State betting:- AZ Dem 1.04 GA Dem 1.06 MI Dem 1.04 NV Dem 1.04 NC Rep no offers but you can lay Dem at 900 PA Dem 1.07 WI Dem 1.07
I can just about understand it. There have been some very lumpy bets placed on Trump very recently, and as we know, rich Republican sympathisers can be very litigious. And it’s surely also the largest political betting book of anyone’s. If this goes on for much longer, though, it will become both stupid and dangerous to their reputation.
The problem is lack of clarity in the rules. If they had said this betting market will be settled on the day the college actually meets to sign off on the ECV vote from the individual states then we wouldn't be bothered.
But it doesn't. It talks about "projected".
I read "projected" purely to mean that they will settle based on how the EC members are supposed to vote, rather than how any who switch sides actually vote?
Indeed. The rules specifically rule out "faithless" ECV voters.
I am getting pretty fed up now. It is clear Biden has won. There is no doubt that the networks settled projection is correct. No legal challenge has got out of first base and indeed lawyers are refusing to continue to work on the pointless actions.
Pay up BF.
The problem for them will be the people on the other side of the bet who would argue that they still have a chance of winning, however slim.
Why should BF indulge that view? It's completely detached from reality. If I were to complain that my bet on Man City winning the 2019-20 Premier League shouldn't be settled yet because who knows maybe Liverpool will be retrospectively disqualified for some imagined breach of rules, should I be taken seriously? Of course not.
The practical problem is the sheer volume of bets still going on Trump.
I understand your logic but as long as people are betting on Trump in substantial amounts it suggests that they think there is a material chance he can still win. I am buggered if I can think how and why that might be but the fact remains considerable numbers think he can. They don't have to give a reason and Betfair would be taking a big risk if they proclaimed that there is none.
They are entitled to think that as long as there are such punters around, they are providing the likes of you and me the opportunty to pick up easy money. So what's the problem? If the Trump backers are manifestly wrong then take them to the cleaners. He'll be gone soon enough. No need for them to pre-empt matters.
I think there is a substantial weight of well-financed opinion that believes that somehow the Orange Goon is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. As long as that remains a possibility, no way are Betfair going to settle.
Yes, Under their rules they should have settled on the PA call at which point there was a winner who had "a majority of the projected votes in the electoral college". Having failed to do that, they are now in a no man's land with no clear and obvious future event to hang the settlement on. But they won't care for the reasons you say. And I don't care either. I'm content to wait a little longer for my money.
It’s really simple. They’re waiting for the official election results to be announced in each State. They’re not settling purely because CNN say Biden won.
Just maybe there's the additional factor that they are doing very nicely out of the large amounts still being bet on the market?
Yes, that's the crux of it. They are putting profit ahead of what they would normally do, and the people paying the price are those who would like to reuse their winnings. It's one thing to say that there are some people out there willing to bet on a prospect that's already lost, and that willing mugs should have their money stripped from them, and Betfair are within their rights to facilitate that. But there are those who have won a bet and are being denied their winnings. Betfair is risking the good will of those customers, and if they start to be seen as unreliable in their settlement of political markets, they risk punters taking their politics bets elsewhere. I wonder whether Betfair is even putting itself in legal jeopardy here.
Surely the sensible thing would be just to settle up and open some new market that reflects what some punters think might happen, instead of trying to squeeze more money out of a market that has evolved beyond what was ever intended.
State betting:- AZ Dem 1.04 GA Dem 1.06 MI Dem 1.04 NV Dem 1.04 NC Rep no offers but you can lay Dem at 900 PA Dem 1.07 WI Dem 1.07
I can just about understand it. There have been some very lumpy bets placed on Trump very recently, and as we know, rich Republican sympathisers can be very litigious. And it’s surely also the largest political betting book of anyone’s. If this goes on for much longer, though, it will become both stupid and dangerous to their reputation.
The problem is lack of clarity in the rules. If they had said this betting market will be settled on the day the college actually meets to sign off on the ECV vote from the individual states then we wouldn't be bothered.
But it doesn't. It talks about "projected".
I read "projected" purely to mean that they will settle based on how the EC members are supposed to vote, rather than how any who switch sides actually vote?
Indeed. The rules specifically rule out "faithless" ECV voters.
I am getting pretty fed up now. It is clear Biden has won. There is no doubt that the networks settled projection is correct. No legal challenge has got out of first base and indeed lawyers are refusing to continue to work on the pointless actions.
Pay up BF.
The problem for them will be the people on the other side of the bet who would argue that they still have a chance of winning, however slim.
Why should BF indulge that view? It's completely detached from reality. If I were to complain that my bet on Man City winning the 2019-20 Premier League shouldn't be settled yet because who knows maybe Liverpool will be retrospectively disqualified for some imagined breach of rules, should I be taken seriously? Of course not.
The practical problem is the sheer volume of bets still going on Trump.
I understand your logic but as long as people are betting on Trump in substantial amounts it suggests that they think there is a material chance he can still win. I am buggered if I can think how and why that might be but the fact remains considerable numbers think he can. They don't have to give a reason and Betfair would be taking a big risk if they proclaimed that there is none.
They are entitled to think that as long as there are such punters around, they are providing the likes of you and me the opportunty to pick up easy money. So what's the problem? If the Trump backers are manifestly wrong then take them to the cleaners. He'll be gone soon enough. No need for them to pre-empt matters.
I think there is a substantial weight of well-financed opinion that believes that somehow the Orange Goon is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. As long as that remains a possibility, no way are Betfair going to settle.
Yes, Under their rules they should have settled on the PA call at which point there was a winner who had "a majority of the projected votes in the electoral college". Having failed to do that, they are now in a no man's land with no clear and obvious future event to hang the settlement on. But they won't care for the reasons you say. And I don't care either. I'm content to wait a little longer for my money.
It’s really simple. They’re waiting for the official election results to be announced in each State. They’re not settling purely because CNN say Biden won.
Just maybe there's the additional factor that they are doing very nicely out of the large amounts still being bet on the market?
Yes, that's the crux of it. They are putting profit ahead of what they would normally do, and the people paying the price are those who would like to reuse their winnings. It's one thing to say that there are some people out there willing to bet on a prospect that's already lost, and that willing mugs should have their money stripped from them, and Betfair are within their rights to facilitate that. But there are those who have won a bet and are being denied their winnings. Betfair is risking the good will of those customers, and if they start to be seen as unreliable in their settlement of political markets, they risk punters taking their politics bets elsewhere. I wonder whether Betfair is even putting itself in legal jeopardy here.
Surely the sensible thing would be just to settle up and open some new market that reflects what some punters think might happen, instead of trying to squeeze more money out of a market that has evolved beyond what was ever intended.
Doing what you are suggesting is precisely what would cause them legal problems. The bets of Trump backers made post the media projecting couldnt stand if Betfair say they are now settling on the basis of the media projection.
What a sorry mess Betfair has gotten itself into. I've just resolved now not to make any political bets with them in future.
It’s not a sorry mess at all. They’ll pay out when there’s an actual result. It was exactly the same four years ago.
Thanks for the interesting responses to my question. We don't quite know, specifically on people who are asymptomatic perhaps still acting as carriers, but it does look hopeful.
What you also have to remember is the methodology underlying pfizer vaccine has shown to work even better than anybody hoped. There are already other vaccine candidates based on the same.idea that overcome some of the downsides e.g. Imperial vaccine doesn't need super cooling.
So I think we should be positive that even if gen 1 of the vaccine does only provide 1-2 years protection, I think we will continue to see improvements such that either the length of protection increases and / or administering it becomes simple. We already do millions and millions of flu jabs each year with no fuss.
If there weren't such incredible time pressure, Pfizer would probably have continued working on their vaccine until they found a version that could be distributed more easily before commercialising it.
No, it’s inherent on the particular technology. The RNA degrades over a couple of days at room temperature, and more slowly if just frozen at normal freezer temperatures.
The advantages in terms of rapid development and manufacturing outweigh the disadvantages.
Off topic, just thinking that Nicola has played a blinder over lockdown. Basically dodged it by waiting for the university cases to burn themselves out rather than being panicked into it by the scientists. She deserves a lot of credit for for not being bounced into it with scary looking graphs with no actual data on them.
Well, whatever has been done in Scotland has been sufficient to reduce hospital admissions, and so the numbers in hospital are now also starting to decline - that says more about the prevalence of infection among older age groups than university students.
In England, whatever was being done before lockdown wasn't enough to bring hospitalisations down. Daily admissions numbers are still going up.
So there is more going on then simply Sturgeon holding her nerve while the surge in case numbers from university students burns itself out. There's a real difference in hospitalisation numbers. England Scotland
Where was that from, please? (Very relevant to some fairly fraught family decision making at present, so thank you.) I can see the URLs but not sure where the primary link is for looking it up in future dates.
An annoyance is the probably correct assumption that the race director, who still isn't Charlie Whiting and whose name I still cannot remember, is likely to be risk averse to the extent of playing it a bit safe.
2.75 was the lay price.
Michael Masi is the race director, and of course he’s stopped the cars half way through Q1 as it’s “too wet”.
I must say I thought Boris and Carrie had split up. No idea she was so influential. Not sure why we should be quite so delighted that she and Allegra Stratton (unimpressive in her brief stint on Newsnight) are running the show. Why are they so much better than Cummings? They may be politer and better dressed etc but the problem with this government has been the deeply unimpressive man at the top of it and his frankly second-rate Cabinet.
And while PMs have always had press spokesmen it is the PM who ought to be explaining his policies to Parliament and the nation. That is if he knows what they are. It does seem ironic that a government headed by a journalist has been so bloody awful at communication, beyond 3-word slogans.
Me too re Ms Symonds. She had been off the radar for so long, for no obvious reason other than the, well, obvious reason.
That she's the mother of a newborn baby?
Does not mean you are locked away for 6 months normally. New mothers occasionally go outdoors.
Some of them even go camping by midge infested lochs in the vain hope of super photo ops.
To echo Wulfrun Phil further down the thread, the NEC result is very good news for Keir Starmer. This is from the pro-left Labour List:
Corbynites lost three seats (local party and BAME) in the April by-elections, and have now lost a further two in the members’ section. There has been a swing of 10% from Momentum to Labour to Win since the last full NEC elections in 2018, with Momentum securing 37% (-19) this time, Labour to Win 31% (+1) and Open Labour 9% (+5). The left vote was also down by nine percentage points compared to earlier this year. Keir Starmer can be encouraged by the overall trajectory of the party.
Off topic, just thinking that Nicola has played a blinder over lockdown. Basically dodged it by waiting for the university cases to burn themselves out rather than being panicked into it by the scientists. She deserves a lot of credit for for not being bounced into it with scary looking graphs with no actual data on them.
Well, whatever has been done in Scotland has been sufficient to reduce hospital admissions, and so the numbers in hospital are now also starting to decline - that says more about the prevalence of infection among older age groups than university students.
In England, whatever was being done before lockdown wasn't enough to bring hospitalisations down. Daily admissions numbers are still going up.
So there is more going on then simply Sturgeon holding her nerve while the surge in case numbers from university students burns itself out. There's a real difference in hospitalisation numbers. England Scotland
Where was that from, please? (Very relevant to some fairly fraught family decision making at present, so thank you.) I can see the URLs but not sure where the primary link is for looking it up in future dates.
State betting:- AZ Dem 1.04 GA Dem 1.06 MI Dem 1.04 NV Dem 1.04 NC Rep no offers but you can lay Dem at 900 PA Dem 1.07 WI Dem 1.07
I can just about understand it. There have been some very lumpy bets placed on Trump very recently, and as we know, rich Republican sympathisers can be very litigious. And it’s surely also the largest political betting book of anyone’s. If this goes on for much longer, though, it will become both stupid and dangerous to their reputation.
