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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Kamala Harris looks set have a bigger role in this White House

SystemSystem Posts: 11,691
edited August 2020 in General
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Kamala Harris looks set have a bigger role in this White House campaign than previous VP picks

One of the undoubted weaknesses of the Democrats as we go into the next phase of the White House Race is the age of Joe Biden and that he can often appear to be old. If he won he’d be 78 on Inauguration Day.

Read the full story here

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  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125
    Given Pelosi has said "let's have no debates" and the focus on Kamala Harris, it gives an insight into how worried Dem strategists must be about Biden crashing and burning at some point in the next 60-odd days.

    I will not be putting money on the winner of this contest. Biden SHOULD win. However....
  • Options
    FishingFishing Posts: 4,561
    Has anybody else noticed that Trump is priced too high given the polls? I would put him at about 35 percent myself.
  • Options
    FishingFishing Posts: 4,561
    Maybe it's the insomnia.
  • Options
    swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,435
    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,020
    Fishing said:

    Has anybody else noticed that Trump is priced too high given the polls? I would put him at about 35 percent myself.

    That's pretty much my view. If I can get more than 2-1 on Trump, I'm betting on him, and anything better than 4-6, and I'm on biden.
  • Options
    FishingFishing Posts: 4,561
    rcs1000 said:

    Fishing said:

    Has anybody else noticed that Trump is priced too high given the polls? I would put him at about 35 percent myself.

    That's pretty much my view. If I can get more than 2-1 on Trump, I'm betting on him, and anything better than 4-6, and I'm on biden.
    I would never usually agree with somebody who prefers Islington to Richmond but in this case I'll make an exception.
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,125

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
  • Options
    StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    Perhaps, but why didn't that happen pre-COVID-19?
  • Options
    USA President betting -- the Biden premium continues (a higher price for Biden than for the Democrats, reflecting the risk he will be replaced before the election), as does the reverse for Trump (and I still have no explanation for that).

    Biden 1.91
    Dem 1.86

    Trump 2.12
    Rep 2.14
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,020
    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Fishing said:

    Has anybody else noticed that Trump is priced too high given the polls? I would put him at about 35 percent myself.

    That's pretty much my view. If I can get more than 2-1 on Trump, I'm betting on him, and anything better than 4-6, and I'm on biden.
    I would never usually agree with somebody who prefers Islington to Richmond but in this case I'll make an exception.
    I prefer Richmond (upon Thames) to Islington.

    You must be confusing me with someone else.
  • Options
    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    Perhaps, but why didn't that happen pre-COVID-19?
    Offshoring was already happening for IT workers and some industrial production.
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,020

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    What's wrong with dementia? Who wouldn't rather have a President who wants to stay home and watch Real Housewives of Atlanta.
  • Options
    Kevin_McCandlessKevin_McCandless Posts: 392
    edited August 2020
    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    All this hand-wringing to save the central London property market. Which is going to rebound naturally anyway and doesn't need saving at all.
  • Options
    alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    Or taxes.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53524486
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,700

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    Actually, were he chairman of a pension company, probably yes. The point is the belief in institutions, which simply doesn’t exist under Trump.
    I certainly would trust a pension company with any of that family of grifters, liars and sociopaths on the board.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,306

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    That depends on what level of infrequent personal attendance or contact or travel is residual when everything settles down.

    Our property market on the island is also hot at the moment with stories of some properties selling unseen.
  • Options

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    All this hand-wringing to save the central London property market. Which is going to rebound naturally anyway and doesn't need saving anyway.
    More to do with jobs and the tax base than whether foreign squillionaires pay small fortunes for Mayfair boltholes. No commuters means lost support jobs and a smaller tax base to pay for more benefit claimants and subsidies for empty trains.
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,020
    Nigelb said:

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    Actually, were he chairman of a pension company, probably yes. The point is the belief in institutions, which simply doesn’t exist under Trump.
    I certainly would trust a pension company with any of that family of grifters, liars and sociopaths on the board.
    Yes, that's probably true. Incompetence loses you a lot less than manovelence.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,306
    Meanwhile in other news... Forecasters predict this bank holiday Monday could be the coldest on record for some parts of the UK as temperatures are expected to be well below average for the time of year.
  • Options
    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    Perhaps, but why didn't that happen pre-COVID-19?
    Offshoring was already happening for IT workers and some industrial production.
    And it will doubtless continue to happen, but warnings of large chunks of remote office work being offshored to India are (probably) overdone. It's self-evidently not going to work for any role where an employee's physical presence in the office is deemed necessary for even a small fraction of the time, and offshoring hasn't always worked when it has been tried in the past, notably with some call centres.

