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Women voters switching: the big driver behind Trump’s polling decline – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited October 2020 in General
Women voters switching: the big driver behind Trump’s polling decline – politicalbetting.com

Latest Morning Consult poll showing how Biden is doing amongst women compared with Clinton at WH2016 pic.twitter.com/kEyJhfRVaH

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    This is shaping up to be a non-vanilla landslide.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    Biden raised $12m during the VP debate.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    It's really hard to take your eyes of the signer in this news conference. Hardly noticed Whitmer at all.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvLZaXdTjG4
  • TimT said:

    It's really hard to take your eyes of the signer in this news conference. Hardly noticed Whitmer at all.

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvLZaXdTjG4

    She said it. Whitmer used the phrase, the Great State of Michigan.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,728
    FPT for the attention of @Andy_JS
    Andy_JS said:

    When I started watching cricket in the 1990s most of the England team were not privately educated AFAIK:

    Graham Gooch, Mike Atherton, Robin Smith, Mark Ramprakash, Jack Russell, Phillip DeFreitas, Gladstone Small, Devon Malcolm, Phil Tufnell, Angus Fraser.

    Gooch - Leyton Grammar (State)
    Atherton - Manchester Grammar (private)
    Smith - Northwood School (SA) fee paying
    Ramprakash - Gayton (State)
    Jack Russell - Archway (state, indeed, state secondary modern)
    Daffy - Willesden (State)
    Gladstone Small - not clear which school he was at, but I think he was privately educated on a sports scholarship in Barbados.
    Devon Malcolm - not clear which school he attended in the Carib, but he was at Richmond College in Sheffield (State) after emigrating here.
    Phil Tufnell - Highgate (private)
    Fraser - Gayton (state).

    So yes, you’re right, but it isn’t quite clear cut.

    Truthfully, I would have said a much bigger impact than even the sale of playing fields is how much less time talented children get to spend on sport in the state sector. An hour a week, maybe, with 1 member of staff among 30 children who may specialise in long distance running doesn’t help with cricket. Whereas in the private sector it could easily be five or six hours, plus extra coaching from specialists for those seen as especially promising.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,728
    edited October 2020
    Nigelb said:

    That is a very good decision indeed by China.
    But let’s be clear about the nature of the regime.
    https://twitter.com/nvanderklippe/status/1314020330789249024

    That could suggest either China is much further behind with its own vaccination programme than it had hoped, or that the disease is far more widespread and damaging than they’re claiming. Or both, of course.

    Edit - damn, that was a reply to the virus post. Not the CNN censorship.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/chris-christie-coronavirus-condition-unknown-remains-hospitalised-b868676.html

    If one of Trump’s inner circle actually died, would there be any way back from that at all?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,728

    TimT said:

    It's really hard to take your eyes of the signer in this news conference. Hardly noticed Whitmer at all.

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvLZaXdTjG4

    She said it. Whitmer used the phrase, the Great State of Michigan.
    A lakely lass.

    I’ll get my coat.

    Have a good morning.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    edited October 2020
    tlg86 said:
    Weird. All you see and hear everywhere is builders at work, and the waiting list for them is apparently long. Yet construction is apparently down the most.
  • FregglesFreggles Posts: 3,486
    alex_ said:
    "Thoughts and prayers", "underlying conditions" etc...
  • Alistair said:
    Don't worry. If Pence invokes the 25th and takes over, he'll ensure that the womenfolk of Gilead go back to their kitchens to make Apple Pie whilst suckling their 14th child. As God obviously intended.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    (CNN) President Donald Trump's increasing political desperation is raising concerns about his judgment following his aggressive Covid-19 treatment and as suspicion mounts that the White House is not telling the truth about his health.

    In a day of chaos Thursday, Trump repeatedly shifted his position on a new plan for a virtual second presidential debate and suddenly decided to back negotiations over a coronavirus economic rescue package he had killed off earlier in the week.

    The President's erratic conduct only emphasized an alarming leadership vacuum in a White House hollowed out by sickness as the pandemic takes an ominous turn amid fresh signs that a fragile economic rebound is slowing.

    Trump's official physician, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley, declared that the President would be fit to return to public engagements on Saturday after completing his treatment. But questions remain over when Trump got sick, who he might have infected and if he is still contagious. And twice in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night, the President declined to say whether he has tested negative even as he said he might try to hold a rally in Florida as soon as Saturday night.

    "He is not well. We would not want any other person on the planet to do the things he's doing this soon after knowing they're infected," Rick Bright, the ousted director of the government office involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead."

    Bright, the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority, said that normally, someone who had undergone Covid-19 experimental therapies would be still be in a hospital bed
  • There are major construction projects on going all around here. I find it incomprehensible that construction has suffered a greater decline than services, how does that make any sense at all?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Freggles said:

    alex_ said:
    "Thoughts and prayers", "underlying conditions" etc...
    Apart from obligatory church attendances, (and even then I expect his mind was elsewhere) I wonder when Trump last actually prayed.

    And Good Morning, everyone,; it looks a bit brighter, weather-wise, here this morning.
  • So this circuit breaker that Shagger is finally going to pull. How many stupid inconsistencies will be left? And on a scale of zero to may as well be zero how much financial support will be made available?

    Interesting that the "on yer bike" jobs service is offering people careers advice like go retrain as an airline pilot or cinema projectionist...

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/08/boxer-lock-keeper-government-careers-quiz-scorned-users-england
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    alex_ said:
    It would be sold as a Chinese state assassination, rather than Whitehouse incompetence. Whether that notion gains any traction at this stage is doubtful, it would have worked better earlier in the year.

