
https://twitter.com/MarinaHyde/status/1352162543209508866
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1352156886783709184
And truthfully, life would be pleasanter if we were not in this situation, but since it is at least partly the aforementioned fraud corruption and incompetence at the DfE that brought us to it - insofar as if they had looked at blended learning or closed schools a fortnight early in the worst hit areas, things would not have been as bad - it’s not worth giving them a gold star for effort.
People should be asking serious questions about what else the Government hasn't currently got contingency plans for, but i fear that the answers would be too horrific to be made public.
"What are those???", incredulous EU residents would be asking. That would never do. No, not at all....
Though there is some irony in the Brexiterrs insisting the EU is a superstate, yet refusing to accept it as such.
And the impact of low interest rates since 2010 on the same thing.
As we are talking about people who are 33 years old this is probably a useful statistic from https://www.money.co.uk/guides/first-time-buyers-around-the-world
Since 2007 the age of the average first time buyer in the UK has increased from 28 years old to 34 years old.
Back in 2007 your typical 33 year old would have now owned a house for 5 years, now he's still a year away from buying one.
We were ordered to draw up contingency plans by local management over the summer in case of a second lockdown, and did. Then we were ordered to stop doing them by the DfE ‘because the virus isn’t spread through schools so they won’t be needed.’
That also seems to be why they stopped rolling out laptops to poorer children.
How do you spell ‘lowlifes?’
Fortunately it did mean we had a basic outline plan ready to go, as we hadn’t destroyed our work. But really...