As can be seen from the betdata.io betting chart there has been something of a move to an earlier election. This is due to take place in 2024 at the latest and it could just be that Johnson might at any time cash in his popularity and go to the country earlier.
Comments
Frost says the "fundamental problem" for the UK is the way the NI protocol if "undermining the Good Friday Agreement rather than supporting it".
"That wasn't what the protocol was meant to do. And if it is doing it, then it isn't working right"
https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1394292308196081670
But he won't be calling an election before 2023.
Over the next 18 months Johnson & co will be trying to plug gaps and get some of that back. So no, there won't be an early election.
In fact, it would not surprise me if the colossal bill for covid/lockdown is now driving the agenda. It would explain why Johnson, after countless cave-ins, is suddenly standing up to SAGE.
He simply cannot afford not to.
Cyclefree said: "It's curious how most focus is on the anti-Semitic nature of this abuse but not so much on the anti-women nature. It's almost as if it's taken as a given that extremists and haters would naturally threaten sexual violence against a minority group's women when wanting to do them harm.
"Christina Lamb has written very movingly about this in her book "Our Bodies, Their Battlefields". It is a very necessary but horrific read."
"This doesn't just raise questions about people's attitudes to Jews but about their attitude to women as well."
TimT responded:
Indeed, it is a depressing feature of many non-traditional wars. Such wars tend to be more personal and hence more vicious. We've seen the weaponization of rape in the break up of Yugoslavia, in ISIS' reign in Kirkuk, in Boko Haram, by the Burmese military against the Rohingya, the Chinese against the Uighurs, and now by Ethiopians and Eritreans in Tigre. Alas, it does not seem confined to one culture or one religion.
"Suck it up, baby.
Big help having such a visible example of 'Civic Unionism' at the weekend with which to compare and contrast of course."
@Theuniondivvie
Wow - you seem a little bit unhinged about football fans celebrating a football win.
Bit short on substance.
Reminds me a bit of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8dZwXnMrRU
https://twitter.com/rafaelbehr/status/1394293560128704518
https://twitter.com/SCOTUSblog/status/1394284425224114176
Though I believe you live in Aberdeen, which would invite an obvious if unkind rejoinder.
I'm convinced as well that one reason labour did well in 2017 is that the electorate did not look favourably on T May having a snap election for what was seen to be party polictics.
@sailorrooscout
What a good way to start the week off! A new study out of the New York University Grossman School of Medicine shows the current vaccines WILL remain protective against variants B.1.617 and B.1.618, first identified in India.
Personally I think that a line needs to be drawn under this QE phase as quickly as possible and no matter the temptation it shouldn't be used again.
The economic climate is so weird at the moment.
Crack on.
Sunak's reported consideration of an inheritance tax rise is also ripe to be a dementia tax 2 in any such campaign
https://inews.co.uk/news/sunak-minded-to-hike-inheritance-tax-to-help-pay-uks-covid-bill-1002571
On Facebook this morning, someone I know was telling people not to sell bitcoin and that now was a good time to buy etc. etc.
It's all going to end in tears.
Surely Rangers wear blue? Or is this a take on 'roses are red, violets are blue'?
Then you have the new 3rd country rules that we asked be applied to people heading to countries like France and Spain.
Red country - not happening.
Amber country - well, yes you CAN go - but don't come crying to us if that status changes and you end up stuck in a Covid hell-hole for months.
Amber is clearly "well, I wouldn't if I were you..."
BTW fpt misogyny feels too weak a word for threatening women with rape. When I hear the word "misogyny" I think of someone believing women are too stupid to be doctors or should just be in the kitchen or are not strong enough to be CEO's or whatever.
Threatening rape is of a whole different order. It is sadism directed at women.
It's the WHO. Prepare for another lockdown.....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57139434
I think bitcoin is worth zero. I've never owned any, nor do I want to. I did consider shorting it, but thankfully worked out that any number could be the price. I sort of hope that the crypto-currencies fade away (thus not hurting people really badly), but I'm almost sure that it won't be a clean demise, and I may be massively wrong and one day be forced to use bitcoin as its the only sensible choice. I hope that they fade away mainly because I think they bring massive potential issues with them, and the more valuable they get the worse those issues are.