    Unfortunately, Christie too has the stamp of a man who might struggle more than others with Covid-19.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    alex_ said:
    Not unless there’s another ‘highly experimental medical treatment‘ that we know nothing about.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080

    Freggles said:

    alex_ said:
    "Thoughts and prayers", "underlying conditions" etc...
    Apart from obligatory church attendances, (and even then I expect his mind was elsewhere) I wonder when Trump last actually prayed.

    And Good Morning, everyone,; it looks a bit brighter, weather-wise, here this morning.
    Yes, the next threatened storm has been pushed back to Monday
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    No because different news cycle, and also because i mean in the context of the current White House centred outbreak, possibly even infected by Trump himself (there are still big questions about when he first became infected and when he suspected he might be). And would prove that the "amazing cure to be accessible to all Americans for free" wasn't even available to one of his closest confidants. Or isn't quite the "cure" he claims.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,670

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
  • Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    People who have made their lives here do not mistake the government for the country, thankfully.

  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    To be fair if you live and work here, have laid down roots - own property, have family, friends etc, what you actually think about the overall direction of the country and whether it is making it more unwelcoming to people like you won't make much difference.
  • tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

  • malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
    We know that consistently every year after the referendum and before the pandemic many more have arrived than left.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727

    Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    Well, they are now...
  • tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    It doesn't get any better, considering the abject failure of EOTHO to drive punters back into restaurants/pubs when not being given a discount.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited October 2020

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    Mixed bag. The growth figures are disappointing (though I'm extremely sceptical about the construction figures, they don't pass the sniff test).

    On the other hand having a trade surplus is an excellent position to be in - and also surprising given how many people have been still continuing to order stuff from Amazon etc online it seems interesting that there is a trade surplus.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
    I personally know several people who left and returned to their home country because of Brexit.
  • Alistair said:

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
    I personally know several people who left and returned to their home country because of Brexit.
    Yet despite that net migration is still high so even more than that want to come here.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    IanB2 said:

    (CNN) President Donald Trump's increasing political desperation is raising concerns about his judgment following his aggressive Covid-19 treatment and as suspicion mounts that the White House is not telling the truth about his health.

    In a day of chaos Thursday, Trump repeatedly shifted his position on a new plan for a virtual second presidential debate and suddenly decided to back negotiations over a coronavirus economic rescue package he had killed off earlier in the week.

    The President's erratic conduct only emphasized an alarming leadership vacuum in a White House hollowed out by sickness as the pandemic takes an ominous turn amid fresh signs that a fragile economic rebound is slowing.

    Trump's official physician, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley, declared that the President would be fit to return to public engagements on Saturday after completing his treatment. But questions remain over when Trump got sick, who he might have infected and if he is still contagious. And twice in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night, the President declined to say whether he has tested negative even as he said he might try to hold a rally in Florida as soon as Saturday night.

    "He is not well. We would not want any other person on the planet to do the things he's doing this soon after knowing they're infected," Rick Bright, the ousted director of the government office involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead."

    Bright, the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority, said that normally, someone who had undergone Covid-19 experimental therapies would be still be in a hospital bed

    How exactly is his recent behaviour any different than that of the preceding four years ?
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346

    There are major construction projects on going all around here. I find it incomprehensible that construction has suffered a greater decline than services, how does that make any sense at all?

    The ONS have got contruction figures wrong for many years, I have no idea where they get them from
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    alex_ said:

    No because different news cycle, and also because i mean in the context of the current White House centred outbreak, possibly even infected by Trump himself (there are still big questions about when he first became infected and when he suspected he might be). And would prove that the "amazing cure to be accessible to all Americans for free" wasn't even available to one of his closest confidants. Or isn't quite the "cure" he claims.
    “The Regeneron” may or may not be efficacious.
    We know that dexamethasome reduces the risk of death in sicker patients; until randomised trials are completed, we really don’t know that about the antibodies, even if the clinical signs (reduction in viral load etc) suggest they are beneficial.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.

    I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.

    The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    Mixed bag. The growth figures are disappointing (though I'm extremely sceptical about the construction figures, they don't pass the sniff test).

    On the other hand having a trade surplus is an excellent position to be in - and also surprising given how many people have been still continuing to order stuff from Amazon etc online it seems interesting that there is a trade surplus.
    Alternatively doesn't it suggest that that anecdotal evidence (which possibly sometimes focuses on some things at the expense of others) is a bad judge of the overall state of the economy. Big backlogs on construction projects could be indicative of a shortage of workers, or retrenchment from some firms leading to general supply shortages or whatever? Also maybe construction didn't as fall as far in the first place.
  • Grrr. Why is Windows 10 such a hateful OS? I've got 3 windows open on my ultrawide monitor and PB on the laptop screen. I'm copying Outlook items into network folders, filing and renaming them and writing up a commentary for my successor.

    Outlook decides to sit down on the job. Won't come back. So Ctrl Alt Del to open Task Manager and kill it that way. Nope. Explorer has now sat down on the job. Can't do anything at all to recover it (after a sit and wait to see if it fixes itself) other than hold the power button to crash the machine and reboot. Took a photo of the work I would lose so that I could type it back in.

    A week on Friday. That's (hopefully) the last time I ever have to use Windows.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    Is this because the app doesn’t work, the surprisingly low rate of infection in pubs and restaurants, or simply that test/track/trace is so slow that two weeks isn’t long enough for it to have picked up cases yet ?

    https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1314447905311387648
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    Nigelb said:

    alex_ said:

    No because different news cycle, and also because i mean in the context of the current White House centred outbreak, possibly even infected by Trump himself (there are still big questions about when he first became infected and when he suspected he might be). And would prove that the "amazing cure to be accessible to all Americans for free" wasn't even available to one of his closest confidants. Or isn't quite the "cure" he claims.
    “The Regeneron” may or may not be efficacious.
    We know that dexamethasome reduces the risk of death in sicker patients; until randomised trials are completed, we really don’t know that about the antibodies, even if the clinical signs (reduction in viral load etc) suggest they are beneficial.
    The reality and the message that Trump is pumping out are obviously at variance. But it needs stark events (like eg. a close confidant dying) to demonstrate that. Something which so fundamentally holes one side of the argument below the waterline that it escapes from the "one side says this, the other side says that - you pays your money and takes your choice" that dominates so much of political debate these days.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583

    So this circuit breaker that Shagger is finally going to pull. How many stupid inconsistencies will be left? And on a scale of zero to may as well be zero how much financial support will be made available?