    Offshoring is only going to be attractive for roles where not only the cost of employing somebody overseas is lower, but also the quality of service provided is as good as that which can be offered by a UK-based employee and their physical presence is never required. You'd have thought that WFH would make it easier to identify such roles, but that we'd probably be talking about thousands or tens of thousands rather than millions.
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    Actually, were he chairman of a pension company, probably yes. The point is the belief in institutions, which simply doesn’t exist under Trump.
    I certainly would trust a pension company with any of that family of grifters, liars and sociopaths on the board.
    Yes, that's probably true. Incompetence loses you a lot less than manovelence.
    Equitable Life investors would disagree. Incompetence can lose you everything.
  • Options
    OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 32,014
    I wonder whether one effect of office workers being able and willing to work from home will be an upturn in clubs and societies and life in general in commuter towns. Until lockdown people in London officeswere finishing work at around 5 o'clock, spending 90-120 minutes getting home and being able, if unwilling, to be 'about' until 8 or so..
    Now they're still finishing work at 5, but only spending 5 minutes in getting back to the bosom of their families! And by 7 or so they're ready to be active outside the house.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,700
    edited August 2020
    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    Actually, were he chairman of a pension company, probably yes. The point is the belief in institutions, which simply doesn’t exist under Trump.
    I certainly would trust a pension company with any of that family of grifters, liars and sociopaths on the board.
    Yes, that's probably true. Incompetence loses you a lot less than manovelence.
    That was not my point.
    Government functions as an institution, Trump has and is sabotaging that; Biden would not.

    In the imperfect analogy, Trump is the equivalent of Bernie Madoff.

  • Options

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    All this hand-wringing to save the central London property market. Which is going to rebound naturally anyway and doesn't need saving anyway.
    More to do with jobs and the tax base than whether foreign squillionaires pay small fortunes for Mayfair boltholes. No commuters means lost support jobs and a smaller tax base to pay for more benefit claimants and subsidies for empty trains.
    II understand that as well. But fall is coming and face masks, while important, aren't magical. You get too many crowded trains, crowded offices, and we're back to square one.

    Letting folks naturally drift back at a slower rate seems better economically to me.
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    IanB2 said:

    Meanwhile in other news... Forecasters predict this bank holiday Monday could be the coldest on record for some parts of the UK as temperatures are expected to be well below average for the time of year.

    It should never have been moved from the first Monday in August. Wilson and Heath have a lot to answer for.
  • Options
    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Which is all perfectly fair, and a large part of the reason why the end state of the WFH revolution probably does not entail nearly all office workers being at home the whole time and tumbleweeds rolling through the Square Mile. However, by the same token, it doesn't do to underplay the benefits either. Commuting is a time-wasting, unpleasant and ruinously expensive chore, the detestation of which is far from confined to greying introverts who inhabit mansions.

    Some businesses are going to use WFH as an excuse to jettison expensive office space altogether, but in most cases what we're most likely going to end up with is a part office-based, part home-working hybrid model with a great deal more flexibility built in. That should be to the overwhelming net benefit of employees.
  • Options
    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    tlg86 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Meanwhile in other news... Forecasters predict this bank holiday Monday could be the coldest on record for some parts of the UK as temperatures are expected to be well below average for the time of year.

    It should never have been moved from the first Monday in August. Wilson and Heath have a lot to answer for.
    I'm surprised that Boris Johnson didn't move it back. He seems to have adopted a "copy Scotland" policy for just about everything else.
  • Options
    nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    All this hand-wringing to save the central London property market. Which is going to rebound naturally anyway and doesn't need saving anyway.
    More to do with jobs and the tax base than whether foreign squillionaires pay small fortunes for Mayfair boltholes. No commuters means lost support jobs and a smaller tax base to pay for more benefit claimants and subsidies for empty trains.
    II understand that as well. But fall is coming and face masks, while important, aren't magical. You get too many crowded trains, crowded offices, and we're back to square one.

    Letting folks naturally drift back at a slower rate seems better economically to me.
    Also it avoids feeding the covid uplift which is on its way forcing people back into offices could well be yet another serious mistake by HMG in the fight against the disease.
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,020
    IshmaelZ said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    Actually, were he chairman of a pension company, probably yes. The point is the belief in institutions, which simply doesn’t exist under Trump.
    I certainly would trust a pension company with any of that family of grifters, liars and sociopaths on the board.
    Yes, that's probably true. Incompetence loses you a lot less than manovelence.
    Equitable Life investors would disagree. Incompetence can lose you everything.
    Incompetence can lose you everything

    "can"

    Not

    "will"
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    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    I wonder whether one effect of office workers being able and willing to work from home will be an upturn in clubs and societies and life in general in commuter towns. Until lockdown people in London officeswere finishing work at around 5 o'clock, spending 90-120 minutes getting home and being able, if unwilling, to be 'about' until 8 or so..
    Now they're still finishing work at 5, but only spending 5 minutes in getting back to the bosom of their families! And by 7 or so they're ready to be active outside the house.

    It would be nice to think so (and that business activity e.g. in the hospitality sector will be displaced out to the places where people live from the city centres, rather than simply disappearing as people spend all that extra time sat at home in front of Netflix.) But time will tell.
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    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,020
    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    Actually, were he chairman of a pension company, probably yes. The point is the belief in institutions, which simply doesn’t exist under Trump.
    I certainly would trust a pension company with any of that family of grifters, liars and sociopaths on the board.
    Yes, that's probably true. Incompetence loses you a lot less than manovelence.
    That was not my point.
    Government functions as an institution, Trump has and is sabotaging that; Biden would not.