I'm 100% not the person to trust in terms of these valuations though - I've been completely wrong all the way.
I raise it because it was not so long ago that in the wake of the Sarah Everard case questions were being raised about sexual violence / harassment of women. And here - a few weeks later - we have an example of the threat of sexual violence against women being deliberately used as a threat against one particular community. But the dots are not being joined.
Whatever the conflict, whatever the issue, women end up being the target. This needs more reflection than it is likely to get.
Prof. Christina Pagel
@chrischirp
·
4h
11. So yes, take the breakdown of patients by vax status in Bolton hospital as a sign that vaccines are protective against severe illness.
But do not think that this makes everything "fine" cos it doesn't. /END
Prof. Christina Pagel
@chrischirp
Replying to
@chrischirp
PS to the heartless argument that unvaxxed people are to blame if they don't get vaxxed... 1) full hospitals are full hospitals 2) SAGE models suggest most deaths are in vaxxed people in a bad surge 3) dividing people in "deserving" and "undeserving" is wrong and dangerous.
What kind of stupid argument is that?! Just get the bloody vaccine. It's really not that difficult.
Here's a reminder of my Acca (?)
Bourenmouth 8/5
Swansea City 5/2
I expect congratulations if I called the play-offs right in the first leg.
The lockdowns were imposed to stop the NHS being overwhelmed and people dying in unacceptably large numbers. Now with the vaccination programme there is no risk of the former or the latter happening, so there is no good reason to continue with lockdowns or continuing restrictions.
A separate question is whether the unvaxxed should get treatment if they get Covid as a result of their refusal to take the vaccine when offered. My view is yes - medical care should be provided on the basis of medical need not on the basis of whether someone has behaved stupidly or not.
Whether others will blame the unvaxxed for their stupidity is another matter. If people behave stupidly, they should not complain if others blame them, especially if they put others at risk.
The central bank may no longer be free to tighten policy if needed, they argue."
https://www.politico.eu/article/former-ecb-chief-economists-warn-of-eurozone-debt-trap-inflation/
But where is the value in Bitcoin? It has no intrinsic value. It has no inferred value. It isn't an official currency of anywhere. I don't get it.
Plus the boundary review (and revue).
So autumn 2023 or spring 2024.
Apparently women are just valueless playthings for men - "totty" if you like - who can be treated as being without value by "men". Thank God that in Boris Johnson we have a man who proudly and fiercely upholds the opposite where women are equal to men and get tret with respect at all times.
Indeed. My advice to those who missed Chris' cameo on PB yesterday afternoon is that it was well worth missing.
Preening moralists like yourself will have to dig a little deeper to fund treatment for the morbidly obese, health tourists and countless others who will never be able to pay a fraction of the cost of treatment they are having for 'behaving stupidly'
But I guess you won't mind that.
One of his co-workers introduced him to Bitcoin and before long he had made enough to buy, outright, a terraced house which he and his father redecorated.
Some people are comfortable living with risk.
1. Its scarcity is guaranteed.
2. It is easy to subdivide and to transfer.
3. Everyone agrees on its worth.
When you have hyperinflation, you lose both 1 and 3, and people grow distrustful of money.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies do have guaranteed scarcity. So, there will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins.
They are (somewhat) easy to subdivide and transfer (although there are some major network capacity constraints that have not yet been solved).
However, no-one agrees on their worth. And no one would agree to pay for a long-term contract (employment or any other) in Bitcoin, because one wouldn't know what a Bitcoin was worth in a day or a month or a year's time.
Bitcoins do possess some utility. If you wish to evade currency controls (in say Argentina), then they are an efficient middle man. You use your Pesos to buy Bitcoin from a man on a street corner and then you can wire them to someone in Stockholm.