    Interesting that the "on yer bike" jobs service is offering people careers advice like go retrain as an airline pilot or cinema projectionist...

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/08/boxer-lock-keeper-government-careers-quiz-scorned-users-england

    As the end of fulrough coincides with Lockdown, the sequel, the crash will be both swift and hard.

    Unemployment and personal indebtedness will become a political issue.

    As Gillian Keegan put it on QT last night, Coronavirus is not the fault of the Government. I would argue any shortcomings in how they deal with the economic aftershock will nonetheless be seen to be the fault of government.
  • alex_ said:

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    Mixed bag. The growth figures are disappointing (though I'm extremely sceptical about the construction figures, they don't pass the sniff test).

    On the other hand having a trade surplus is an excellent position to be in - and also surprising given how many people have been still continuing to order stuff from Amazon etc online it seems interesting that there is a trade surplus.
    Alternatively doesn't it suggest that that anecdotal evidence (which possibly sometimes focuses on some things at the expense of others) is a bad judge of the overall state of the economy. Big backlogs on construction projects could be indicative of a shortage of workers, or retrenchment from some firms leading to general supply shortages or whatever? Also maybe construction didn't as fall as far in the first place.
    There doesn't seem any intuitive or logical explanation why the crash in Construction would be worse than the crash in Services. It doesn't make any sense to me at least.

    It may be right, but it doesn't seem logical. Especially since the 2 metre restrictions etc seem to be more vigorously enforced in Services than in Construction.

    Construction was allowed to remain open through the summer when many Services weren't too, so why would Construction have had such a heavier decline? It seems very odd to me.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715

    Alistair said:

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
    I personally know several people who left and returned to their home country because of Brexit.
    Yet despite that net migration is still high so even more than that want to come here.
    Isn't EU down but non-EU up?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    alex_ said:

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    Mixed bag. The growth figures are disappointing (though I'm extremely sceptical about the construction figures, they don't pass the sniff test).

    On the other hand having a trade surplus is an excellent position to be in - and also surprising given how many people have been still continuing to order stuff from Amazon etc online it seems interesting that there is a trade surplus.
    Alternatively doesn't it suggest that that anecdotal evidence (which possibly sometimes focuses on some things at the expense of others) is a bad judge of the overall state of the economy. Big backlogs on construction projects could be indicative of a shortage of workers, or retrenchment from some firms leading to general supply shortages or whatever? Also maybe construction didn't as fall as far in the first place.
    There doesn't seem any intuitive or logical explanation why the crash in Construction would be worse than the crash in Services. It doesn't make any sense to me at least.

    It may be right, but it doesn't seem logical. Especially since the 2 metre restrictions etc seem to be more vigorously enforced in Services than in Construction.

    Construction was allowed to remain open through the summer when many Services weren't too, so why would Construction have had such a heavier decline? It seems very odd to me.
    Is it something to do with these figures reflecting business sectors rather than economic activity? I agree that the figures seem odd, but I don't actually know what they are measuring. Is all the economic activity that supports construction (for example, all the commercial stuff - tenders etc.) included?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    Mixed bag. The growth figures are disappointing (though I'm extremely sceptical about the construction figures, they don't pass the sniff test).

    On the other hand having a trade surplus is an excellent position to be in - and also surprising given how many people have been still continuing to order stuff from Amazon etc online it seems interesting that there is a trade surplus.
    The sudden and dramatic change around in our trade position is indicative of an exceptional collapse in demand in the UK, even more than in other countries. There was a graph recently that indicated that German exports to the UK had collapsed. Inevitably, it was suggested that this weakened our Brexit hand but the reality is that it meant tens of thousands of Germans no longer in gainful employment (subject to their version of the furlough scheme).

    I think that that is a consequence of us having a much higher proportion of our workforce self employed than the average. The better earning self employed have had minimal help from the government and are deeply concerned about outstanding tax bills from better times. It makes us cautious. It reduces our spending and increases our saving.
  • Alistair said:

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
    I personally know several people who left and returned to their home country because of Brexit.
    Yet despite that net migration is still high so even more than that want to come here.
    Isn't EU down but non-EU up?
    No. EU is positive and non-EU is also positive.

    The EU is less positive than it used to be, but net migration would be negative if more were leaving than arriving. Changes in net migration is a second order derivative not a first order one.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    Maybe Trump's doctor is playing a canny game. He's decided that the only way he can get Trump to listen to important medical guidance is to allow him to do things that are beyond his limits/capabilities. Once he tries and fails he will recognise that he needs to take things seriously.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    That is a very good decision indeed by China.
    But let’s be clear about the nature of the regime.
    https://twitter.com/nvanderklippe/status/1314020330789249024

    That could suggest either China is much further behind with its own vaccination programme than it had hoped, or that the disease is far more widespread and damaging than they’re claiming. Or both, of course.

    Edit - damn, that was a reply to the virus post. Not the CNN censorship.
    That wasn’t my take on it.
    It seems rather to be part of the effort to expand their soft power/global influence. The contrast with the US refusal to participate in the global distribution scheme is marked.