    In the imperfect analogy, Trump is the equivalent of Bernie Madoff.

    Fair point.
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    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,776
    WSJ too. I read a while back that in Japan a terminal diagnosis is not told to the patient - I wonder if that’s still the case?

    https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1299222952190369792?s=20
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    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    nichomar said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    All this hand-wringing to save the central London property market. Which is going to rebound naturally anyway and doesn't need saving anyway.
    More to do with jobs and the tax base than whether foreign squillionaires pay small fortunes for Mayfair boltholes. No commuters means lost support jobs and a smaller tax base to pay for more benefit claimants and subsidies for empty trains.
    II understand that as well. But fall is coming and face masks, while important, aren't magical. You get too many crowded trains, crowded offices, and we're back to square one.

    Letting folks naturally drift back at a slower rate seems better economically to me.
    Also it avoids feeding the covid uplift which is on its way forcing people back into offices could well be yet another serious mistake by HMG in the fight against the disease.
    Fortunately, as was discussed at some length yesterday, Government has no ability to force people to go back to offices. So long as WFH remains mutually convenient for employers and employees, there is absolutely no reason for it to end.

    I think it may have been the BBC just yesterday that released a survey of 50 leading UK employers with large cohorts of office based staff, none of which expressed an intention to get everyone back to the office. I seem to recall that nearly half of those had no plans to call any workers back at all.

    This Government is barely capable of putting one foot in front of another without tripping over its own legs. It certainly can't reverse the flow of time and put us all back to the start of the year. That is, of course, impossible.
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    fox327fox327 Posts: 366

    I wonder whether one effect of office workers being able and willing to work from home will be an upturn in clubs and societies and life in general in commuter towns. Until lockdown people in London officeswere finishing work at around 5 o'clock, spending 90-120 minutes getting home and being able, if unwilling, to be 'about' until 8 or so..
    Now they're still finishing work at 5, but only spending 5 minutes in getting back to the bosom of their families! And by 7 or so they're ready to be active outside the house.

    Church halls are closed down and community centres are out of action. Insurance for social clubs may exclude claims related to COVID 19. Clubs and societies that have been running for decades are shut. This is not a good time to be an officer of a community group, when you cannot even hold a face to face meeting of your organisation's executive committee. Some local councils are making it more difficult for groups by keeping community centres and libraries closed. Also, local organisations have little economic clout, unlike restaurants say. There is no one in the government to speak for them.
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    OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 32,014

    I wonder whether one effect of office workers being able and willing to work from home will be an upturn in clubs and societies and life in general in commuter towns. Until lockdown people in London officeswere finishing work at around 5 o'clock, spending 90-120 minutes getting home and being able, if unwilling, to be 'about' until 8 or so..
    Now they're still finishing work at 5, but only spending 5 minutes in getting back to the bosom of their families! And by 7 or so they're ready to be active outside the house.

    It would be nice to think so (and that business activity e.g. in the hospitality sector will be displaced out to the places where people live from the city centres, rather than simply disappearing as people spend all that extra time sat at home in front of Netflix.) But time will tell.
    It will indeed, but it will take time! Change is rarely immediate.
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    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    Alistair said:
    Hmmmm, how about four years later?

    It's an interesting one. We're happy for our incumbent PM to use Downing Street for political speeches. Perhaps we should ban them.
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    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    nichomar said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    All this hand-wringing to save the central London property market. Which is going to rebound naturally anyway and doesn't need saving anyway.
    More to do with jobs and the tax base than whether foreign squillionaires pay small fortunes for Mayfair boltholes. No commuters means lost support jobs and a smaller tax base to pay for more benefit claimants and subsidies for empty trains.
    II understand that as well. But fall is coming and face masks, while important, aren't magical. You get too many crowded trains, crowded offices, and we're back to square one.

    Letting folks naturally drift back at a slower rate seems better economically to me.
    Also it avoids feeding the covid uplift which is on its way forcing people back into offices could well be yet another serious mistake by HMG in the fight against the disease.
    Fortunately, as was discussed at some length yesterday, Government has no ability to force people to go back to offices. So long as WFH remains mutually convenient for employers and employees, there is absolutely no reason for it to end.

    I think it may have been the BBC just yesterday that released a survey of 50 leading UK employers with large cohorts of office based staff, none of which expressed an intention to get everyone back to the office. I seem to recall that nearly half of those had no plans to call any workers back at all.

    This Government is barely capable of putting one foot in front of another without tripping over its own legs. It certainly can't reverse the flow of time and put us all back to the start of the year. That is, of course, impossible.
    Government has a few strings to its bow if it wants people to work in offices. Subsidise commutes, reduce business rates on offices, impose them on wfh homes...
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    OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 32,014
    edited August 2020
    IshmaelZ said:

    nichomar said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    All this hand-wringing to save the central London property market. Which is going to rebound naturally anyway and doesn't need saving anyway.
    More to do with jobs and the tax base than whether foreign squillionaires pay small fortunes for Mayfair boltholes. No commuters means lost support jobs and a smaller tax base to pay for more benefit claimants and subsidies for empty trains.
    II understand that as well. But fall is coming and face masks, while important, aren't magical. You get too many crowded trains, crowded offices, and we're back to square one.