The problem is lack of clarity in the rules. If they had said this betting market will be settled on the day the college actually meets to sign off on the ECV vote from the individual states then we wouldn't be bothered.
But it doesn't. It talks about "projected".
I read "projected" purely to mean that they will settle based on how the EC members are supposed to vote, rather than how any who switch sides actually vote?
Indeed. The rules specifically rule out "faithless" ECV voters.
I am getting pretty fed up now. It is clear Biden has won. There is no doubt that the networks settled projection is correct. No legal challenge has got out of first base and indeed lawyers are refusing to continue to work on the pointless actions.
Pay up BF.
The problem for them will be the people on the other side of the bet who would argue that they still have a chance of winning, however slim.
Why should BF indulge that view? It's completely detached from reality. If I were to complain that my bet on Man City winning the 2019-20 Premier League shouldn't be settled yet because who knows maybe Liverpool will be retrospectively disqualified for some imagined breach of rules, should I be taken seriously? Of course not.
The practical problem is the sheer volume of bets still going on Trump.
I understand your logic but as long as people are betting on Trump in substantial amounts it suggests that they think there is a material chance he can still win. I am buggered if I can think how and why that might be but the fact remains considerable numbers think he can. They don't have to give a reason and Betfair would be taking a big risk if they proclaimed that there is none.
They are entitled to think that as long as there are such punters around, they are providing the likes of you and me the opportunty to pick up easy money. So what's the problem? If the Trump backers are manifestly wrong then take them to the cleaners. He'll be gone soon enough. No need for them to pre-empt matters.
I think there is a substantial weight of well-financed opinion that believes that somehow the Orange Goon is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. As long as that remains a possibility, no way are Betfair going to settle.
Yes, Under their rules they should have settled on the PA call at which point there was a winner who had "a majority of the projected votes in the electoral college". Having failed to do that, they are now in a no man's land with no clear and obvious future event to hang the settlement on. But they won't care for the reasons you say. And I don't care either. I'm content to wait a little longer for my money.
It’s really simple. They’re waiting for the official election results to be announced in each State. They’re not settling purely because CNN say Biden won.
Just maybe there's the additional factor that they are doing very nicely out of the large amounts still being bet on the market?
Yes, that's the crux of it. They are putting profit ahead of what they would normally do, and the people paying the price are those who would like to reuse their winnings. It's one thing to say that there are some people out there willing to bet on a prospect that's already lost, and that willing mugs should have their money stripped from them, and Betfair are within their rights to facilitate that. But there are those who have won a bet and are being denied their winnings. Betfair is risking the good will of those customers, and if they start to be seen as unreliable in their settlement of political markets, they risk punters taking their politics bets elsewhere. I wonder whether Betfair is even putting itself in legal jeopardy here.
Surely the sensible thing would be just to settle up and open some new market that reflects what some punters think might happen, instead of trying to squeeze more money out of a market that has evolved beyond what was ever intended.
State betting:- AZ Dem 1.04 GA Dem 1.06 MI Dem 1.04 NV Dem 1.04 NC Rep no offers but you can lay Dem at 900 PA Dem 1.07 WI Dem 1.07
I can just about understand it. There have been some very lumpy bets placed on Trump very recently, and as we know, rich Republican sympathisers can be very litigious. And it’s surely also the largest political betting book of anyone’s. If this goes on for much longer, though, it will become both stupid and dangerous to their reputation.
The problem is lack of clarity in the rules. If they had said this betting market will be settled on the day the college actually meets to sign off on the ECV vote from the individual states then we wouldn't be bothered.
But it doesn't. It talks about "projected".
I read "projected" purely to mean that they will settle based on how the EC members are supposed to vote, rather than how any who switch sides actually vote?
Indeed. The rules specifically rule out "faithless" ECV voters.
I am getting pretty fed up now. It is clear Biden has won. There is no doubt that the networks settled projection is correct. No legal challenge has got out of first base and indeed lawyers are refusing to continue to work on the pointless actions.
Pay up BF.
The problem for them will be the people on the other side of the bet who would argue that they still have a chance of winning, however slim.
Why should BF indulge that view? It's completely detached from reality. If I were to complain that my bet on Man City winning the 2019-20 Premier League shouldn't be settled yet because who knows maybe Liverpool will be retrospectively disqualified for some imagined breach of rules, should I be taken seriously? Of course not.
The practical problem is the sheer volume of bets still going on Trump.
I understand your logic but as long as people are betting on Trump in substantial amounts it suggests that they think there is a material chance he can still win. I am buggered if I can think how and why that might be but the fact remains considerable numbers think he can. They don't have to give a reason and Betfair would be taking a big risk if they proclaimed that there is none.
They are entitled to think that as long as there are such punters around, they are providing the likes of you and me the opportunty to pick up easy money. So what's the problem? If the Trump backers are manifestly wrong then take them to the cleaners. He'll be gone soon enough. No need for them to pre-empt matters.
I think there is a substantial weight of well-financed opinion that believes that somehow the Orange Goon is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. As long as that remains a possibility, no way are Betfair going to settle.
Yes, Under their rules they should have settled on the PA call at which point there was a winner who had "a majority of the projected votes in the electoral college". Having failed to do that, they are now in a no man's land with no clear and obvious future event to hang the settlement on. But they won't care for the reasons you say. And I don't care either. I'm content to wait a little longer for my money.
It’s really simple. They’re waiting for the official election results to be announced in each State. They’re not settling purely because CNN say Biden won.
Just maybe there's the additional factor that they are doing very nicely out of the large amounts still being bet on the market?
Yes, that's the crux of it. They are putting profit ahead of what they would normally do, and the people paying the price are those who would like to reuse their winnings. It's one thing to say that there are some people out there willing to bet on a prospect that's already lost, and that willing mugs should have their money stripped from them, and Betfair are within their rights to facilitate that. But there are those who have won a bet and are being denied their winnings. Betfair is risking the good will of those customers, and if they start to be seen as unreliable in their settlement of political markets, they risk punters taking their politics bets elsewhere. I wonder whether Betfair is even putting itself in legal jeopardy here.
Surely the sensible thing would be just to settle up and open some new market that reflects what some punters think might happen, instead of trying to squeeze more money out of a market that has evolved beyond what was ever intended.
Doing what you are suggesting is precisely what would cause them legal problems. The bets of Trump backers made post the media projecting couldnt stand if Betfair say they are now settling on the basis of the media projection.
What a sorry mess Betfair has gotten itself into. I've just resolved now not to make any political bets with them in future.
It’s not a sorry mess at all. They’ll pay out when there’s an actual result. It was exactly the same four years ago.
They don't pay out on the "To Score" market in football until the match has finished now, despite the market being suspended at kick off, and the individual market (which is what it is for comm purposes) having decided sometimes almost two hours previously.
Trying to save "My Markets" is like trying to steer a shopping trolley from the 80s. Even little things like consistency of players names (Trent Alexander-Arnold is listed differently every match) is no longer happening. What comes of a monopoly maybe
I must say I thought Boris and Carrie had split up. No idea she was so influential. Not sure why we should be quite so delighted that she and Allegra Stratton (unimpressive in her brief stint on Newsnight) are running the show. Why are they so much better than Cummings? They may be politer and better dressed etc but the problem with this government has been the deeply unimpressive man at the top of it and his frankly second-rate Cabinet.
And while PMs have always had press spokesmen it is the PM who ought to be explaining his policies to Parliament and the nation. That is if he knows what they are. It does seem ironic that a government headed by a journalist has been so bloody awful at communication, beyond 3-word slogans.
Me too re Ms Symonds. She had been off the radar for so long, for no obvious reason other than the, well, obvious reason.
That she's the mother of a newborn baby?
Does not mean you are locked away for 6 months normally. New mothers occasionally go outdoors.
Some of them even go camping by midge infested lochs in the vain hope of super photo ops.
Yes, but that was in August. I had thouight she must have moved out of No 10 at the very least. It's slightly more accessible to the average London paparazzo than the backside of Applecross.
For those wondering about how the Labour NEC elections have changed Starmer's ability to push things through, here's a summary. I'll concentrate on the posts for which ordinary members had an input - the councillors representation was unchanged and the Treasurer post wasn't seriously contested.
At the previous full round of elections in 2018, Momentum had secured a rule change to increase the CLP representatives from 6 to 9 to bolster Corbyn's position, all elected by FPTP. The result: Momentum had 9 CLP, plus 1 youth plus 1 Wales (appointed by Drakeford). Total 11 Momentum, Others nil.
After the Spring 2000 by elections, LTW picked up 2 Constituency seats, largely because the far left couldn't agree on candidates and split their vote. So Momentum had 7 CLP, plus 1 youth plus 1 Wales appointed. Total 9 Momentum, 2 LTW. But with Starmer's election, the leadership and front bench appointees to the NEC also changed. Even so, Starmer could at that point rely on no more than a narrow NEC majority of about 2, which would have fallen to 1 had one of the Momentum CLP reps (Willsman) not been suspended.
That narrow majority was however enough for Starmer to push through a crucial change to the NEC constituency voting from FPTP to STV for November's elections. After the latest round of voting, the results in the above seats are: CLP: Momentum 5, LTW 3, Open Labour 1 (Black). Youth: Momentum 1. Wales: LTW 1 Disabled (new seat): Momentum 1
So compared to the Spring, Momentum are down from a total of 9 to 7, LTW up from 2 to 4 and Open Labour up from 0 to 1 (Black). On key votes, I think that Black will act in a way that is critical but supportive of Starmer's leadership, and she was instrumental in promoting the change in the voting system that diluted Momentum's grip. She'll at least consider things on their merits, rather than from a partisan far left factional line. So Momentum down 2, Non-Momentum up 3.
That's a net shift since the Spring in Starmer's favour of 5, bringing his minimum working majority up from 1 to 6. The switch in Wales is a notable bonus to what might have been expected.
Leonard in the meanwhile has insisted that the Scotland NEC seat should remain reserved for the Scottish leader. In 2021, Leonard seems sure to be replaced, so at that point I would expect Starmer's minimum majority to increase further to 8.
Overall, I'm sure that Starmer will be very pleased at the practical outcome of a much strengthened hand. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
Labour NEC Elections: Further details now emerging on how the first preference votes split for the successful CLP candidates.
1 Luke Akehurst Labour to Win 21,355 2 Laura Pidcock Momentum/Grassroots Voice 15,668 3 Johanna Baxter Labour to Win 9,803 4 Gemma Bolton Momentum/Grassroots Voice 9,596 5 Gurinder Singh Josan Labour to Win 4,624 6 Ann Black Open Labour 7,813 7 Yasmin Dar Momentum/Grassroots Voice 6,322 8 Nadia Jama Momentum/Grassroots Voice 5,707 9 Mish Rahman Momentum/Grassroots Voice 5,879
I don't have full details of the other candidates, but the first two LTW candidates to be eliminated had
M/GV had a much more sophisticated approach, recommending different preference orders for different parts of the country. This maximised the efficiency of their vote. LTW did not do this, so maxed out support among their top three candidates. They will learn from this and so should have a shot at an additional seat next time around. Starmer's increased control of the NEC aside, the big takeaway from the vote is the decline in support for M/GV. As the far-left peels away and goes elsewhere, this trend should only continue. It's been a very good November so far.
For those wondering about how the Labour NEC elections have changed Starmer's ability to push things through, here's a summary. I'll concentrate on the posts for which ordinary members had an input - the councillors representation was unchanged and the Treasurer post wasn't seriously contested.