Likewise, there is a whole "underground" economy based around their pseudonymity (although most people using them don't realise just how easily that can be broken.)
If (a) Bitcoin's network capacity issues are solved via the Lightning network, and it can essentially support unlimited transaction volumes with massively lower fees. And (b) the price ceases swinging around like a drunken sailor, then it's possible that Bitcoin's worth becomes more certain.
If Modern Monetary Theory leads to greater inflation of traditional money, then it's possible that the volume of real transactions through Bitcoin will rise and it will cease being just a trading chip.
However, for now it is just a number in a casino.
Cryptos are popular because enough people believe that others will swap it with them in the future because they think the technology/structure of the currency is better (whether it is or not, enough people believe that). So there is a different belief behind them compared to gold, but it is all just about belief, currencies dont have intrinsic value to match their price.
"The UK has ruled out a food standards alignment deal that would have done away with 90% of border checks, according to Shanker Singham, one of the lead proponents for alternative arrangements for the border.
According to internal documents seen by the BBC and the Guardian, the UK instead wants to phase in border checks on food. Phase 1 from 1 October would involve the introduction of export health certificates for fresh meat. Phase 2, from the end of January, would cover dairy products, garden centre plants, seeds and wine.
Phase 3 would cover fruit and vegetables and pet food, and phase 4 would cover “ambient” foods such as jams, products with a short shelf life and high-risk foods not of animal origin."
This is delusional. We won't agree a deal to declare our aligned standards to be aligned. Instead we're going to drive through non-workable logistics costs and delays AND whip the loyalist community up to rioting point. Why? Because our aligned standards may well be aligned by our choice but we can't say that as we have to have defeated the evil EU or whatever.
I think the people may kick off if they don't do anything about it. But then 30 and 40 somethings with big mortgages may kick off if they do too much about it!
Because these people are from a different and pretty alien culture - family honour is rated highly; individual rights are rated lowly. And what individual women think about it is valued not at all.
Speaking of which, didn't Contrarian argue very forcefully that no way we would be back drinking inside pubs this May? I suggest he doesn't turn on the telly today....
Cryptos are beyond the reach of governments. They can't be confiscated and attempts to tax them are pretty sketchy. They uphold the rights of the property owner in a world which really doesn't.
Of course, the money has to go somewhere, so instead of it inflating the price of consumer goods, it increased the price of assets. (The 'carry trade' made a lot of rich people a little bit richer.)
I'm not convinced that China will be able to keep exporting deflation. Costs are rising there now, and their industrialisation process is mostly complete. Now, China could attempt to offset this by driving their currency lower, but it's easier to stop a currency rising than it is to drive it down.
So I would guess we're going to see a slow and steady rise in inflationary pressures over the next five to ten years.
Don't buy super long dated low coupon bonds.
I'm surprised we're even talking about this tbh.
It does remind, me though of tulipomania (although I believe this wasn't a bad popularly believed) or the South Sea Bubble.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/16/a-raid-a-march-a-court-case-how-israel-spiralled-into-a-deadly-conflict
...The Sheikh Jarrah case is incendiary for many Palestinians because would-be settlers cite an Israeli law allowing Jews to reclaim ownership of property lost before 1948. Palestinians have no equivalent legal means to reclaim property that became part of the state of Israel at the same time. “The law is written to privilege Jews over non-Jews. It is house-by-house, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood apartheid,” said Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian political analyst.
The families at the heart of the dispute have lived there since the 1950s, after being forced to abandon or flee their homes in the fighting that preceded the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948....
As we learn more about SAGE, we surely understand the faith in it displayed on here and elsewhere is utterly misplaced.
Because to them only men matter and the women are chattle, and why would you threaten chattle?
There's been a fall in testing overall although I dare say a big increase in testing in areas of concern. Worth keeping an eye on the numbers for the next few days...
Bitcoin et al have value because some people who believe in Bitcoin have declared it has value. It isn't a currency. It is a religion - one of the cultey ones.
Crypto-Groat!