    Letting folks naturally drift back at a slower rate seems better economically to me.
    Also it avoids feeding the covid uplift which is on its way forcing people back into offices could well be yet another serious mistake by HMG in the fight against the disease.
    Fortunately, as was discussed at some length yesterday, Government has no ability to force people to go back to offices. So long as WFH remains mutually convenient for employers and employees, there is absolutely no reason for it to end.

    I think it may have been the BBC just yesterday that released a survey of 50 leading UK employers with large cohorts of office based staff, none of which expressed an intention to get everyone back to the office. I seem to recall that nearly half of those had no plans to call any workers back at all.

    This Government is barely capable of putting one foot in front of another without tripping over its own legs. It certainly can't reverse the flow of time and put us all back to the start of the year. That is, of course, impossible.
    Government has a few strings to its bow if it wants people to work in offices. Subsidise commutes, reduce business rates on offices, impose them on wfh homes...
    Yes, there will have to be all sorts of consequences which fall from a large-scale move to working from home for office workers. We have to remember of course that it's very difficult, ATM at least, to work remotely on a widget production line.
    It's perhaps interesting that there's an advert at the moment with what appears to be a call centre worker working from home.
    On the other side, younger son, has reached a stage in negotiations over a 'significant' contract where he really feels he ought to be talking around issues with his customer, in a face-to-face environment, and he can't.
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    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,187
    tlg86 said:

    Alistair said:
    Hmmmm, how about four years later?

    It's an interesting one. We're happy for our incumbent PM to use Downing Street for political speeches. Perhaps we should ban them.
    Not in the period of a GE afaik?
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,914
    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    They need to embrace it rather than accept it.

    There’s a huge opportunity here to reverse the decline in the average High Street, as people move to wanting services close to where they live.
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    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 33,050
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    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    The other point about WFH is it is the most socially regressive development since WW1. An office is a level playing field; the entry requirements are a Primark suit and a season ticket loan. The entry requirement for wfh is a h. Tarquin gets the white collar job every bloody time because mummy and daddy tarquin can afford to set him up in a 1 bed flat of his own, with a workstation.
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    coachcoach Posts: 250
    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.
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    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    edited August 2020

    tlg86 said:

    Alistair said:
    Hmmmm, how about four years later?

    It's an interesting one. We're happy for our incumbent PM to use Downing Street for political speeches. Perhaps we should ban them.
    Not in the period of a GE afaik?
    Do the Americans have purdah pre-election period? And if so, are they in it?

    And who can forget this rather odd speech on 21 June 2016 (i.e. very much in purdah):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU9Wg3AUKXw
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    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 33,050
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    StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    Perhaps, but why didn't that happen pre-COVID-19?
    All change needs a catalyst.

    The difference now is that employees, mistakenly, believe that home-working is in their own interest.
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    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,187
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    edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,151
    Scott_xP said:
    They're both tying themselves in knots, trying to refight 2016. You can't run on Keep America Great while saying the other side has spent the last 4 years bollocksing it up, and you definitely can't run on Make America Great Again Again, that's just getting ridiculous.
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    StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
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    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Incidentally the MU Wisconsin poll had 30% approving of his handling of BLM protests. Over 50% disapproved.
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    Seems more like a Freudian slip.
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    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
    Indeed, there was a chap who told anyone who bet on No winning in September 2014 were clueless wonders who were in a for a shock.
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    pm215pm215 Posts: 936

    Some businesses are going to use WFH as an excuse to jettison expensive office space altogether, but in most cases what we're most likely going to end up with is a part office-based, part home-working hybrid model with a great deal more flexibility built in. That should be to the overwhelming net benefit of employees.

    The thing about a hybrid model is it only saves the employer a pile of cash if they can have a physically smaller office space. That means either your hybrid is "half the staff are 100% wfh and the other half always in the office", or you're in the world of hot-desking, which I think is generally rather disliked. Everybody's desk/chair/computer must be interchangeable. For me at least (desk usually a profusion of random papers and notes, computer a desktop with big monitors) hotdesking seems wildly impractical.
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    Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,816
    How much of a veiled threat did the return to work call contain? All this "Your employer might not want you if you WfH" business. Is that simply a "employers have some discretion who they let go, so you never know" type threat or is it a "you know we've a commitment to maintaining employment standards but, you know, extraordinary times, extraordinary measures" type threat.

    Given the idea mooted a couple of weeks ago that all over 50s should shield until proven fit, a bit of rolling back age discrimination laws might also be helpful to HMGs cause here? Imagine.

    Just leave it Boris. In time, if it is advantageous, the offices will repopulate, maybe not in the exact same way, but they will. Just like people eventually repopulate the fertile soil at the base after a volcano has gone off.