    It will be interesting to see which vaccines work best, but it’s highly unlikely that all the Chinese efforts (many of which are based on old but proven technology) are going to be failures at the same time as western efforts succeed.
  • DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.

    I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.

    The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
    I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.

  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    France had theirs done long time ago
    France hasn’t started!

    France announced back in January that it would be creating a new online process for British people to make their applications. Originally scheduled to go live in July, this has now been pushed back to October 2020.
    https://www.thelocal.fr/20200520/france-to-launch-website-for-post-brexit-residency-cards
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753
    Scott_xP said:
    Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?

    It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    edited October 2020
    Some new polling out of Michigan makes grim reading for Trump.

    Emerson the pollsters are A- rated on Nate Silvers site .

    Biden 54

    Trump 43

    17% of people have already voted there .
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    (CNN) President Donald Trump's increasing political desperation is raising concerns about his judgment following his aggressive Covid-19 treatment and as suspicion mounts that the White House is not telling the truth about his health.

    In a day of chaos Thursday, Trump repeatedly shifted his position on a new plan for a virtual second presidential debate and suddenly decided to back negotiations over a coronavirus economic rescue package he had killed off earlier in the week.

    The President's erratic conduct only emphasized an alarming leadership vacuum in a White House hollowed out by sickness as the pandemic takes an ominous turn amid fresh signs that a fragile economic rebound is slowing.

    Trump's official physician, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley, declared that the President would be fit to return to public engagements on Saturday after completing his treatment. But questions remain over when Trump got sick, who he might have infected and if he is still contagious. And twice in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night, the President declined to say whether he has tested negative even as he said he might try to hold a rally in Florida as soon as Saturday night.

    "He is not well. We would not want any other person on the planet to do the things he's doing this soon after knowing they're infected," Rick Bright, the ousted director of the government office involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead."

    Bright, the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority, said that normally, someone who had undergone Covid-19 experimental therapies would be still be in a hospital bed

    How exactly is his recent behaviour any different than that of the preceding four years ?
    It's the same chaos, but at a Benny Hill like speeded up pace. If I remember correctly this scene was always at the end of the episode. Fingers crossed that it also the the end of the Trump at the Whitehouse episode,
    That’s fair.
    I’m not going to be able to unhear Yakety Sax in the background from now on.
    Maybe the Lincoln Project could use it.
  • alex_ said:

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    Mixed bag. The growth figures are disappointing (though I'm extremely sceptical about the construction figures, they don't pass the sniff test).

    On the other hand having a trade surplus is an excellent position to be in - and also surprising given how many people have been still continuing to order stuff from Amazon etc online it seems interesting that there is a trade surplus.
    Alternatively doesn't it suggest that that anecdotal evidence (which possibly sometimes focuses on some things at the expense of others) is a bad judge of the overall state of the economy. Big backlogs on construction projects could be indicative of a shortage of workers, or retrenchment from some firms leading to general supply shortages or whatever? Also maybe construction didn't as fall as far in the first place.
    There doesn't seem any intuitive or logical explanation why the crash in Construction would be worse than the crash in Services. It doesn't make any sense to me at least.

    It may be right, but it doesn't seem logical. Especially since the 2 metre restrictions etc seem to be more vigorously enforced in Services than in Construction.

    Construction was allowed to remain open through the summer when many Services weren't too, so why would Construction have had such a heavier decline? It seems very odd to me.
    I guess it depends in how construction is actually defined. A lot of regular maintenance work will have been mothballed, for example. My nephew is an electrician in London and is struggling to find work currently.

  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    Morning to everyone although not a good one given the GDP underperformance. Will be interesting to see what Rishi means by his new measure for jobs.

    I spent too much bloody time on here yesterday so this is the only post of the day and then I'm off. First, @HYFUD posted the Florida poll with a +3% Republican lead. Here is an article on it, which claims the pollster got Florida right in 2016 and the scale of Obama's 2008 victory (don't know whether that is true, I haven't had time to check). Biden's rating amongst Hispanics actually looks decent in the poll but it states Trump is winning amongst 45+ and has 12% of the Black vote.

    https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/fox-35-exclusive-insideradvantage-poll-gives-trump-3-point-edge-over-biden-in-florida

    For @OllyT, the same pollster explains why he is sceptical the polling is reliable. He has a slightly different take from me, namely the problem being that it has to do with the switch to cellphone and polling the same pool but his conclusion is the same, namely polling is less reliable than it was:

    https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/professional-pollster-polls-do-not-predict-elections

    Finally, from Bitzer at North State politics. This is "old" (a week and half ago) but it is looking at the composition of the early returned ballots in NC. HIs conclusion is there is a good chance the Democrats are merely cannibalising their 2016 votes with the returned ballots rather than adding new voters. - at Sep 27, 71% of Democrats who had voted by mail had voted in person in 2016 vs 66% for the state as a whole, and only 21% had either registered in 2017+ or hadn't voted in 2016 vs 24% for the whole state (and 25% for the much smaller Republican number):

    http://www.oldnorthstatepolitics.com/2020/09/nc-abm-ballots-observations-Oct28.html

    Have a good day everyone.....
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Nigelb said:

    Is this because the app doesn’t work, the surprisingly low rate of infection in pubs and restaurants, or simply that test/track/trace is so slow that two weeks isn’t long enough for it to have picked up cases yet ?

    https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1314447905311387648

    Will certainly fuel the growing argument that lockdowns don't really work.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    France had theirs done long time ago
    France hasn’t started!