At the previous full round of elections in 2018, Momentum had secured a rule change to increase the CLP representatives from 6 to 9 to bolster Corbyn's position, all elected by FPTP. The result: Momentum had 9 CLP, plus 1 youth plus 1 Wales (appointed by Drakeford). Total 11 Momentum, Others nil.
After the Spring 2000 by elections, LTW picked up 2 Constituency seats, largely because the far left couldn't agree on candidates and split their vote. So Momentum had 7 CLP, plus 1 youth plus 1 Wales appointed. Total 9 Momentum, 2 LTW. But with Starmer's election, the leadership and front bench appointees to the NEC also changed. Even so, Starmer could at that point rely on no more than a narrow NEC majority of about 2, which would have fallen to 1 had one of the Momentum CLP reps (Willsman) not been suspended.
That narrow majority was however enough for Starmer to push through a crucial change to the NEC constituency voting from FPTP to STV for November's elections. After the latest round of voting, the results in the above seats are: CLP: Momentum 5, LTW 3, Open Labour 1 (Black). Youth: Momentum 1. Wales: LTW 1 Disabled (new seat): Momentum 1
So compared to the Spring, Momentum are down from a total of 9 to 7, LTW up from 2 to 4 and Open Labour up from 0 to 1 (Black). On key votes, I think that Black will act in a way that is critical but supportive of Starmer's leadership, and she was instrumental in promoting the change in the voting system that diluted Momentum's grip. She'll at least consider things on their merits, rather than from a partisan far left factional line. So Momentum down 2, Non-Momentum up 3.
That's a net shift since the Spring in Starmer's favour of 5, bringing his minimum working majority up from 1 to 6. The switch in Wales is a notable bonus to what might have been expected.
Leonard in the meanwhile has insisted that the Scotland NEC seat should remain reserved for the Scottish leader. In 2021, Leonard seems sure to be replaced, so at that point I would expect Starmer's minimum majority to increase further to 8.
Overall, I'm sure that Starmer will be very pleased at the practical outcome of a much strengthened hand. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
Labour NEC Elections: Further details now emerging on how the first preference votes split for the successful CLP candidates.
1 Luke Akehurst Labour to Win 21,355 2 Laura Pidcock Momentum/Grassroots Voice 15,668 3 Johanna Baxter Labour to Win 9,803 4 Gemma Bolton Momentum/Grassroots Voice 9,596 5 Gurinder Singh Josan Labour to Win 4,624 6 Ann Black Open Labour 7,813 7 Yasmin Dar Momentum/Grassroots Voice 6,322 8 Nadia Jama Momentum/Grassroots Voice 5,707 9 Mish Rahman Momentum/Grassroots Voice 5,879
I don't have full details of the other candidates, but the first two LTW candidates to be eliminated had
This illustrates the nonsense of STV. Are they a slate or are they individuals?
Perhaps people voted Akehurst because they wanted to elect him, and didn't give a stuff for the rest of the slate?
Then of course we have the vote redistribution nonsense of the 'excess votes'.
The current, and probably final, trajectory is to an end-point where Remainers are more "happy" than leavers. Leavers will be furious, which is what Remainers want.
No. What we want is our rights back and our businesses not to be crippled by bureaucracy. Leavers got what they wanted - we left. We Brexited in January, so I wish that they would stop moaning about their victory.
From the Remain perspective, it is not my fault that you won. The Leave campaigns lied repeatedly about being £350m better off each week and that all of Turkey would migrate to the UK after converting the EU to a Caliphate, that we would be drowning in mountains of our own fish and freed up from huge amounts of red tape.
And every single word of it was a lie.
When this was pointed out it was "Project Fear". Those nasty Remainers were trying to scare voters.
We have spent years shouting until we are blue in the face that the lies are fantasies and Brexit is just a big unicorn hunt
So hard cheese. You won. This is your victory.
Now kindly shut up and sort out the mess you made. Or at least have the guts to own up to shambles Leave has created.
I agree with a lot of that. To clarify - I voted to remain.
Doesn`t alter the fact that most who voted to leave the EU do not want an end-point which doesn`t give us back the control that they wanted. And this is the end-point that I believe Johnson is heading towards.
"Project Fear" was project reality. In 2016 I tried and tried to convince those that intended to vote to leave, but failed.
One of the problems we have is that what we were told we were going to get in 2016 is not what we will end up with in 2021. The piece that Johnson wrote for the Telegraph immediately after the referendum is well worth a read as a starting point on that. It is also very clear we are not going to be part of a free trade bloc stretching from the Urals to the Atlantic. The German car makers have less than a week now to ride to the rescue.
Yes, and your last point reminds me of the boringly numerous chuckling elbow-on- the-bar-of-the-pub crap I kept being told about the ease of getting a trade deal because BMW and Audi would insist. I heard this so many times. Straight out of the Daily Mail I suspect.
Thanks for the interesting responses to my question. We don't quite know, specifically on people who are asymptomatic perhaps still acting as carriers, but it does look hopeful.
What you also have to remember is the methodology underlying pfizer vaccine has shown to work even better than anybody hoped. There are already other vaccine candidates based on the same.idea that overcome some of the downsides e.g. Imperial vaccine doesn't need super cooling.
So I think we should be positive that even if gen 1 of the vaccine does only provide 1-2 years protection, I think we will continue to see improvements such that either the length of protection increases and / or administering it becomes simple. We already do millions and millions of flu jabs each year with no fuss.
If there weren't such incredible time pressure, Pfizer would probably have continued working on their vaccine until they found a version that could be distributed more easily before commercialising it.
No, it’s inherent on the particular technology. The RNA degrades over a couple of days at room temperature, and more slowly if just frozen at normal freezer temperatures.
The advantages in terms of rapid development and manufacturing outweigh the disadvantages.
Had a conversation with an Ocado driver we hadn't seen for some time the other night. He'd remembered delivering something - I don't recall what - packed in card ice on a previous visit. Point is that neither card ice not liquid nitrogen are so specialised to even make this particularly challenging - too much is being made of the logistical challenge.
In fact, I heard on the radio, I think, an aid worker saying it proved possible to effectively distribute the Ebola vaccine in the poorer parts of West Africa, which had the same requirements.
To echo Wulfrun Phil further down the thread, the NEC result is very good news for Keir Starmer. This is from the pro-left Labour List:
Corbynites lost three seats (local party and BAME) in the April by-elections, and have now lost a further two in the members’ section. There has been a swing of 10% from Momentum to Labour to Win since the last full NEC elections in 2018, with Momentum securing 37% (-19) this time, Labour to Win 31% (+1) and Open Labour 9% (+5). The left vote was also down by nine percentage points compared to earlier this year. Keir Starmer can be encouraged by the overall trajectory of the party.
I voted for several individual candidates not on slates.
Yes, so did I - in fact I tried to avoid the candidates who recommended voting for others of a like mind. I suspect we're not alone, and that Labour List is underestimating the number of members (non-Momentum, which is most of us) who selected on the substance of candidates' published statements rather than on their slate. There were far too many candidates though - hence why those at the top of the alphabet, particularly Akehurst, did well.
I see we are still at the "Remainers could have rescued us from our own stupidity but failed. The bastards" stage of Brexiteers self awareness journey...
That's not the case, and it would have been better to remain after all, but the softer remainers tactically messed up in their excitement last summer. They went for the big prize of reversal rather than mitigation and it blew up in their face.
It doesn't make it their fault, but it was a massive misstep which has negative consequences and may well prove a pivotal historical moment. The Brexiteers were worried parliament has seizing control from the government. Then...nothing.
If you wanted a soft Brexit then it is Remainers fault that they failed. It isn't Brexiteers fault they succeeded it is their credit that they succeeded against the odds.
If you're a Serbia fan then you don't say it was the Scottish keepers fault you were knocked out. The Scottish keeper wanted to save the penalty. It's the Serbian penalty kicker who missed who is at fault, not the opposition who got what they wanted.
I'll skip the analogy, since all that marriage and golf club stuff is so 2016.
kle is right that the Remainers messed up, but the fact is that the Brexiters (or at least those in power) had the responsibility of delivering a Brexit that met the various promises and commitments made during the campaign, from "maintain current benefits" through "oven ready deal". If we end with a damaging Brexit, it is clearly the fault of those leavers with influence - not least because we were told by them all along that there wouldn't be any damage; any suggestion of such was "project fear".
Let's face it, there is an abundance of incompetence, arrogance, ignorance and plain stupidity to go around but the failure of the Commons to support May's deal was a serious mistake when the remainer majority in that Parliament could have left the Brexiteer loons howling in the wilderness (which frankly suits several of them anyway) and moved on. But they got greedy with dreams of a second referendum or simple cancellation. It was by no means the only mistake, there have been hundreds, but it was a big one.
SKS actually bears a lot of responsibility for this. He didn't act in the national interest. He didn't even act in his own party's interest: had he persuaded Corbyn to give May the votes he may well have split the Tories in 2 leading to an extended period of Labour dominance. It was a poor call by him.
What if they didn’t want to vote for it because they believed it to be wrong?
Then they should not have allowed themselves to be elected on a platform committed to implementing Brexit as the Labour party MPs were in that disgrace of a Parliament. And they should have been more pragmatic about the alternatives, such as where we are right now. I am pretty sure that Boris blundering about with an 80 strong majority was not what they had in mind as an ideal outcome.
It was only "a disgrace of a Parliament" because it didn't give Leavers the results they desired.
Now you have your 80 strong majority, you have no excuses, so get on with whatever it is you want to get on with.
That's completely the wrong way around. In 2015 they lied and said that they would implement Brexit. It cost many of them (not just in the Labour party in fairness) their seats. They deserved nothing less.
Oh stop this nonsense. "Remainers" would have reluctantly accepted a soft EEA style Brexit. It was May (and Brexiteers in general)'s failure to reach out to "Remainers" at all which resulted in the situation we found ourselves in.
Why are you so angry? You've got everything you wanted. Sunlit uplands await.
And yet when that option was put on the table it didn't get a majority in the house. Starmer played right into the hands of hard leavers.
Single Market and Customs Union options both received the support of a significant majority of Labour MPs. They were voted down largely thanks to the Tory government. Stop trying to rewrite history.
To echo Wulfrun Phil further down the thread, the NEC result is very good news for Keir Starmer. This is from the pro-left Labour List:
Corbynites lost three seats (local party and BAME) in the April by-elections, and have now lost a further two in the members’ section. There has been a swing of 10% from Momentum to Labour to Win since the last full NEC elections in 2018, with Momentum securing 37% (-19) this time, Labour to Win 31% (+1) and Open Labour 9% (+5). The left vote was also down by nine percentage points compared to earlier this year. Keir Starmer can be encouraged by the overall trajectory of the party.
I voted for several individual candidates not on slates.
I sort of agree with that sentiment. However, the problem is that when one slate is trying to actively undermine the most electable leader that the party has had in 20 years then in order to stymie them you have to make a pragmatic choice to vote for electable candidates committed to working constructively with Starmer, and that means candidates on the opposite slate. That doesn't mean that I sign up to Akehurst's unreformed Blairism - far from it - but better that than another dose of Corbynism. I voted first preference for Ann Black as the least factional of the candidates supportive of Starmer.
State betting:- AZ Dem 1.04 GA Dem 1.06 MI Dem 1.04 NV Dem 1.04 NC Rep no offers but you can lay Dem at 900 PA Dem 1.07 WI Dem 1.07
I can just about understand it. There have been some very lumpy bets placed on Trump very recently, and as we know, rich Republican sympathisers can be very litigious. And it’s surely also the largest political betting book of anyone’s. If this goes on for much longer, though, it will become both stupid and dangerous to their reputation.