    A re-organisation of city centre sectors that have outlived their purpose? Come on, you're Tories - just substitute the word mines into the above and ask what you would do then? If things haven't changed, those sectors will come back and perhaps some further help is in order, if they have - well, you are adopting the look of Corbyn talking about automation.
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    StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    IanB2 said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    That depends on what level of infrequent personal attendance or contact or travel is residual when everything settles down.

    Our property market on the island is also hot at the moment with stories of some properties selling unseen.
    Doesn’t surprise me. One of my in-laws is a car dealer and says that folk (pre-Covid) would buy cars totally unseen every week, clearly trusting the dealer’s description and disclosure.

    In fact, now I come to think of it, we bought our last holiday apartment unseen, in that it hadn’t been built yet. We knew where the piece of ground was approximately, and saw the map and description, but it was really only the name of the well-respected architect that was the persuasive selling point. Turned out to be a terrific investment (another feather in the cap).
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    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,260
    rcs1000 said:

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    What's wrong with dementia? Who wouldn't rather have a President who wants to stay home and watch Real Housewives of Atlanta.
    I believe that to be a safer option than a President who one day wakes up and decides he might like to try out his nuclear weapons. Why? Because he can and he hasn't tried them yet.
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    coachcoach Posts: 250

    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
    Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.

    That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
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    StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    She makes for a balanced ticket, so I think as along as old Joe sticks to his script and Trump sticks to his I agree with MarqueeMark's sentiment. Biden's age means that even if he does win, his second term is questionable....

    His first term is questionable. If he does get elected President, I think there is a very material chance that he will be replaced by his Veep as acting President during his term. Perhaps very early in his term.

    The guy has dementia. Ask yourself this: would you trust him with your pension? If the answer to that is no...then scale up to the nuclear codes. I just think that is the ultimate answer Americans may well give in November. Hell, they don't want Trump. But the Dems have given them a truly unpalatable choice.

    For the Dems to lose the election in 2016 was unforgivable. To lose it in 2020 would be unfathomable.
    Actually, were he chairman of a pension company, probably yes. The point is the belief in institutions, which simply doesn’t exist under Trump.
    I certainly would trust a pension company with any of that family of grifters, liars and sociopaths on the board.
    Yes, that's probably true. Incompetence loses you a lot less than manovelence.
    The problem with Boris Johnson’s New UKIP Party is that it is both incompetent and malevolent.
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
  • Options
    kamskikamski Posts: 4,260
    coach said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
    Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.

    That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
    I've worked as both a barista and a sandwich maker, and I'm currently unemployed, so I guess everybody should listen to me.
  • Options
    edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,151
    Impressively, astute journalists managed to diagnose Abe's health problems two weeks ago by timing how long it took him to walk past them and plotting it on a graph.

    https://twitter.com/GearoidReidy/status/1294138471703961603
  • Options
    coachcoach Posts: 250
    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    I've only been once, to NY so I can't comment, but you make my point about the mainstream media here as opposed to tens of millions of Americans.

    With absolutely no financial gain on my part, the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in will be sumptuous. And further confirmation of how detached they are.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,331
    I will be surprised if Harris is not President by 2023. The Democrats choice this time around is truly bizarre. A man who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer at any stage who is clearly fading. What on earth were they thinking? This is one of the most demanding jobs in the world, it ages and exhausts much younger and fitter men. I just don't see how anyone can seriously argue that Biden is capable of fulfilling such a role.

    If I was an American I would vote for Biden because Trump is malevolent and malignant, apparently indifferent to the damage he has done to US institutions and institutional structures but I would do so with a heavy heart and very much reliant upon the fact that Harris seems competent and capable if not particularly sociable. An enhanced role for her has to be a part of the deal from the beginning leading to her taking over completely mid term.
  • Options
    coachcoach Posts: 250
    kamski said:

    coach said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
    Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.

    That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
    I've worked as both a barista and a sandwich maker, and I'm currently unemployed, so I guess everybody should listen to me.
    I'm sure people do listen but you're a tiny minority in terms of occupation and circumstance.
  • Options
    kamskikamski Posts: 4,260
    coach said:

    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    I've only been once, to NY so I can't comment, but you make my point about the mainstream media here as opposed to tens of millions of Americans.

    With absolutely no financial gain on my part, the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in will be sumptuous. And further confirmation of how detached they are.
    I'm sorry, and don't take this personally, but the people claiming they are going to enjoy "the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in" come across as arseholes.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,749
    ..

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    Perhaps, but why didn't that happen pre-COVID-19?
    Offshoring was already happening for IT workers and some industrial production.
    And it will doubtless continue to happen, but warnings of large chunks of remote office work being offshored to India are (probably) overdone. It's self-evidently not going to work for any role where an employee's physical presence in the office is deemed necessary for even a small fraction of the time, and offshoring hasn't always worked when it has been tried in the past, notably with some call centres.