    France announced back in January that it would be creating a new online process for British people to make their applications. Originally scheduled to go live in July, this has now been pushed back to October 2020.
    https://www.thelocal.fr/20200520/france-to-launch-website-for-post-brexit-residency-cards
    Brits in Spain:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/06/british-residents-in-spain-confused-and-alarmed-about-post-brexit-future
  • ydoethur said:

    FPT for the attention of @Andy_JS

    Andy_JS said:

    When I started watching cricket in the 1990s most of the England team were not privately educated AFAIK:

    Graham Gooch, Mike Atherton, Robin Smith, Mark Ramprakash, Jack Russell, Phillip DeFreitas, Gladstone Small, Devon Malcolm, Phil Tufnell, Angus Fraser.

    Gooch - Leyton Grammar (State)
    Atherton - Manchester Grammar (private)
    Smith - Northwood School (SA) fee paying
    Ramprakash - Gayton (State)
    Jack Russell - Archway (state, indeed, state secondary modern)
    Daffy - Willesden (State)
    Gladstone Small - not clear which school he was at, but I think he was privately educated on a sports scholarship in Barbados.
    Devon Malcolm - not clear which school he attended in the Carib, but he was at Richmond College in Sheffield (State) after emigrating here.
    Phil Tufnell - Highgate (private)
    Fraser - Gayton (state).

    So yes, you’re right, but it isn’t quite clear cut.

    Truthfully, I would have said a much bigger impact than even the sale of playing fields is how much less time talented children get to spend on sport in the state sector. An hour a week, maybe, with 1 member of staff among 30 children who may specialise in long distance running doesn’t help with cricket. Whereas in the private sector it could easily be five or six hours, plus extra coaching from specialists for those seen as especially promising.
    Not all state schools are like that. We have about 2 hours of PE and games combined each week plus a similar amount after school training for those in school teams (or at least the squads), plus the matches themselves (usually on a Saturday). We couldn’t do it without a large number of non-PE specialist staff being prepared to take a team though and a well organised fund raising effort by parents to pay for coaches (of the wheeled variety) etc. so the school doesn’t have to.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Grrr. Why is Windows 10 such a hateful OS? I've got 3 windows open on my ultrawide monitor and PB on the laptop screen. I'm copying Outlook items into network folders, filing and renaming them and writing up a commentary for my successor.

    Outlook decides to sit down on the job. Won't come back. So Ctrl Alt Del to open Task Manager and kill it that way. Nope. Explorer has now sat down on the job. Can't do anything at all to recover it (after a sit and wait to see if it fixes itself) other than hold the power button to crash the machine and reboot. Took a photo of the work I would lose so that I could type it back in.

    A week on Friday. That's (hopefully) the last time I ever have to use Windows.

    I've been fully Mac for twelve years now, and for five years before that we only had an old PC in the office just for the banking software (which wouldn't run on macos initially).

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?

    It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
    Not really, as we’re in the main testing only those who are symptomatic.
    So even if we were testing all of those, which we aren’t, around half of infected cases wouldn’t be tested at all.

    Add in the days of delay between testing and tracing contacts, and you can see why that’s not the case.

    Again this is the consequence of making test accuracy the single most important metric.
    Number of tests (which must include testing those who are not symptomatic) and speed of results are every bit as important, and have simply not been given equivalent priority from the start.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,122

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    France had theirs done long time ago
    France hasn’t started!

    France announced back in January that it would be creating a new online process for British people to make their applications. Originally scheduled to go live in July, this has now been pushed back to October 2020.
    https://www.thelocal.fr/20200520/france-to-launch-website-for-post-brexit-residency-cards
    In Spain we ate going next week TP collect our new residence card. So far it hashing quite smoothly by Spanish standards.
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 4,861

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    I'm sorry, but being someone who has gone through gaining German Citizenship in 2019, my experience has been totally different from the EU citizens I know living in the UK, trying to get citizenship.

    My application could only be accepted from August 2019, but the immigration office was actively helping me from May 2019 to get my application together so I could make my application on the first day possible. Within a couple of months everything had been processed in the fast lane and exactly one year ago today I was sworn in to be a German citizen. The stories I hear the other way round are of delays, mistrust and administrative incompetence.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753

    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.

    I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.

    The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
    I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.

    We can do a lot about our response to Covid and that will have vastly more effect on our service industries than the end of the transitional arrangements, whatever replaces them.

    So far the blessed Nicola has been the mother of the nation in Scotland riding high on a wave of approval but I am detecting a lot of opposition to her most recent measures, a surprising amount of it from SNP supporters. I think we are at the limits of what people are willing to accept in terms of limits on our economy. The price is now payable and people are shocked by it. All too soon, as furlough unwinds, they will be appalled. I think at that point the consensus will switch to living with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    There are major construction projects on going all around here. I find it incomprehensible that construction has suffered a greater decline than services, how does that make any sense at all?

    The ONS have got contruction figures wrong for many years, I have no idea where they get them from
    Presumably construction figures include small building works, new driveways and so on?

    If so, then they aren't picking up the streets around me. It's like someone is breeding skips out there and the noise is nonstop on a week day: new patios, extensions, loft conversions, driveways, double glazing replacements, kitchens etc etc etc...
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,341
    Alistair said:
    They have been copying the tactics of so many Labour supporters whose big tactic for winning over moderate Conservative voters is to blacken their character with words full of bile and hate.

    BTW good to see women voters beginning to see there might be one or two difficulties with Trump and that he may not be a wholly satisfactory person from a woman's point of view; though there were several large red flashing lights in 2016.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550

    Nigelb said:

    Is this because the app doesn’t work, the surprisingly low rate of infection in pubs and restaurants, or simply that test/track/trace is so slow that two weeks isn’t long enough for it to have picked up cases yet ?

    https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1314447905311387648

    Will certainly fuel the growing argument that lockdowns don't really work.
    It will, and rightly so.
    But people will jump to conclusions without sufficient evidence.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753

    alex_ said:

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    Mixed bag. The growth figures are disappointing (though I'm extremely sceptical about the construction figures, they don't pass the sniff test).