The problem is lack of clarity in the rules. If they had said this betting market will be settled on the day the college actually meets to sign off on the ECV vote from the individual states then we wouldn't be bothered.
But it doesn't. It talks about "projected".
I read "projected" purely to mean that they will settle based on how the EC members are supposed to vote, rather than how any who switch sides actually vote?
Indeed. The rules specifically rule out "faithless" ECV voters.
I am getting pretty fed up now. It is clear Biden has won. There is no doubt that the networks settled projection is correct. No legal challenge has got out of first base and indeed lawyers are refusing to continue to work on the pointless actions.
Pay up BF.
The problem for them will be the people on the other side of the bet who would argue that they still have a chance of winning, however slim.
Why should BF indulge that view? It's completely detached from reality. If I were to complain that my bet on Man City winning the 2019-20 Premier League shouldn't be settled yet because who knows maybe Liverpool will be retrospectively disqualified for some imagined breach of rules, should I be taken seriously? Of course not.
The practical problem is the sheer volume of bets still going on Trump.
I understand your logic but as long as people are betting on Trump in substantial amounts it suggests that they think there is a material chance he can still win. I am buggered if I can think how and why that might be but the fact remains considerable numbers think he can. They don't have to give a reason and Betfair would be taking a big risk if they proclaimed that there is none.
They are entitled to think that as long as there are such punters around, they are providing the likes of you and me the opportunty to pick up easy money. So what's the problem? If the Trump backers are manifestly wrong then take them to the cleaners. He'll be gone soon enough. No need for them to pre-empt matters.
I think there is a substantial weight of well-financed opinion that believes that somehow the Orange Goon is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. As long as that remains a possibility, no way are Betfair going to settle.
Yes, Under their rules they should have settled on the PA call at which point there was a winner who had "a majority of the projected votes in the electoral college". Having failed to do that, they are now in a no man's land with no clear and obvious future event to hang the settlement on. But they won't care for the reasons you say. And I don't care either. I'm content to wait a little longer for my money.
It’s really simple. They’re waiting for the official election results to be announced in each State. They’re not settling purely because CNN say Biden won.
Is that what they did last time? Or the time before? Or the time before that?
Or did they settle after enough votes had been counted so that there was no mathematical way that any remaining votes yet to be counted could change the rest? (As has been the case for quite a while now)
Thanks for the interesting responses to my question. We don't quite know, specifically on people who are asymptomatic perhaps still acting as carriers, but it does look hopeful.
What you also have to remember is the methodology underlying pfizer vaccine has shown to work even better than anybody hoped. There are already other vaccine candidates based on the same.idea that overcome some of the downsides e.g. Imperial vaccine doesn't need super cooling.
So I think we should be positive that even if gen 1 of the vaccine does only provide 1-2 years protection, I think we will continue to see improvements such that either the length of protection increases and / or administering it becomes simple. We already do millions and millions of flu jabs each year with no fuss.
If there weren't such incredible time pressure, Pfizer would probably have continued working on their vaccine until they found a version that could be distributed more easily before commercialising it.
No, it’s inherent on the particular technology. The RNA degrades over a couple of days at room temperature, and more slowly if just frozen at normal freezer temperatures.
The advantages in terms of rapid development and manufacturing outweigh the disadvantages.
I think it may be the lipid packaging rather than the mRNA itself that requires the ultra-cold temperatures.
To echo Wulfrun Phil further down the thread, the NEC result is very good news for Keir Starmer. This is from the pro-left Labour List:
Corbynites lost three seats (local party and BAME) in the April by-elections, and have now lost a further two in the members’ section. There has been a swing of 10% from Momentum to Labour to Win since the last full NEC elections in 2018, with Momentum securing 37% (-19) this time, Labour to Win 31% (+1) and Open Labour 9% (+5). The left vote was also down by nine percentage points compared to earlier this year. Keir Starmer can be encouraged by the overall trajectory of the party.
I voted for several individual candidates not on slates.
I sort of agree with that sentiment. However, the problem is that when one slate is trying to actively undermine the most electable leader that the party has had in 20 years then in order to stymie them you have to make a pragmatic choice to vote for electable candidates committed to working constructively with Starmer, and that means candidates on the opposite slate. That doesn't mean that I sign up to Akehurst's unreformed Blairism - far from it - but better that than another dose of Corbynism. I voted first preference for Ann Black as the least factional of the candidates supportive of Starmer.
Yep - there were no voting slates before Momentum created one for 2018. Given they did that, and given they clearly decided that in 2020 there job is to attack Starmer at every opportunity, there was no choice but to respond. As a side note, I am not sure that Luke Akehurst would agree on the unreformed Blairism description. He is well to the left of Blair, but a pragmatist.
Just as Trump can't accept that he lost, so Brexiteers can't accept that it's a disaster
Both will face reality in January
Neither will take it well
Inability to accept defeat seems to be par for the course #fouryearsago
Spending the next 4-??? years after a political defeat as a professional retweeter = taking it well.
Apparently.
Will you be saying that when Dominic Cummings is endlessly retweeting how he really won the power struggle in Downing Street 44 years from now?
Yikes. Perhaps his blog will be the carmen perpetuum of the post-Brexit age...
Now I’ve said that, I’ve started worrying about whether there will be enough bandwidth and memory in the world for 44 years’ worth of blog posts by Cummings to retweet...
To echo Wulfrun Phil further down the thread, the NEC result is very good news for Keir Starmer. This is from the pro-left Labour List:
Corbynites lost three seats (local party and BAME) in the April by-elections, and have now lost a further two in the members’ section. There has been a swing of 10% from Momentum to Labour to Win since the last full NEC elections in 2018, with Momentum securing 37% (-19) this time, Labour to Win 31% (+1) and Open Labour 9% (+5). The left vote was also down by nine percentage points compared to earlier this year. Keir Starmer can be encouraged by the overall trajectory of the party.
I voted for several individual candidates not on slates.
I sort of agree with that sentiment. However, the problem is that when one slate is trying to actively undermine the most electable leader that the party has had in 20 years then in order to stymie them you have to make a pragmatic choice to vote for electable candidates committed to working constructively with Starmer, and that means candidates on the opposite slate. That doesn't mean that I sign up to Akehurst's unreformed Blairism - far from it - but better that than another dose of Corbynism. I voted first preference for Ann Black as the least factional of the candidates supportive of Starmer.
Yep - there were no voting slates before Momentum created one for 2018. Given they did that, and given they clearly decided that in 2020 there job is to attack Starmer at every opportunity, there was no choice but to respond. As a side note, I am not sure that Luke Akehurst would agree on the unreformed Blairism description. He is well to the left of Blair, but a pragmatist.
Are you sure re the side note? This sounds familiar - can't quite place it.... wait .....
"More than half of Muslim members of the Labour party do not trust Keir Starmer to tackle Islamophobia, with nearly the same proportion saying they do not have confidence in the party’s complaints process, a new poll has found.
The report by the Labour Muslim Network (LMN) is the latest sign that the party’s new leadership is losing the trust of minority ethnic members and supporters, even as it struggles to recover from an antisemitism crisis that led to a collapse in support from Jewish voters.
The findings echo complaints aired earlier this year by members of the party’s own black and minority ethnic staff network that there is a perception of a “hierarchy of racism” within the party, wherein some forms of racism are regarded as more serious than others.
A survey of 422 Muslim members or supporters of the party found that nearly six in 10 – 59% – did not feel “well represented by the leadership of the Labour party”, and nearly half – 44% – did not believe the party takes the issue of Islamophobia seriously"
I notice he is linking to the mail article quoting the fake 42bn number...it is how fake news becomes real. One inaccurate article, then gets copy and pasted by all the othet media outlets, that then gets tweeted by loads of people on the internet. And now is fact.
The thing is, big dom is actually right. Looking at our covid response, clearly is nowhere near enough people in our civil service and wider goverence who have high quality skills in data science, ml and ai.
But its ok we have got rid of the boogeyman and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us the likes of PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
State betting:- AZ Dem 1.04 GA Dem 1.06 MI Dem 1.04 NV Dem 1.04 NC Rep no offers but you can lay Dem at 900 PA Dem 1.07 WI Dem 1.07
I can just about understand it. There have been some very lumpy bets placed on Trump very recently, and as we know, rich Republican sympathisers can be very litigious. And it’s surely also the largest political betting book of anyone’s. If this goes on for much longer, though, it will become both stupid and dangerous to their reputation.
The problem is lack of clarity in the rules. If they had said this betting market will be settled on the day the college actually meets to sign off on the ECV vote from the individual states then we wouldn't be bothered.
But it doesn't. It talks about "projected".
I read "projected" purely to mean that they will settle based on how the EC members are supposed to vote, rather than how any who switch sides actually vote?
Indeed. The rules specifically rule out "faithless" ECV voters.
I am getting pretty fed up now. It is clear Biden has won. There is no doubt that the networks settled projection is correct. No legal challenge has got out of first base and indeed lawyers are refusing to continue to work on the pointless actions.
Pay up BF.
The problem for them will be the people on the other side of the bet who would argue that they still have a chance of winning, however slim.
Why should BF indulge that view? It's completely detached from reality. If I were to complain that my bet on Man City winning the 2019-20 Premier League shouldn't be settled yet because who knows maybe Liverpool will be retrospectively disqualified for some imagined breach of rules, should I be taken seriously? Of course not.
The practical problem is the sheer volume of bets still going on Trump.
I understand your logic but as long as people are betting on Trump in substantial amounts it suggests that they think there is a material chance he can still win. I am buggered if I can think how and why that might be but the fact remains considerable numbers think he can. They don't have to give a reason and Betfair would be taking a big risk if they proclaimed that there is none.
They are entitled to think that as long as there are such punters around, they are providing the likes of you and me the opportunty to pick up easy money. So what's the problem? If the Trump backers are manifestly wrong then take them to the cleaners. He'll be gone soon enough. No need for them to pre-empt matters.
I think there is a substantial weight of well-financed opinion that believes that somehow the Orange Goon is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. As long as that remains a possibility, no way are Betfair going to settle.
Yes, Under their rules they should have settled on the PA call at which point there was a winner who had "a majority of the projected votes in the electoral college". Having failed to do that, they are now in a no man's land with no clear and obvious future event to hang the settlement on. But they won't care for the reasons you say. And I don't care either. I'm content to wait a little longer for my money.
It’s really simple. They’re waiting for the official election results to be announced in each State. They’re not settling purely because CNN say Biden won.
Is that what they did last time? Or the time before? Or the time before that?
Or did they settle after enough votes had been counted so that there was no mathematical way that any remaining votes yet to be counted could change the rest? (As has been the case for quite a while now)
They settled after enough states had certified the result to give one candidate 270 projected EC votes.
Actual certified results, not partial counts or media ‘calls’.
"More than half of Muslim members of the Labour party do not trust Keir Starmer to tackle Islamophobia, with nearly the same proportion saying they do not have confidence in the party’s complaints process, a new poll has found.
The report by the Labour Muslim Network (LMN) is the latest sign that the party’s new leadership is losing the trust of minority ethnic members and supporters, even as it struggles to recover from an antisemitism crisis that led to a collapse in support from Jewish voters.
The findings echo complaints aired earlier this year by members of the party’s own black and minority ethnic staff network that there is a perception of a “hierarchy of racism” within the party, wherein some forms of racism are regarded as more serious than others.