    Offshoring is only going to be attractive for roles where not only the cost of employing somebody overseas is lower, but also the quality of service provided is as good as that which can be offered by a UK-based employee and their physical presence is never required. You'd have thought that WFH would make it easier to identify such roles, but that we'd probably be talking about thousands or tens of thousands rather than millions.
    Offshoring to offices in places like India and Philippines already happens at scale. WFH allows businesses to search wider for their staff at the individual level who are as likely to be in places 50 miles away as 5000.

    The fundamental job requirement for any office working is that the candidate lives within commuting distance of the office. This requirement trumps whether the candidate is any good at the job.

    Staff already in place have established their credentials so should be safe. When they look for their next job both they and prospective employers will be casting their nets wider. The net effect will be that talented people in awkward places will see their prospects improve while mediocre people in employment hotspots will be in a weaker position. Wages in those hotspots will also reduce.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,306
    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    A lot of it manifests as fear, leading to desired separation.
  • Options
    StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    I wonder whether one effect of office workers being able and willing to work from home will be an upturn in clubs and societies and life in general in commuter towns. Until lockdown people in London officeswere finishing work at around 5 o'clock, spending 90-120 minutes getting home and being able, if unwilling, to be 'about' until 8 or so..
    Now they're still finishing work at 5, but only spending 5 minutes in getting back to the bosom of their families! And by 7 or so they're ready to be active outside the house.

    Welcome to my life!

    36 hour week (theoretically); over eight weeks paid leave and up to 13 weeks unpaid leave available if I choose; an 18 minute commute (maybe 25 minutes if I travel at rush-hour, which is maybe 10 times a year); often home by 2 o’clock in the afternoon; cycling distance to at least five great bathing spots; free-time coming out my ears.

    Although forced to work in a big office building (home working is impossible with my job), I spend a small proportion of my life in the world of work.

    Why anyone chooses the London rat race has always been a mystery to me. Yes, London can be a fantastic place, but only if you have the time, money and energy to fully appreciate it.
  • Options
    coachcoach Posts: 250
    kamski said:

    coach said:

    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    I've only been once, to NY so I can't comment, but you make my point about the mainstream media here as opposed to tens of millions of Americans.

    With absolutely no financial gain on my part, the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in will be sumptuous. And further confirmation of how detached they are.
    I'm sorry, and don't take this personally, but the people claiming they are going to enjoy "the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in" come across as arseholes.
    I neither take it personally or care tbh. The BBC is there to report the news in an unbiased way (haha) with regard to Trump that simply doesn't happen.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,700
    Pro_Rata said:

    How much of a veiled threat did the return to work call contain? All this "Your employer might not want you if you WfH" business. Is that simply a "employers have some discretion who they let go, so you never know" type threat or is it a "you know we've a commitment to maintaining employment standards but, you know, extraordinary times, extraordinary measures" type threat.

    Given the idea mooted a couple of weeks ago that all over 50s should shield until proven fit, a bit of rolling back age discrimination laws might also be helpful to HMGs cause here? Imagine.

    Just leave it Boris. In time, if it is advantageous, the offices will repopulate, maybe not in the exact same way, but they will. Just like people eventually repopulate the fertile soil at the base after a volcano has gone off.

    A re-organisation of city centre sectors that have outlived their purpose? Come on, you're Tories - just substitute the word mines into the above and ask what you would do then? ....

    Good question...
  • Options
    kamskikamski Posts: 4,260
    coach said:

    kamski said:

    coach said:

    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    I've only been once, to NY so I can't comment, but you make my point about the mainstream media here as opposed to tens of millions of Americans.

    With absolutely no financial gain on my part, the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in will be sumptuous. And further confirmation of how detached they are.
    I'm sorry, and don't take this personally, but the people claiming they are going to enjoy "the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in" come across as arseholes.
    I neither take it personally or care tbh. The BBC is there to report the news in an unbiased way (haha) with regard to Trump that simply doesn't happen.
    The BBC has never been afraid to take bit of a view on foreign leaders. It isn't afraid to be critical of Bolsonaro, Orban or Erdogan either. I am old enough to remember the reporting on Soviet leaders back in the day, which I am sure the stalinists complained was biased.
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,344
    IanB2 said:

    Meanwhile in other news... Forecasters predict this bank holiday Monday could be the coldest on record for some parts of the UK as temperatures are expected to be well below average for the time of year.

    "On record" not as impressive as people might assume given that the Bank Holiday was moved to the colder end of August only about 50 years ago, and only existed at all since 1871.

    In terms of records we're still currently on track to set a new record for warmest year in the Central England Temperature, which runs from 1659.
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    I am intrigued for an example of biased BBC reporting on Trump
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,700
    coach said:

    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    I've only been once, to NY so I can't comment, but you make my point about the mainstream media here as opposed to tens of millions of Americans.

    With absolutely no financial gain on my part, the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in will be sumptuous. And further confirmation of how detached they are.
    On the contrary, BBC reporting is usually very generous to the Republicans. And as far as Trump's chances go, tend to be long the lines of 'it's a close race, don't write him off'.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,749
    Scott_xP said:


    Now they have seen the reaction

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1299234405945401344

    Government by press release. Twats.