    On the other hand having a trade surplus is an excellent position to be in - and also surprising given how many people have been still continuing to order stuff from Amazon etc online it seems interesting that there is a trade surplus.
    Alternatively doesn't it suggest that that anecdotal evidence (which possibly sometimes focuses on some things at the expense of others) is a bad judge of the overall state of the economy. Big backlogs on construction projects could be indicative of a shortage of workers, or retrenchment from some firms leading to general supply shortages or whatever? Also maybe construction didn't as fall as far in the first place.
    There doesn't seem any intuitive or logical explanation why the crash in Construction would be worse than the crash in Services. It doesn't make any sense to me at least.

    It may be right, but it doesn't seem logical. Especially since the 2 metre restrictions etc seem to be more vigorously enforced in Services than in Construction.

    Construction was allowed to remain open through the summer when many Services weren't too, so why would Construction have had such a heavier decline? It seems very odd to me.
    I guess it depends in how construction is actually defined. A lot of regular maintenance work will have been mothballed, for example. My nephew is an electrician in London and is struggling to find work currently.

    I agree. Many, many projects have been mothballed until it can be determined whether they are still viable. Its one of the reasons that Boris was going on about offshore windfarms the other day. He is anxious to get as many projects as possible back on track.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    Alistair said:

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
    I personally know several people who left and returned to their home country because of Brexit.
    Yet despite that net migration is still high so even more than that want to come here.
    Isn't EU down but non-EU up?
    In 2019, an estimated 49,000 more EU citizens came to the UK than left - down from the "peak levels" of more than 200,000 in 2015 and early 2016, the ONS says.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52752656
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    "Labour’s dossier on local lockdowns was far more potent. It looked at 20 areas that have spent two months under various restrictions and 
pointed to how the virus had surged in 19 of them.

    In Bolton, Hyndburn and Bury, Covid infections have risen more than tenfold. In Burnley, they have risen twentyfold. "

    Telegraph (Fraser Nelson)
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    So this circuit breaker that Shagger is finally going to pull. How many stupid inconsistencies will be left? And on a scale of zero to may as well be zero how much financial support will be made available?

    Interesting that the "on yer bike" jobs service is offering people careers advice like go retrain as an airline pilot or cinema projectionist...

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/08/boxer-lock-keeper-government-careers-quiz-scorned-users-england

    As Gillian Keegan put it on QT last night, Coronavirus is not the fault of the Government. I would argue any shortcomings in how they deal with the economic aftershock will nonetheless be seen to be the fault of government.
    Very much agree with this. Its why they were so screwed from the start unless they hsd been able to get a New Zealand like response, which given the nature of the two countries was implausible.
  • felix said:

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    France had theirs done long time ago
    France hasn’t started!

    France announced back in January that it would be creating a new online process for British people to make their applications. Originally scheduled to go live in July, this has now been pushed back to October 2020.
    https://www.thelocal.fr/20200520/france-to-launch-website-for-post-brexit-residency-cards
    In Spain we ate going next week TP collect our new residence card. So far it hashing quite smoothly by Spanish standards.
    @Felix - My family owes you a great big thank-you! Thanks to you, my wife will be getting her teacher pension 10 years earlier than she was expecting. She is absolutely delighted, obviously. So many, many thanks.

  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    felix said:

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    France had theirs done long time ago
    France hasn’t started!

    France announced back in January that it would be creating a new online process for British people to make their applications. Originally scheduled to go live in July, this has now been pushed back to October 2020.
    https://www.thelocal.fr/20200520/france-to-launch-website-for-post-brexit-residency-cards
    In Spain we ate going next week TP collect our new residence card. So far it hashing quite smoothly by Spanish standards.
    If you have resedencia there’s no need for the new card as I understand it, I can understand anyone under pension age worrying about health care but they shouldn’t have been scamming the EHIC card as a substitute to private insurance.
  • DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:
    Those services numbers are horrific given August was Eat Out to Help Out month. And Services are going to be very badly affected by whatever Brexit deal we do or don’t end up with. Thankfully, services are only a small part of the UK economy ...

    In normal times the August growth figures would be little short of sensational and we would be worrying about uncontrolled booms. What I think can be said is that the horrendous damage caused by Covid and the lockdown is being undone but not quite as fast as it was in the summer. Of course August had the higher base of July for a monthly comparison but even so the force of the bounce back faded somewhat.

    I don't agree that the services figure is particularly bad, let alone horrific. Most services are still operating with significantly reduced capacity and that includes restaurants and bars. What is clear is that the new restrictions that we have in Scotland and much of the north of England will drive those figures down further in the coming weeks with severe job implications.

    The brutal truth is that our economy cannot operate at its previous level when we have to stay 2m apart, where the capacity of a pub or restaurant or even court house is measured on the fingers of a couple of hands. We are trying to live virtually. Its not working.
    I understand why the services numbers are horrific, but they are horrific. And come January a major market for our services sector will become much harder to access. That’s just a fact. Covid we can’t do much about. The rest is about choices our government has made.

    We can do a lot about our response to Covid and that will have vastly more effect on our service industries than the end of the transitional arrangements, whatever replaces them.

    So far the blessed Nicola has been the mother of the nation in Scotland riding high on a wave of approval but I am detecting a lot of opposition to her most recent measures, a surprising amount of it from SNP supporters. I think we are at the limits of what people are willing to accept in terms of limits on our economy. The price is now payable and people are shocked by it. All too soon, as furlough unwinds, they will be appalled. I think at that point the consensus will switch to living with the virus rather than trying to eliminate it.
    Yes, covid is the big one. So it’s not smart to be inflicting harm on ourselves on top. But we are where we are.