A survey of 422 Muslim members or supporters of the party found that nearly six in 10 – 59% – did not feel “well represented by the leadership of the Labour party”, and nearly half – 44% – did not believe the party takes the issue of Islamophobia seriously"
It would be terrible, but not completely unlikely, if the Corbynites stood as Independents/as some new party in areas with a high Muslim population, promising to represent them against the Islamaphobic/pro Israel right (which would include Labour). The way Starmer provoked them by suspending Jezza could lead to it - they probably dont see the Tories as much less of an enemy
The thing is, big dom is actually right. Looking at our covid response, clearly is nowhere near enough people in our civil service and wider goverence who have high quality skills in data science, ml and ai.
But its ok we have got rid of the boogie man and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
So why do we keep appointing only Oxbridge humanities ex spads who are friends with the leaders of the big parties? Identifying the problem is easy and there isnt much disagreement that the civil service leadership is too narrow, but Cummings and Johnson have just narrowed it further by appointing their mates.
How can this seriously be seen as him being right?
State betting:- AZ Dem 1.04 GA Dem 1.06 MI Dem 1.04 NV Dem 1.04 NC Rep no offers but you can lay Dem at 900 PA Dem 1.07 WI Dem 1.07
I can just about understand it. There have been some very lumpy bets placed on Trump very recently, and as we know, rich Republican sympathisers can be very litigious. And it’s surely also the largest political betting book of anyone’s. If this goes on for much longer, though, it will become both stupid and dangerous to their reputation.
The problem is lack of clarity in the rules. If they had said this betting market will be settled on the day the college actually meets to sign off on the ECV vote from the individual states then we wouldn't be bothered.
But it doesn't. It talks about "projected".
I read "projected" purely to mean that they will settle based on how the EC members are supposed to vote, rather than how any who switch sides actually vote?
Indeed. The rules specifically rule out "faithless" ECV voters.
I am getting pretty fed up now. It is clear Biden has won. There is no doubt that the networks settled projection is correct. No legal challenge has got out of first base and indeed lawyers are refusing to continue to work on the pointless actions.
Pay up BF.
The problem for them will be the people on the other side of the bet who would argue that they still have a chance of winning, however slim.
Why should BF indulge that view? It's completely detached from reality. If I were to complain that my bet on Man City winning the 2019-20 Premier League shouldn't be settled yet because who knows maybe Liverpool will be retrospectively disqualified for some imagined breach of rules, should I be taken seriously? Of course not.
The practical problem is the sheer volume of bets still going on Trump.
I understand your logic but as long as people are betting on Trump in substantial amounts it suggests that they think there is a material chance he can still win. I am buggered if I can think how and why that might be but the fact remains considerable numbers think he can. They don't have to give a reason and Betfair would be taking a big risk if they proclaimed that there is none.
They are entitled to think that as long as there are such punters around, they are providing the likes of you and me the opportunty to pick up easy money. So what's the problem? If the Trump backers are manifestly wrong then take them to the cleaners. He'll be gone soon enough. No need for them to pre-empt matters.
I think there is a substantial weight of well-financed opinion that believes that somehow the Orange Goon is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. As long as that remains a possibility, no way are Betfair going to settle.
Yes, Under their rules they should have settled on the PA call at which point there was a winner who had "a majority of the projected votes in the electoral college". Having failed to do that, they are now in a no man's land with no clear and obvious future event to hang the settlement on. But they won't care for the reasons you say. And I don't care either. I'm content to wait a little longer for my money.
It’s really simple. They’re waiting for the official election results to be announced in each State. They’re not settling purely because CNN say Biden won.
Is that what they did last time? Or the time before? Or the time before that?
Or did they settle after enough votes had been counted so that there was no mathematical way that any remaining votes yet to be counted could change the rest? (As has been the case for quite a while now)
They settled after enough states had certified the result to give one candidate 270 projected EC votes.
Actual certified results, not partial counts or media ‘calls’.
Are you sure? I think in 2016 the market was settled the day after the election, but then of course Hillary Clinton conceded.
For those wondering about how the Labour NEC elections have changed Starmer's ability to push things through, here's a summary. I'll concentrate on the posts for which ordinary members had an input - the councillors representation was unchanged and the Treasurer post wasn't seriously contested.
At the previous full round of elections in 2018, Momentum had secured a rule change to increase the CLP representatives from 6 to 9 to bolster Corbyn's position, all elected by FPTP. The result: Momentum had 9 CLP, plus 1 youth plus 1 Wales (appointed by Drakeford). Total 11 Momentum, Others nil.
After the Spring 2000 by elections, LTW picked up 2 Constituency seats, largely because the far left couldn't agree on candidates and split their vote. So Momentum had 7 CLP, plus 1 youth plus 1 Wales appointed. Total 9 Momentum, 2 LTW. But with Starmer's election, the leadership and front bench appointees to the NEC also changed. Even so, Starmer could at that point rely on no more than a narrow NEC majority of about 2, which would have fallen to 1 had one of the Momentum CLP reps (Willsman) not been suspended.
That narrow majority was however enough for Starmer to push through a crucial change to the NEC constituency voting from FPTP to STV for November's elections. After the latest round of voting, the results in the above seats are: CLP: Momentum 5, LTW 3, Open Labour 1 (Black). Youth: Momentum 1. Wales: LTW 1 Disabled (new seat): Momentum 1
So compared to the Spring, Momentum are down from a total of 9 to 7, LTW up from 2 to 4 and Open Labour up from 0 to 1 (Black). On key votes, I think that Black will act in a way that is critical but supportive of Starmer's leadership, and she was instrumental in promoting the change in the voting system that diluted Momentum's grip. She'll at least consider things on their merits, rather than from a partisan far left factional line. So Momentum down 2, Non-Momentum up 3.
That's a net shift since the Spring in Starmer's favour of 5, bringing his minimum working majority up from 1 to 6. The switch in Wales is a notable bonus to what might have been expected.
Leonard in the meanwhile has insisted that the Scotland NEC seat should remain reserved for the Scottish leader. In 2021, Leonard seems sure to be replaced, so at that point I would expect Starmer's minimum majority to increase further to 8.
Overall, I'm sure that Starmer will be very pleased at the practical outcome of a much strengthened hand. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
Labour NEC Elections: Further details now emerging on how the first preference votes split for the successful CLP candidates.
1 Luke Akehurst Labour to Win 21,355 2 Laura Pidcock Momentum/Grassroots Voice 15,668 3 Johanna Baxter Labour to Win 9,803 4 Gemma Bolton Momentum/Grassroots Voice 9,596 5 Gurinder Singh Josan Labour to Win 4,624 6 Ann Black Open Labour 7,813 7 Yasmin Dar Momentum/Grassroots Voice 6,322 8 Nadia Jama Momentum/Grassroots Voice 5,707 9 Mish Rahman Momentum/Grassroots Voice 5,879
I don't have full details of the other candidates, but the first two LTW candidates to be eliminated had
M/GV had a much more sophisticated approach, recommending different preference orders for different parts of the country. This maximised the efficiency of their vote. LTW did not do this, so maxed out support among their top three candidates. They will learn from this and so should have a shot at an additional seat next time around. Starmer's increased control of the NEC aside, the big takeaway from the vote is the decline in support for M/GV. As the far-left peels away and goes elsewhere, this trend should only continue. It's been a very good November so far.
Could all be undone if the hard left candidate, Roger McKenzie prevails in this month's election for Unison's General Secretary.
The thing is, big dom is actually right. Looking at our covid response, clearly is nowhere near enough people in our civil service and wider goverence who have high quality skills in data science, ml and ai.
But its ok we have got rid of the boogeyman and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us the likes of PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
True, but you don't solve the problems of "government doesn't use data well" by a big office with big screens.
In late Franco / early democratic Spain, there was a guy called Manuel Fraga. Very clever. "The Spanish state fitted in his brain" they said. Unfortunately, that limited the possibilities of the Spanish state to the contents nor one man's mind.
Dom's dream died for several reasons. One was that it was small like that.
Thanks for the interesting responses to my question. We don't quite know, specifically on people who are asymptomatic perhaps still acting as carriers, but it does look hopeful.
What you also have to remember is the methodology underlying pfizer vaccine has shown to work even better than anybody hoped. There are already other vaccine candidates based on the same.idea that overcome some of the downsides e.g. Imperial vaccine doesn't need super cooling.
So I think we should be positive that even if gen 1 of the vaccine does only provide 1-2 years protection, I think we will continue to see improvements such that either the length of protection increases and / or administering it becomes simple. We already do millions and millions of flu jabs each year with no fuss.
If there weren't such incredible time pressure, Pfizer would probably have continued working on their vaccine until they found a version that could be distributed more easily before commercialising it.
No, it’s inherent on the particular technology. The RNA degrades over a couple of days at room temperature, and more slowly if just frozen at normal freezer temperatures.
The advantages in terms of rapid development and manufacturing outweigh the disadvantages.
I think it may be the lipid packaging rather than the mRNA itself that requires the ultra-cold temperatures.
The thing is, big dom is actually right. Looking at our covid response, clearly is nowhere near enough people in our civil service and wider goverence who have high quality skills in data science, ml and ai.
But its ok we have got rid of the boogie man and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
So why do we keep appointing only Oxbridge humanities ex spads who are friends with the leaders of the big parties? Identifying the problem is easy and there isnt much disagreement that the civil service leadership is too narrow, but Cummings and Johnson have just narrowed it further by appointing their mates.
How can this seriously be seen as him being right?
That’s the whole problem. Identifying a problem and coming up with a workable solution are two very different things.
The first only requires the ability to look at what’s happening and say what *should* be happening. Any fool can do that. Heck, many of them do.
But working out *how* to do it without causing other, far more serious problems along the way is very difficult indeed.
So, speaking as a history graduate with a much better degree than Cummings, he was right to say we need more civil servants with expertise in STEM. But that is altogether different from saying we need ‘misfits and weirdos.’ Science graduates, in my experience, are no more misfits and weirdos than the rest of us. Misfits and weirdos are generally, y’know, people who can’t adapt to large organisations or concentrate on the ordinary, boring skills of day to day management. That is why, indeed, they are called ‘misfits.’
Education is the classic example when it comes to Cummings. What did we need? Reform. Agreed. LEAs were a decaying disaster and a hotbed of corruption, exams were increasingly mechanistic, and funding was confused and uneven.
What did we get? Chaos. No experts were consulted as Cummings didn’t like them, and so most of what he put forward was based in profound ignorance of what could be done to address these issues. In fact, following his reforms civil servants have far more say over the education of children than they ever did, and parents far less. Heck, even OFSTED is led by a civil servant, and not a very good one.
And another thing we should remember is it’s only a few months ago that the head of the civil service was himself sacked to protect Cummings (I’ve always wondered if that was linked to the ‘truth twisters’ tweet) to be replaced by another civil servant with a weak track record.
I notice he is linking to the mail article quoting the fake 42bn number...it is how fake news becomes real. One inaccurate article, then gets copy and pasted by all the othet media outlets, that then gets tweeted by loads of people on the internet. And now is fact.
Like you of all people have a right to complain about copy and pasting bullshit 'news' from twitter all over this site.
State betting:- AZ Dem 1.04 GA Dem 1.06 MI Dem 1.04 NV Dem 1.04 NC Rep no offers but you can lay Dem at 900 PA Dem 1.07 WI Dem 1.07
I can just about understand it. There have been some very lumpy bets placed on Trump very recently, and as we know, rich Republican sympathisers can be very litigious. And it’s surely also the largest political betting book of anyone’s. If this goes on for much longer, though, it will become both stupid and dangerous to their reputation.
The problem is lack of clarity in the rules. If they had said this betting market will be settled on the day the college actually meets to sign off on the ECV vote from the individual states then we wouldn't be bothered.