    There are too many articles on the theme for the message not to have been coordinated.

    Including this piece of quite astonishing hypocrisy:

    https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1299094372718465025
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    edited August 2020
    IanB2 said:

    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    A lot of it manifests as fear, leading to desired separation.
    Indeed, the great Evangelical political awakening was not due to Roe vs Wade (the Southern Baptist Council welcomed the decision) but due to the federal government stripping their Whites only colleges of charity status (started by Nixon ironically enough).
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,268
    kamski said:

    coach said:

    kamski said:

    coach said:

    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    I've only been once, to NY so I can't comment, but you make my point about the mainstream media here as opposed to tens of millions of Americans.

    With absolutely no financial gain on my part, the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in will be sumptuous. And further confirmation of how detached they are.
    I'm sorry, and don't take this personally, but the people claiming they are going to enjoy "the BBC meltdown should Trump get back in" come across as arseholes.
    I neither take it personally or care tbh. The BBC is there to report the news in an unbiased way (haha) with regard to Trump that simply doesn't happen.
    The BBC has never been afraid to take bit of a view on foreign leaders. It isn't afraid to be critical of Bolsonaro, Orban or Erdogan either. I am old enough to remember the reporting on Soviet leaders back in the day, which I am sure the stalinists complained was biased.
    Seamus probably still is.
  • Options
    ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 4,980
    coach said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
    Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.

    That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
    I’m both in that before I go to work I make a flask of coffee and a sandwich to take with me, which is why Pret stand to gain nothing from any return to the office by me.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,306

    I wonder whether one effect of office workers being able and willing to work from home will be an upturn in clubs and societies and life in general in commuter towns. Until lockdown people in London officeswere finishing work at around 5 o'clock, spending 90-120 minutes getting home and being able, if unwilling, to be 'about' until 8 or so..
    Now they're still finishing work at 5, but only spending 5 minutes in getting back to the bosom of their families! And by 7 or so they're ready to be active outside the house.

    Welcome to my life!

    36 hour week (theoretically); over eight weeks paid leave and up to 13 weeks unpaid leave available if I choose; an 18 minute commute (maybe 25 minutes if I travel at rush-hour, which is maybe 10 times a year); often home by 2 o’clock in the afternoon; cycling distance to at least five great bathing spots; free-time coming out my ears.

    Although forced to work in a big office building (home working is impossible with my job), I spend a small proportion of my life in the world of work.

    Why anyone chooses the London rat race has always been a mystery to me. Yes, London can be a fantastic place, but only if you have the time, money and energy to fully appreciate it.
    What does appear to be emerging is that a lot of people who extol the virtues of London living do so because they know they are stuck there and are putting a brave face on it. Now that - it would seem - other choices are available, a lot of them are moving away, or at least thinking of doing so.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,749
    edited August 2020
    Pro_Rata said:

    How much of a veiled threat did the return to work call contain? All this "Your employer might not want you if you WfH" business. Is that simply a "employers have some discretion who they let go, so you never know" type threat or is it a "you know we've a commitment to maintaining employment standards but, you know, extraordinary times, extraordinary measures" type threat.

    Given the idea mooted a couple of weeks ago that all over 50s should shield until proven fit, a bit of rolling back age discrimination laws might also be helpful to HMGs cause here? Imagine.

    Just leave it Boris. In time, if it is advantageous, the offices will repopulate, maybe not in the exact same way, but they will. Just like people eventually repopulate the fertile soil at the base after a volcano has gone off.

    A re-organisation of city centre sectors that have outlived their purpose? Come on, you're Tories - just substitute the word mines into the above and ask what you would do then? If things haven't changed, those sectors will come back and perhaps some further help is in order, if they have - well, you are adopting the look of Corbyn talking about automation.

    I think this and the implied threat miss the dynamics of WFH. WFH will be embedded in a business if management value being able to recruit better and cheaper over the desire to keep everyone under their watchful gaze. It won't be the same answer for all employers and all employees. We are not seeing the instant death of all offices. But as employers have got used to remote management, Covid has instigated a significant shift.
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    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,306
    Shapps on R4 now trying to defend the government's "pick a number" quarantine policy
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    ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 4,980
    DavidL said:

    I will be surprised if Harris is not President by 2023. The Democrats choice this time around is truly bizarre. A man who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer at any stage who is clearly fading. What on earth were they thinking? This is one of the most demanding jobs in the world, it ages and exhausts much younger and fitter men. I just don't see how anyone can seriously argue that Biden is capable of fulfilling such a role.

    If I was an American I would vote for Biden because Trump is malevolent and malignant, apparently indifferent to the damage he has done to US institutions and institutional structures but I would do so with a heavy heart and very much reliant upon the fact that Harris seems competent and capable if not particularly sociable. An enhanced role for her has to be a part of the deal from the beginning leading to her taking over completely mid term.