  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583

    Alistair said:

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
    I personally know several people who left and returned to their home country because of Brexit.
    Yet despite that net migration is still high so even more than that want to come here.
    Isn't EU down but non-EU up?
    No. EU is positive and non-EU is also positive.

    The EU is less positive than it used to be, but net migration would be negative if more were leaving than arriving. Changes in net migration is a second order derivative not a first order one.
    Second paragraph, "but net migration would be negative if more were leaving than arriving". No s***, Sherlock!
  • Grrr. Why is Windows 10 such a hateful OS? I've got 3 windows open on my ultrawide monitor and PB on the laptop screen. I'm copying Outlook items into network folders, filing and renaming them and writing up a commentary for my successor.

    Outlook decides to sit down on the job. Won't come back. So Ctrl Alt Del to open Task Manager and kill it that way. Nope. Explorer has now sat down on the job. Can't do anything at all to recover it (after a sit and wait to see if it fixes itself) other than hold the power button to crash the machine and reboot. Took a photo of the work I would lose so that I could type it back in.

    A week on Friday. That's (hopefully) the last time I ever have to use Windows.

    I've been fully Mac for twelve years now, and for five years before that we only had an old PC in the office just for the banking software (which wouldn't run on macos initially).

    I'm going fully Chrome OS - its brilliant for most day to day tasks. For the odd things I need that it won't run I have Win10 running on an old Chromebook which allows me to keep going a brilliant but software challenged Samsung laser printer. But thats all I want from Windows. They haven't had a really decent system since Windows 2000.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    'We are introducing a traffic light scheme. Your local area is classified as blue.'

    The management of this is shambolic. And the delays unforgivable.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Fraser Nelson: "George Osborne recently told me that Starmer looks as though he could walk into No 10 immediately. It has been a very long time, he said, since the Tories have been up against such a plausible opponent."

  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    eristdoof said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    I'm sorry, but being someone who has gone through gaining German Citizenship in 2019, my experience has been totally different from the EU citizens I know living in the UK, trying to get citizenship.

    My application could only be accepted from August 2019, but the immigration office was actively helping me from May 2019 to get my application together so I could make my application on the first day possible. Within a couple of months everything had been processed in the fast lane and exactly one year ago today I was sworn in to be a German citizen. The stories I hear the other way round are of delays, mistrust and administrative incompetence.
    How many British citizens have the equivalent of “settled status” in Germany?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    France had theirs done long time ago
    France hasn’t started!

    France announced back in January that it would be creating a new online process for British people to make their applications. Originally scheduled to go live in July, this has now been pushed back to October 2020.
    https://www.thelocal.fr/20200520/france-to-launch-website-for-post-brexit-residency-cards
    Oops, damn kneejerk responses get you eventually.
  • There are major construction projects on going all around here. I find it incomprehensible that construction has suffered a greater decline than services, how does that make any sense at all?

    The ONS have got contruction figures wrong for many years, I have no idea where they get them from
    Presumably construction figures include small building works, new driveways and so on?

    If so, then they aren't picking up the streets around me. It's like someone is breeding skips out there and the noise is nonstop on a week day: new patios, extensions, loft conversions, driveways, double glazing replacements, kitchens etc etc etc...
    Construction figures may be a tale of two economies. On one hand normal people are spending thousands improving their homes. On the other hand big construction isn't going full pelt into multi-gazillion pound office / apartment / shopping / leisure developments.

    I'm only hearing it 3rd hand but I have a couple of trusted mates who work in finance and it sounds like armageddon for their finance friends who manage large scale commercial property.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,457

    There are major construction projects on going all around here. I find it incomprehensible that construction has suffered a greater decline than services, how does that make any sense at all?

    The ONS have got contruction figures wrong for many years, I have no idea where they get them from
    Presumably construction figures include small building works, new driveways and so on?

    If so, then they aren't picking up the streets around me. It's like someone is breeding skips out there and the noise is nonstop on a week day: new patios, extensions, loft conversions, driveways, double glazing replacements, kitchens etc etc etc...
    Yes, same around here.

    Would it be too cynical to suggest that much of this type of work is not being recorded in the data as it's off the books? And that some of the people doing it are also at the same time still furloughed or claiming self-employment allowances etc.?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753
    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?

    It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
    Not really, as we’re in the main testing only those who are symptomatic.
    So even if we were testing all of those, which we aren’t, around half of infected cases wouldn’t be tested at all.

    Add in the days of delay between testing and tracing contacts, and you can see why that’s not the case.

    Again this is the consequence of making test accuracy the single most important metric.
    Number of tests (which must include testing those who are not symptomatic) and speed of results are every bit as important, and have simply not been given equivalent priority from the start.
    I do recall in March or April listening to Vallance and Whitty and being told that a test that was not sufficiently accurate was "worse than useless". Even at the time my eyebrows shot up but, in a crowded field, I think it is now clear that that was the worst single piece of advice the government received. Its cost thousands of lives and had horrific economic consequences.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Is this because the app doesn’t work, the surprisingly low rate of infection in pubs and restaurants, or simply that test/track/trace is so slow that two weeks isn’t long enough for it to have picked up cases yet ?

    https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1314447905311387648

    Will certainly fuel the growing argument that lockdowns don't really work.
    But people will jump to conclusions without sufficient evidence.
    A statement to apply in all situations.
  • nico679 said:

    Some new polling out of Michigan makes grim reading for Trump.

    Emerson the pollsters are A- rated on Nate Silvers site .

    Biden 54

    Trump 43

    17% of people have already voted there .

    Michigan is hardly a swing State now but the size of the lead is eye-catching. Similar story in New Hampshire which Clinton won narrowly in 2016. St Anselm have Biden 12 ahead. It's a famously idiosyncratic electorate but that's a hell of a lead in a State which was thought earlier in the the campaign to be a ppotential flip to Trump.