But it doesn't. It talks about "projected".
I read "projected" purely to mean that they will settle based on how the EC members are supposed to vote, rather than how any who switch sides actually vote?
Indeed. The rules specifically rule out "faithless" ECV voters.
I am getting pretty fed up now. It is clear Biden has won. There is no doubt that the networks settled projection is correct. No legal challenge has got out of first base and indeed lawyers are refusing to continue to work on the pointless actions.
Pay up BF.
The problem for them will be the people on the other side of the bet who would argue that they still have a chance of winning, however slim.
Why should BF indulge that view? It's completely detached from reality. If I were to complain that my bet on Man City winning the 2019-20 Premier League shouldn't be settled yet because who knows maybe Liverpool will be retrospectively disqualified for some imagined breach of rules, should I be taken seriously? Of course not.
The practical problem is the sheer volume of bets still going on Trump.
I understand your logic but as long as people are betting on Trump in substantial amounts it suggests that they think there is a material chance he can still win. I am buggered if I can think how and why that might be but the fact remains considerable numbers think he can. They don't have to give a reason and Betfair would be taking a big risk if they proclaimed that there is none.
They are entitled to think that as long as there are such punters around, they are providing the likes of you and me the opportunty to pick up easy money. So what's the problem? If the Trump backers are manifestly wrong then take them to the cleaners. He'll be gone soon enough. No need for them to pre-empt matters.
I think there is a substantial weight of well-financed opinion that believes that somehow the Orange Goon is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. As long as that remains a possibility, no way are Betfair going to settle.
Yes, Under their rules they should have settled on the PA call at which point there was a winner who had "a majority of the projected votes in the electoral college". Having failed to do that, they are now in a no man's land with no clear and obvious future event to hang the settlement on. But they won't care for the reasons you say. And I don't care either. I'm content to wait a little longer for my money.
It’s really simple. They’re waiting for the official election results to be announced in each State. They’re not settling purely because CNN say Biden won.
Is that what they did last time? Or the time before? Or the time before that?
Or did they settle after enough votes had been counted so that there was no mathematical way that any remaining votes yet to be counted could change the rest? (As has been the case for quite a while now)
They settled after enough states had certified the result to give one candidate 270 projected EC votes.
Actual certified results, not partial counts or media ‘calls’.
Are you sure? I think in 2016 the market was settled the day after the election, but then of course Hillary Clinton conceded.
Am I misremembering? ISTR waiting a fortnight for them to settle one of their Trump markets.
The thing is, big dom is actually right. Looking at our covid response, clearly is nowhere near enough people in our civil service and wider goverence who have high quality skills in data science, ml and ai.
But its ok we have got rid of the boogeyman and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us the likes of PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
True, but you don't solve the problems of "government doesn't use data well" by a big office with big screens.
In late Franco / early democratic Spain, there was a guy called Manuel Fraga. Very clever. "The Spanish state fitted in his brain" they said. Unfortunately, that limited the possibilities of the Spanish state to the contents nor one man's mind.
Dom's dream died for several reasons. One was that it was small like that.
Strikes me that Cummings was a continuation of an ancient and continuing feature of the British State: the well meaning amateur gentleman.
What expertise in Big Data and ML did Cummings have? Read a few books? Seen some TED talks? Yet on that basis the entire civil service was to be ripped up from the roots without so much as Cabinet approval never mind a royal commission, speakers conference or some such.
"More than half of Muslim members of the Labour party do not trust Keir Starmer to tackle Islamophobia, with nearly the same proportion saying they do not have confidence in the party’s complaints process, a new poll has found.
The report by the Labour Muslim Network (LMN) is the latest sign that the party’s new leadership is losing the trust of minority ethnic members and supporters, even as it struggles to recover from an antisemitism crisis that led to a collapse in support from Jewish voters.
The findings echo complaints aired earlier this year by members of the party’s own black and minority ethnic staff network that there is a perception of a “hierarchy of racism” within the party, wherein some forms of racism are regarded as more serious than others.
A survey of 422 Muslim members or supporters of the party found that nearly six in 10 – 59% – did not feel “well represented by the leadership of the Labour party”, and nearly half – 44% – did not believe the party takes the issue of Islamophobia seriously"
It would be terrible, but not completely unlikely, if the Corbynites stood as Independents/as some new party in areas with a high Muslim population, promising to represent them against the Islamaphobic/pro Israel right (which would include Labour). The way Starmer provoked them by suspending Jezza could lead to it - they probably dont see the Tories as much less of an enemy
Does the Current Shadow Cabinet Represent the Muslim Community?
Disagree 76-24 Agree
Although a couple are complaining that the issues they raised a year ago haven't been dealt with, and that was on Jezza's watch
The thing is, big dom is actually right. Looking at our covid response, clearly is nowhere near enough people in our civil service and wider goverence who have high quality skills in data science, ml and ai.
But its ok we have got rid of the boogeyman and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us the likes of PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
Well the latter point is where $20bn of the inaccurately labelled ‘moonshot’ money is to be spent. They’re effectively planning to rebuild over the next four years the public health laboratory infrastructure we dismantled over the last 25, I think. Though the contract is being awarded in such a rush that the money likely won’t be very well spent.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
What a sorry mess Betfair has gotten itself into. I've just resolved now not to make any political bets with them in future.
It’s not a sorry mess at all. They’ll pay out when there’s an actual result. It was exactly the same four years ago.
One point of inconsistency with Betfair, why has it paid out on Biden winning New York State on the exchange ? Mathematically speaking that's far more likely to go to Trump than Michigan.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain*, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
*regional and northern England, unless Dom possesses some Scotch expertise that he has been modestly hiding under a bushel up till now?
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
Northern England yes, and heck it does need it, but surely not 'Northern Britain'? Or am I missing some genius on Mr C's part?
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
I kind of agree with this a bit. It does have the feel of Johnson retreating into his comfort zone, which basically means surrounding himself with people he used to hang out with at Annabel's. Cummings did at least have experience of the North, albeit mostly relating to people living in castles.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
Yep - a pivot to Cameroonian Toryism may not be the vote winner in the Red Wall that Carrie and Allegra imagine. Under Cameron, the Tories never got more than 37% of the vote. For all his manifest failings, Cummings understood that Labour to Tory switchers in 2019 did not do it because they wanted to hug a hoodie or a huskie. The big winner out of all this could end up being Nigel Farage.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain*, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
*regional and northern England, unless Dom possesses some Scotch expertise that he has been modestly hiding under a bushel up till now?
The thing is, big dom is actually right. Looking at our covid response, clearly is nowhere near enough people in our civil service and wider goverence who have high quality skills in data science, ml and ai.
But its ok we have got rid of the boogie man and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
So why do we keep appointing only Oxbridge humanities ex spads who are friends with the leaders of the big parties? Identifying the problem is easy and there isnt much disagreement that the civil service leadership is too narrow, but Cummings and Johnson have just narrowed it further by appointing their mates.
How can this seriously be seen as him being right?
That’s the whole problem. Identifying a problem and coming up with a workable solution are two very different things.
The first only requires the ability to look at what’s happening and say what *should* be happening. Any fool can do that. Heck, many of them do.
But working out *how* to do it without causing other, far more serious problems along the way is very difficult indeed.
So, speaking as a history graduate with a much better degree than Cummings, he was right to say we need more civil servants with expertise in STEM. But that is altogether different from saying we need ‘misfits and weirdos.’ Science graduates, in my experience, are no more misfits and weirdos than the rest of us. Misfits and weirdos are generally, y’know, people who can’t adapt to large organisations or concentrate on the ordinary, boring skills of day to day management. That is why, indeed, they are called ‘misfits.’
Education is the classic example when it comes to Cummings. What did we need? Reform. Agreed. LEAs were a decaying disaster and a hotbed of corruption, exams were increasingly mechanistic, and funding was confused and uneven.
What did we get? Chaos. No experts were consulted as Cummings didn’t like them, and so most of what he put forward was based in profound ignorance of what could be done to address these issues. In fact, following his reforms civil servants have far more say over the education of children than they ever did, and parents far less. Heck, even OFSTED is led by a civil servant, and not a very good one.
And another thing we should remember is it’s only a few months ago that the head of the civil service was himself sacked to protect Cummings (I’ve always wondered if that was linked to the ‘truth twisters’ tweet) to be replaced by another civil servant with a weak track record.
You obviously agreed with Cummings about bypassing LEAs, given you say they were "a decaying disaster and a hotbed of corruption", as you put it. But isn't the inevitable consequence of getting rid of LEAs a centralisation of (educational) power resting with unaccountable civil servants, which you also then bemoan? Unless you give all the power to (unaccountable) academy chains that aren't answerable to Whitehall, or anybody else.
Would you consider the possibility that reforming/professionalising LEAs might have resulted in a more accountable (to the voters), democratic system? My LEA, for what it's worth, was always rather good - they weren't all useless.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain*, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
*regional and northern England, unless Dom possesses some Scotch expertise that he has been modestly hiding under a bushel up till now?
Yes, that's a fair point - not much understanding of Scotland - although in terms of being isolated and overlooked by Westminster I'd argue there are strong similarities with just different political consequences.
For those wondering about how the Labour NEC elections have changed Starmer's ability to push things through, here's a summary. I'll concentrate on the posts for which ordinary members had an input - the councillors representation was unchanged and the Treasurer post wasn't seriously contested.
At the previous full round of elections in 2018, Momentum had secured a rule change to increase the CLP representatives from 6 to 9 to bolster Corbyn's position, all elected by FPTP. The result: Momentum had 9 CLP, plus 1 youth plus 1 Wales (appointed by Drakeford). Total 11 Momentum, Others nil.
After the Spring 2000 by elections, LTW picked up 2 Constituency seats, largely because the far left couldn't agree on candidates and split their vote. So Momentum had 7 CLP, plus 1 youth plus 1 Wales appointed. Total 9 Momentum, 2 LTW. But with Starmer's election, the leadership and front bench appointees to the NEC also changed. Even so, Starmer could at that point rely on no more than a narrow NEC majority of about 2, which would have fallen to 1 had one of the Momentum CLP reps (Willsman) not been suspended.
That narrow majority was however enough for Starmer to push through a crucial change to the NEC constituency voting from FPTP to STV for November's elections. After the latest round of voting, the results in the above seats are: CLP: Momentum 5, LTW 3, Open Labour 1 (Black). Youth: Momentum 1. Wales: LTW 1 Disabled (new seat): Momentum 1
So compared to the Spring, Momentum are down from a total of 9 to 7, LTW up from 2 to 4 and Open Labour up from 0 to 1 (Black). On key votes, I think that Black will act in a way that is critical but supportive of Starmer's leadership, and she was instrumental in promoting the change in the voting system that diluted Momentum's grip. She'll at least consider things on their merits, rather than from a partisan far left factional line. So Momentum down 2, Non-Momentum up 3.
That's a net shift since the Spring in Starmer's favour of 5, bringing his minimum working majority up from 1 to 6. The switch in Wales is a notable bonus to what might have been expected.
Leonard in the meanwhile has insisted that the Scotland NEC seat should remain reserved for the Scottish leader. In 2021, Leonard seems sure to be replaced, so at that point I would expect Starmer's minimum majority to increase further to 8.
Overall, I'm sure that Starmer will be very pleased at the practical outcome of a much strengthened hand. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
Labour NEC Elections: Further details now emerging on how the first preference votes split for the successful CLP candidates.