    Agreed, which is why I think his VP pick sealed the deal for Biden.
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    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,306
    edited August 2020
    Alistair said:

    IanB2 said:

    Alistair said:

    coach said:

    In old money Biden is 10/11 with Trump 11/10, I'm genuinely amazed. I really thought a year ago the Democrats would have walked in with any candidate.

    That might still be the case but despite every media outlet painting Trump in such a bad light (over here) the Americans clearly see it differently. I don't follow the US enough to make a judgement, my point is the view where it counts is nowhere near as negative as the view from here.

    It isn't a massive secret. A lot of American are incredibly racist in a way you simply don't see here.

    Yeah, yeah clutch your pearls at my terribleness but the research is abundantly clear.

    A huge section of poor rural white Americans will repeatedly choose options that are economically bad for them as long as it ensures equally bad if not worse outcomes for Black people.

    White supremicism is a mainstream political viewpoint in America.

    Betting on American politics without understanding how deeply ingrained their racism is is a sure fire way to the poor house.
    A lot of it manifests as fear, leading to desired separation.
    Indeed, the great Evangelical political awakening was not due to Roe vs Wade (the Southern Baptist Council welcomed the decision) but due to the federal government stripping their Whites only colleges of charity status (started by Nixon ironically enough).
    I've told the story here before of how I walked to the dog park in Buffalo through a perfectly decent, indeed friendly, 'black neighbourhood' and was then taken aside by successive white dog owners warning me that I had put my life at risk by arriving from that direction. I also remember a discussion with my Kentucky friend about people from the other side of her town and how they should stay in their neighbourhood and not come into her part of town, when I was a little slow in realising what she was talking about. And Americans visiting Europe ask lots of questions about where it is and isnt safe to walk in places where no European would even give this a thought. The first thing a white American does in a strange city appears to be finding out where the 'black neighbourhood' is so that they dont go there.
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    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,712
    coach said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
    Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.

    That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
    WFH not for me, all those sick folk hanging around in my front yard...

    I came across this this morning. Oxford vaccine out November 3rd if phase 3 trials supportive. Only €3 a dose too.

    https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/2020/08/23/5f427b6e46163ff7878b45d6.html
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    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,268
    Will Black Lives Matter end up helping Donald Trump?

    Amid the radicalism of BLM – with its absurd demand to “defund” the police - Mr Trump’s strong message on law and order may win wider appeal

    Right now, Joe Biden is ahead in the polls, but not by a landslide – and, as in 2016, voters could be hiding their true intentions, particularly given the sensitivity of the issues under discussion.

    (Telegraph leader)
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    ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 4,980
    Foxy said:

    coach said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    tlg86 said:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/go-back-work-risk-losing-job-major-drive-launched-get-people/

    Boris Johnson will launch a major drive to get Britain back to the office as ministers warn working from home will make people more “vulnerable” to being sacked.

    A publicity campaign to begin next week will extol the virtues of returning to the workplace, making the “emotional case” for mixing with colleagues and highlighting the benefits to mental health.


    We've been told that those informal chats whilst making tea/coffee are very much banned when the office reopens.

    I get that the government can see serious trouble coming, but they need to accept it rather than fight it.

    When (not if) most workplaces are adapted for home-working, the main problem for employees is that it doesn’t really matter for owners and managers if personnel are at home in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Naples, Zurich, Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta, Toronto or Santiago.

    Many people have romantic ideas of moving to nice places like Devon, the Cotswolds, the Hebrides or rural France, and working from home there. While this is certainly going to happen in the short term (the Scottish rural property market is red-hot), in the long-term most are gonna be screwed by more productive foreign workers.
    The problems entailed by the move to wfh are routinely not just understated but entirely ignored on this site. There is a huge skew on the site to people with nice houses with room to work in (Are there more bedrooms than residents? is a good test), and who are naturally ungregarious to the point that their idea of/substitute for social interaction is wibbling on an Internet politics site, and who are at a late enough stage in their careers that hustling for self-promotion (a notably face to face activity) is no longer a necessity. A hostile government is another spoke in the wheel of the idea, and the point the government makes that wfhers are vulnerable to sacking may be nasty but it is also correct.
    Good post and good points. PBers are generally speaking hopelessy disconnected from ordinary voters and how normal people live and think. A lot of folk around here even wear that as a badge of pride (Charles springs to mind).
    Ain't that true, I'm quite new here and anticipated a political betting site with impartial analysis. Its actually 90% white collar liberals with little interest in or understanding of betting.

    That's not a problem, I like white collar liberals, but they're completely unaware of what goes on in the lives of ordinary working people. Pret, among others, are shedding 1000s of jobs, I don't suppose there's too many baristas or sandwich makers on here.
    WFH not for me, all those sick folk hanging around in my front yard...

    I came across this this morning. Oxford vaccine out November 3rd if phase 3 trials supportive. Only €3 a dose too.

    https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/2020/08/23/5f427b6e46163ff7878b45d6.html
    Vaccine + cashiered Donald. It could be a real feel good November!
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    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    It’s good to have Coach’s working class grit on the site.
This discussion has been closed.