    The Florida poll is good for him however. Whatever the National result I expect him to perform relatively well in Florida.

    Up 7 in Texas is also good for him but it's Rasmussen so judgement is reserved.

    Nate Silver's site now has Biden up Nationally by 9.8, a new high. It feels too high to me, and I suspect it is over-influenced by the prolific USC Dornlife outfit, but the general impression is that the challenger is a good 8 to 9 clear on a rising trajectory. It can be turned round. There are plenty of examples of that kind of thing being done elsewhere but it would help if Trump stopped firing at his feet. The recent Yes/No/Wait over the debates didn't help and as for being rude about the fragrant Kamala..... :open_mouth:

    Laters. Have a nice morning everyone.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,243
    DavidL said:

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?

    It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
    Not really, as we’re in the main testing only those who are symptomatic.
    So even if we were testing all of those, which we aren’t, around half of infected cases wouldn’t be tested at all.

    Add in the days of delay between testing and tracing contacts, and you can see why that’s not the case.

    Again this is the consequence of making test accuracy the single most important metric.
    Number of tests (which must include testing those who are not symptomatic) and speed of results are every bit as important, and have simply not been given equivalent priority from the start.
    I do recall in March or April listening to Vallance and Whitty and being told that a test that was not sufficiently accurate was "worse than useless". Even at the time my eyebrows shot up but, in a crowded field, I think it is now clear that that was the worst single piece of advice the government received. Its cost thousands of lives and had horrific economic consequences.
    It depends where you set the bar for 'sufficiently'. @Nigelb is right though, speed and volume are very important, along with decent sensitivity, specificity less important - you can test again.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    France had theirs done long time ago
    France hasn’t started!

    France announced back in January that it would be creating a new online process for British people to make their applications. Originally scheduled to go live in July, this has now been pushed back to October 2020.
    https://www.thelocal.fr/20200520/france-to-launch-website-for-post-brexit-residency-cards
    British residents in France have until juillet 2021 before they need to apply for their carte de séjour so they are working to a different timetable.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753

    eristdoof said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    I'm sorry, but being someone who has gone through gaining German Citizenship in 2019, my experience has been totally different from the EU citizens I know living in the UK, trying to get citizenship.

    My application could only be accepted from August 2019, but the immigration office was actively helping me from May 2019 to get my application together so I could make my application on the first day possible. Within a couple of months everything had been processed in the fast lane and exactly one year ago today I was sworn in to be a German citizen. The stories I hear the other way round are of delays, mistrust and administrative incompetence.
    How many British citizens have the equivalent of “settled status” in Germany?
    For us to have processed the thick end of 4m applications from EU citizens already, despite Covid, is really a remarkable logistical achievement which I am pretty sure that the government will not want to take any great credit.
  • Alistair said:

    malcolmg said:

    Remember how we were told “the U.K. would never process EU citizen applications in time”?

    overall, the total number of applications received up to 30 September 2020 was 4,061,900
    overall, the total number of applications concluded up to 30 September 2020 was 3,880,400


    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics

    How have EU members done with British citizen applications? Funny how many EU citizens want to live in nasty xenophobic “Little Britain” (England, actually, with the overwhelming majority (91%) of the applications).

    Do we know how many have left , many will be married or been her many years and now have to apply to be 2nd class citizens rather than having freedom of movement. France had theirs done long time ago, assume Spain would be the same.
    I personally know several people who left and returned to their home country because of Brexit.
    Yet despite that net migration is still high so even more than that want to come here.
    Isn't EU down but non-EU up?
    No. EU is positive and non-EU is also positive.

    The EU is less positive than it used to be, but net migration would be negative if more were leaving than arriving. Changes in net migration is a second order derivative not a first order one.
    Second paragraph, "but net migration would be negative if more were leaving than arriving". No s***, Sherlock!
    You should think it would be a case of "No s***, Sherlock!" but actually far, far too many people seem to think that a reduction in net migration is what matters and means that more are leaving than arriving. 🤦🏻‍♂️
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753
    Selebian said:

    DavidL said:

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?

    It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
    Not really, as we’re in the main testing only those who are symptomatic.
    So even if we were testing all of those, which we aren’t, around half of infected cases wouldn’t be tested at all.

    Add in the days of delay between testing and tracing contacts, and you can see why that’s not the case.

    Again this is the consequence of making test accuracy the single most important metric.
    Number of tests (which must include testing those who are not symptomatic) and speed of results are every bit as important, and have simply not been given equivalent priority from the start.
    I do recall in March or April listening to Vallance and Whitty and being told that a test that was not sufficiently accurate was "worse than useless". Even at the time my eyebrows shot up but, in a crowded field, I think it is now clear that that was the worst single piece of advice the government received. Its cost thousands of lives and had horrific economic consequences.
    It depends where you set the bar for 'sufficiently'. @Nigelb is right though, speed and volume are very important, along with decent sensitivity, specificity less important - you can test again.
    Its a numbers game and it always was. If you are finding 80%+ of the cases you get a result, even if there are false positives and false negatives scattered through the results.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Is that bad? Or is that good? I genuinely don't know. What proportion of sexual contacts does an STD clinic manage to trace? What is the comparator here?

    It seems to me that if 2/3 of those who have been in contact with someone found to be infected are being traced this should be more than sufficient to reduce R below 1. As that is not happening I wonder how they are defining "contacts" and how quickly those 2/3 are being traced.
    Its not tracing 2/3 of those you have been in contact with. Its tracing 2/3 of those that you have been in contact with that you either know the name of or have the app. Which is probably less than around 30% of the people you have had contact with if you have been out and about
This discussion has been closed.