1 Luke Akehurst Labour to Win 21,355 2 Laura Pidcock Momentum/Grassroots Voice 15,668 3 Johanna Baxter Labour to Win 9,803 4 Gemma Bolton Momentum/Grassroots Voice 9,596 5 Gurinder Singh Josan Labour to Win 4,624 6 Ann Black Open Labour 7,813 7 Yasmin Dar Momentum/Grassroots Voice 6,322 8 Nadia Jama Momentum/Grassroots Voice 5,707 9 Mish Rahman Momentum/Grassroots Voice 5,879
I don't have full details of the other candidates, but the first two LTW candidates to be eliminated had
M/GV had a much more sophisticated approach, recommending different preference orders for different parts of the country. This maximised the efficiency of their vote. LTW did not do this, so maxed out support among their top three candidates. They will learn from this and so should have a shot at an additional seat next time around. Starmer's increased control of the NEC aside, the big takeaway from the vote is the decline in support for M/GV. As the far-left peels away and goes elsewhere, this trend should only continue. It's been a very good November so far.
Could all be undone if the hard left candidate, Roger McKenzie prevails in this month's election for Unison's General Secretary.
The moderates are 23 to 16 on the NEC, so their majority can survive both Unison and the GMB leaderships falling into the hands of the far-left.
The thing is, big dom is actually right. Looking at our covid response, clearly is nowhere near enough people in our civil service and wider goverence who have high quality skills in data science, ml and ai.
But its ok we have got rid of the boogie man and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
So why do we keep appointing only Oxbridge humanities ex spads who are friends with the leaders of the big parties? Identifying the problem is easy and there isnt much disagreement that the civil service leadership is too narrow, but Cummings and Johnson have just narrowed it further by appointing their mates.
How can this seriously be seen as him being right?
That’s the whole problem. Identifying a problem and coming up with a workable solution are two very different things.
The first only requires the ability to look at what’s happening and say what *should* be happening. Any fool can do that. Heck, many of them do.
But working out *how* to do it without causing other, far more serious problems along the way is very difficult indeed.
So, speaking as a history graduate with a much better degree than Cummings, he was right to say we need more civil servants with expertise in STEM. But that is altogether different from saying we need ‘misfits and weirdos.’ Science graduates, in my experience, are no more misfits and weirdos than the rest of us. Misfits and weirdos are generally, y’know, people who can’t adapt to large organisations or concentrate on the ordinary, boring skills of day to day management. That is why, indeed, they are called ‘misfits.’
Education is the classic example when it comes to Cummings. What did we need? Reform. Agreed. LEAs were a decaying disaster and a hotbed of corruption, exams were increasingly mechanistic, and funding was confused and uneven.
What did we get? Chaos. No experts were consulted as Cummings didn’t like them, and so most of what he put forward was based in profound ignorance of what could be done to address these issues. In fact, following his reforms civil servants have far more say over the education of children than they ever did, and parents far less. Heck, even OFSTED is led by a civil servant, and not a very good one.
And another thing we should remember is it’s only a few months ago that the head of the civil service was himself sacked to protect Cummings (I’ve always wondered if that was linked to the ‘truth twisters’ tweet) to be replaced by another civil servant with a weak track record.
You obviously agreed with Cummings about bypassing LEAs, given you say they were "a decaying disaster and a hotbed of corruption", as you put it. But isn't the inevitable consequence of getting rid of LEAs a centralisation of (educational) power resting with unaccountable civil servants, which you also then bemoan? Unless you give all the power to (unaccountable) academy chains that aren't answerable to Whitehall, or anybody else.
Would you consider the possibility that reforming/professionalising LEAs might have resulted in a more accountable (to the voters), democratic system? My LEA, for what it's worth, was always rather good - they weren't all useless.
What about giving the authority to parents?
Which was the stated aim of the reforms...
Edit - it is only fair to say at this juncture that having worked in or been educated under just two LEAs - Gloucestershire and Bristol - my perspective may be somewhat warped by the fact that most of their members should actually have been doing jail time.
But I did notice how every attempt to reform them (e.g. under Blair) made them worse.
£654,000 is sitting on BF waiting to picked up at 1.07 for Biden to be next president.
Who is prepared to lay this at such quantity?
It's only costing the layer(s) a potential £45K but even so.
The layers must either think it is a value lay (ie greater than 7% chance that Trump will remain President) or it is an emotional insurance lay (some comfort if Trump does win). Or just possible that someone is manipulating the market to support the Trump narrative at relatively low cost.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain*, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
*regional and northern England, unless Dom possesses some Scotch expertise that he has been modestly hiding under a bushel up till now?
Yes, that's a fair point - not much understanding of Scotland - although in terms of being isolated and overlooked by Westminster I'd argue there are strong similarities with just different political consequences.
It would be very interesting to see what happens if Mr Gove and Mr C are sent to sort out Scotland when the next indyref is called.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain*, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
*regional and northern England, unless Dom possesses some Scotch expertise that he has been modestly hiding under a bushel up till now?
Yes, that's a fair point - not much understanding of Scotland - although in terms of being isolated and overlooked by Westminster I'd argue there are strong similarities with just different political consequences.
True.
I do wonder what Cummings actually feels about the overlooked and voiceless. The one thing I'd say he has in common with Johnson is that his sincere motivations and principles are somewhat obscured, to the point of me wondering if there are any.
£654,000 is sitting on BF waiting to picked up at 1.07 for Biden to be next president.
Who is prepared to lay this at such quantity?
It's only costing the layer(s) a potential £45K but even so.
The layers must either think it is a value lay (ie greater than 7% chance that Trump will remain President) or it is an emotional insurance lay (some comfort if Trump does win). Or just possible that someone is manipulating the market to support the Trump narrative at relatively low cost.
Some of it will be people releasing their winnings. Stupid to lay an already-winner in its own terms, but as someone pointed out the other day, opportunity costs factor in too.
I notice he is linking to the mail article quoting the fake 42bn number...it is how fake news becomes real. One inaccurate article, then gets copy and pasted by all the othet media outlets, that then gets tweeted by loads of people on the internet. And now is fact.
Like you of all people have a right to complain about copy and pasting bullshit 'news' from twitter all over this site.
£654,000 is sitting on BF waiting to picked up at 1.07 for Biden to be next president.
Who is prepared to lay this at such quantity?
It's only costing the layer(s) a potential £45K but even so.
The layers must either think it is a value lay (ie greater than 7% chance that Trump will remain President) or it is an emotional insurance lay (some comfort if Trump does win). Or just possible that someone is manipulating the market to support the Trump narrative at relatively low cost.
I`m not convinced by any of those explanations. You would be insane to be offering 1.07 on a Biden win. Why manipulate a UK market? Emotional insurance: not in that quantity surely.
Could it be bookies offsetting liabilities? Or, could there be a health concern over Biden. (If Biden were to die before inauguration, he would still be the winner on the BF market though.)
I see we are still at the "Remainers could have rescued us from our own stupidity but failed. The bastards" stage of Brexiteers self awareness journey...
That's not the case, and it would have been better to remain after all, but the softer remainers tactically messed up in their excitement last summer. They went for the big prize of reversal rather than mitigation and it blew up in their face.
It doesn't make it their fault, but it was a massive misstep which has negative consequences and may well prove a pivotal historical moment. The Brexiteers were worried parliament has seizing control from the government. Then...nothing.
So no deal Brexit is the fault of former Remainers?
That is a similar argument to the one that implies the young woman got what was coming to her because she wore a short skirt.
I don’t think that’s what @kle4 is saying. I’m not quite sure what he means by a ‘soft Brexit’ that was apparently there for the taking, as anything other than May’s deal simply wasn’t. But I agree (and agreed at the time), that May’s deal was greatly preferable to the ongoing shitshow.
Supporters of the government certainly didn’t, and it’s utterly dishonest of them to pretend or imply that somehow the full responsibility for what they voted for - both Brexit and this government - isn’t theirs.
There are two questions, which it's important not to mix up- whether by accident or design,
First- could those opposed to a hard Brexit have stopped it in the 2017-19 Parliament? Perhaps they could, but it would have required TM the then PM to get her plan through with opposition votes against a large chunk of her own party. Maybe she could have got away with that, but it's not clear why the ERG wouldn't have deposed her faster than you could say "vassal state".
Second- if hard-to-no-deal Brexit happens, who gets the credit / blame for what happens next? Easy. The people who argued, campaigned, cajoled, backstabbed and used all the political arts to get to this situation. The people in charge when it happens. Claiming that "we wanted to do this but it's their fault for not stopping us" is absurd, as is "we didn't really want to do this, but we were forced into it by the people we outwitted".
Hard Brexiteers- you won. Get over it.
First the ERG tried to oust May remember before the first Meaningful Vote. They lost.
Second you're right. But Hard Brexiteers don't think Hard Brexit is going to be a disaster, they don't think it's going to be a fault.
If Hard Brexit works well enough as Hard Brexiteers expected and it becomes a new reality and we stay out of the Single Market forever as a result and the Leavers are happy but Remainers lose everything they wanted to win then whose fault is it the Remainers lost? That's a different question.
What a weird thing to say. If Hard Brexit results in a good outcome for Britain then why would "Remainers" complain? That's good for us. If such a thing comes to pass, then we clearly were very wrong.
Because that's politics.
Thatcherism resulted in a good result for the country. Did that stop socialists from complaining?
That is a view - but many saw her as downright evil. I have heard several label her as 'the Anti-Christ'.There was a reason why 'Ding Dong the Witch is dead' soared in the chart following news of her demise.
£654,000 is sitting on BF waiting to picked up at 1.07 for Biden to be next president.
Who is prepared to lay this at such quantity?
It's only costing the layer(s) a potential £45K but even so.
The layers must either think it is a value lay (ie greater than 7% chance that Trump will remain President) or it is an emotional insurance lay (some comfort if Trump does win). Or just possible that someone is manipulating the market to support the Trump narrative at relatively low cost.
Some of it will be people releasing their winnings. Stupid to lay an already-winner in its own terms, but as someone pointed out the other day, opportunity costs factor in too.
Mr. Doethur, I can't remember his odds but a lot of them were on 51. I think he was that or longer.
So it'd would've been great, but not retirement money.
However, I do have a little on Perez to be best of the rest so this grid is handy for that. Less helpful for my McLaren bet (similar lines). However, I also had a £1 free bet pre-season on Racing Point being top 3. Essentially, I want Renault to fail
Looks like Trump Jr might have a crack at the 2022 NY governor's race
Trump said : New York Marxist Cuomo has been very mean to me and my family over the last year. New York deserves better. Maybe Jr. will run in 2022, he has my full support. #maga2022
£654,000 is sitting on BF waiting to picked up at 1.07 for Biden to be next president.
Who is prepared to lay this at such quantity?
It's only costing the layer(s) a potential £45K but even so.
The layers must either think it is a value lay (ie greater than 7% chance that Trump will remain President) or it is an emotional insurance lay (some comfort if Trump does win). Or just possible that someone is manipulating the market to support the Trump narrative at relatively low cost.
I`m not convinced by any of those explanations. You would be insane to be offering 1.07 on a Biden win. Why manipulate a UK market? Emotional insurance: not in that quantity surely.
Could it be bookies offsetting liabilities? Or, could there be a health concern over Biden. (If Biden were to die before inauguration, he would still be the winner on the BF market though.)
Remember 70% of Republicans think he has won, or at least did a few days ago (post results). There are some of those, they are getting great odds in their minds.
Others might think it a 1% chance but could reduce their equity portfolios by double digits percentages and more if the USA turned into a perma Trump kingdom. They might consider it reasonable insurance to invest 0.1% of their portfolio as a hedge, that could turn into significant amounts in total.
Others will be traders with expected profits that they can cash in, and make more money (or have more fun) elsewhere on the exchange.
It is not one big client holding up the odds, but hundreds or thousands of small clients, each with their own set of reasons.
I see we are still at the "Remainers could have rescued us from our own stupidity but failed. The bastards" stage of Brexiteers self awareness journey...
That's not the case, and it would have been better to remain after all, but the softer remainers tactically messed up in their excitement last summer. They went for the big prize of reversal rather than mitigation and it blew up in their face.
It doesn't make it their fault, but it was a massive misstep which has negative consequences and may well prove a pivotal historical moment. The Brexiteers were worried parliament has seizing control from the government. Then...nothing.
So no deal Brexit is the fault of former Remainers?
That is a similar argument to the one that implies the young woman got what was coming to her because she wore a short skirt.
I don’t think that’s what @kle4 is saying. I’m not quite sure what he means by a ‘soft Brexit’ that was apparently there for the taking, as anything other than May’s deal simply wasn’t. But I agree (and agreed at the time), that May’s deal was greatly preferable to the ongoing shitshow.
Supporters of the government certainly didn’t, and it’s utterly dishonest of them to pretend or imply that somehow the full responsibility for what they voted for - both Brexit and this government - isn’t theirs.
There are two questions, which it's important not to mix up- whether by accident or design,
First- could those opposed to a hard Brexit have stopped it in the 2017-19 Parliament? Perhaps they could, but it would have required TM the then PM to get her plan through with opposition votes against a large chunk of her own party. Maybe she could have got away with that, but it's not clear why the ERG wouldn't have deposed her faster than you could say "vassal state".
Second- if hard-to-no-deal Brexit happens, who gets the credit / blame for what happens next? Easy. The people who argued, campaigned, cajoled, backstabbed and used all the political arts to get to this situation. The people in charge when it happens. Claiming that "we wanted to do this but it's their fault for not stopping us" is absurd, as is "we didn't really want to do this, but we were forced into it by the people we outwitted".
Hard Brexiteers- you won. Get over it.
First the ERG tried to oust May remember before the first Meaningful Vote. They lost.
Second you're right. But Hard Brexiteers don't think Hard Brexit is going to be a disaster, they don't think it's going to be a fault.
If Hard Brexit works well enough as Hard Brexiteers expected and it becomes a new reality and we stay out of the Single Market forever as a result and the Leavers are happy but Remainers lose everything they wanted to win then whose fault is it the Remainers lost? That's a different question.
What a weird thing to say. If Hard Brexit results in a good outcome for Britain then why would "Remainers" complain? That's good for us. If such a thing comes to pass, then we clearly were very wrong.
Because that's politics.
Thatcherism resulted in a good result for the country. Did that stop socialists from complaining?
That is a view - but many saw her as downright evil. I have heard several label her as 'the Anti-Christ'.There was a reason why 'Ding Dong the Witch is dead' soared in the chart following news of her demise.
Precisely. Politics.
If the greatest PM since Churchill can be considered evil then I'm not holding much faith that Remainers are suddenly all going to admit that Brexit was a good idea, even if it turns out better than they expected.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain*, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
*regional and northern England, unless Dom possesses some Scotch expertise that he has been modestly hiding under a bushel up till now?
Yes, that's a fair point - not much understanding of Scotland - although in terms of being isolated and overlooked by Westminster I'd argue there are strong similarities with just different political consequences.
It would be very interesting to see what happens if Mr Gove and Mr C are sent to sort out Scotland when the next indyref is called.
We know Boris is an empty vessel, other than his ambition. So he gets led by those he delegates his strategic thinking to and follows them accordingly.
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain*, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
*regional and northern England, unless Dom possesses some Scotch expertise that he has been modestly hiding under a bushel up till now?
Yes, that's a fair point - not much understanding of Scotland - although in terms of being isolated and overlooked by Westminster I'd argue there are strong similarities with just different political consequences.
It would be very interesting to see what happens if Mr Gove and Mr C are sent to sort out Scotland when the next indyref is called.
Comments
The RNA degrades over a couple of days at room temperature, and more slowly if just frozen at normal freezer temperatures.
The advantages in terms of rapid development and manufacturing outweigh the disadvantages.
There's a dropdown to select different areas for the data.
Michael Masi is the race director, and of course he’s stopped the cars half way through Q1 as it’s “too wet”.
I despair.
I voted for several individual candidates not on slates.
Trying to save "My Markets" is like trying to steer a shopping trolley from the 80s. Even little things like consistency of players names (Trent Alexander-Arnold is listed differently every match) is no longer happening. What comes of a monopoly maybe
Perhaps people voted Akehurst because they wanted to elect him, and didn't give a stuff for the rest of the slate?
Then of course we have the vote redistribution nonsense of the 'excess votes'.
In fact, I heard on the radio, I think, an aid worker saying it proved possible to effectively distribute the Ebola vaccine in the poorer parts of West Africa, which had the same requirements.
Or the time before?
Or the time before that?
Or did they settle after enough votes had been counted so that there was no mathematical way that any remaining votes yet to be counted could change the rest?
(As has been the case for quite a while now)
Reportedly, Pfizer is hoping to develop a powder version of the vaccine which won't be subject to the same constraints:
https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/amid-cold-chain-blues-pfizer-looks-to-powder-vaccine-formula-2021-report
https://twitter.com/lukeakehurst/status/1327496583919902720
Nephew now has it, caught from his parents (he's been living back at home since March while WFH). Relatively mild symptoms so far.
"More than half of Muslim members of the Labour party do not trust Keir Starmer to tackle Islamophobia, with nearly the same proportion saying they do not have confidence in the party’s complaints process, a new poll has found.
The report by the Labour Muslim Network (LMN) is the latest sign that the party’s new leadership is losing the trust of minority ethnic members and supporters, even as it struggles to recover from an antisemitism crisis that led to a collapse in support from Jewish voters.
The findings echo complaints aired earlier this year by members of the party’s own black and minority ethnic staff network that there is a perception of a “hierarchy of racism” within the party, wherein some forms of racism are regarded as more serious than others.
A survey of 422 Muslim members or supporters of the party found that nearly six in 10 – 59% – did not feel “well represented by the leadership of the Labour party”, and nearly half – 44% – did not believe the party takes the issue of Islamophobia seriously"
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/14/over-half-muslim-labour-members-do-not-trust-party-to-tackle-islamophobia
But its ok we have got rid of the boogeyman and we can just go back to our old ways....that gave us the likes of PHE that couldn't even organize 20k covid tests a day.
Actual certified results, not partial counts or media ‘calls’.
How can this seriously be seen as him being right?
In late Franco / early democratic Spain, there was a guy called Manuel Fraga. Very clever. "The Spanish state fitted in his brain" they said.
Unfortunately, that limited the possibilities of the Spanish state to the contents nor one man's mind.
Dom's dream died for several reasons. One was that it was small like that.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/goodbye-big-boys-club-did-women-no-favours/
The first only requires the ability to look at what’s happening and say what *should* be happening. Any fool can do that. Heck, many of them do.
But working out *how* to do it without causing other, far more serious problems along the way is very difficult indeed.
So, speaking as a history graduate with a much better degree than Cummings, he was right to say we need more civil servants with expertise in STEM. But that is altogether different from saying we need ‘misfits and weirdos.’ Science graduates, in my experience, are no more misfits and weirdos than the rest of us. Misfits and weirdos are generally, y’know, people who can’t adapt to large organisations or concentrate on the ordinary, boring skills of day to day management. That is why, indeed, they are called ‘misfits.’
Education is the classic example when it comes to Cummings. What did we need? Reform. Agreed. LEAs were a decaying disaster and a hotbed of corruption, exams were increasingly mechanistic, and funding was confused and uneven.
What did we get? Chaos. No experts were consulted as Cummings didn’t like them, and so most of what he put forward was based in profound ignorance of what could be done to address these issues. In fact, following his reforms civil servants have far more say over the education of children than they ever did, and parents far less. Heck, even OFSTED is led by a civil servant, and not a very good one.
And another thing we should remember is it’s only a few months ago that the head of the civil service was himself sacked to protect Cummings (I’ve always wondered if that was linked to the ‘truth twisters’ tweet) to be replaced by another civil servant with a weak track record.
*grabs tinfoil hat and ducks*
What expertise in Big Data and ML did Cummings have? Read a few books? Seen some TED talks? Yet on that basis the entire civil service was to be ripped up from the roots without so much as Cabinet approval never mind a royal commission, speakers conference or some such.
Disagree 76-24 Agree
Although a couple are complaining that the issues they raised a year ago haven't been dealt with, and that was on Jezza's watch
The full report can be seen here
https://www.labourmuslims.org/press
Though the contract is being awarded in such a rush that the money likely won’t be very well spent.
http://saintlaika.com/2020/11/09/welcome-home-america/
Cummings for all his faults understood regional and northern Britain, and all their concerns, which is why he was so successful in so many referendums and campaigns.
Replacing him with Carrie Symonds and Allegra Stratton, both born in and products of south-west London and attuned accordingly, does not fill me with much hope.
It might be the case that the only thing worse than Boris being in hock to Cummings is Boris being in hock to someone else.
Be careful what you wish for.
Mathematically speaking that's far more likely to go to Trump than Michigan.
https://twitter.com/SteveLawrence_/status/1327260243504533506?s=20
Who is prepared to lay this at such quantity?
https://twitter.com/johnredwood/status/1327497918597763074
https://twitter.com/ThinkEmily/status/1327554253737570306?s=20
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=hootsuite&utm_content=sme&utm_campaign=usage
Would you consider the possibility that reforming/professionalising LEAs might have resulted in a more accountable (to the voters), democratic system? My LEA, for what it's worth, was always rather good - they weren't all useless.
Which was the stated aim of the reforms...
Edit - it is only fair to say at this juncture that having worked in or been educated under just two LEAs - Gloucestershire and Bristol - my perspective may be somewhat warped by the fact that most of their members should actually have been doing jail time.
But I did notice how every attempt to reform them (e.g. under Blair) made them worse.
The layers must either think it is a value lay (ie greater than 7% chance that Trump will remain President) or it is an emotional insurance lay (some comfort if Trump does win). Or just possible that someone is manipulating the market to support the Trump narrative at relatively low cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toL1tXrLA1c
But the way they find it will be difficult to comprehend, because we all know the peace of cod passeth all understanding.
I do wonder what Cummings actually feels about the overlooked and voiceless. The one thing I'd say he has in common with Johnson is that his sincere motivations and principles are somewhat obscured, to the point of me wondering if there are any.
Could it be bookies offsetting liabilities? Or, could there be a health concern over Biden. (If Biden were to die before inauguration, he would still be the winner on the BF market though.)
So it'd would've been great, but not retirement money.
However, I do have a little on Perez to be best of the rest so this grid is handy for that. Less helpful for my McLaren bet (similar lines). However, I also had a £1 free bet pre-season on Racing Point being top 3. Essentially, I want Renault to fail
Looks like Trump Jr might have a crack at the 2022 NY governor's race
Trump said : New York Marxist Cuomo has been very mean to me and my family over the last year. New York deserves better. Maybe Jr. will run in 2022, he has my full support. #maga2022
Others might think it a 1% chance but could reduce their equity portfolios by double digits percentages and more if the USA turned into a perma Trump kingdom. They might consider it reasonable insurance to invest 0.1% of their portfolio as a hedge, that could turn into significant amounts in total.
Others will be traders with expected profits that they can cash in, and make more money (or have more fun) elsewhere on the exchange.
It is not one big client holding up the odds, but hundreds or thousands of small clients, each with their own set of reasons.
If the greatest PM since Churchill can be considered evil then I'm not holding much faith that Remainers are suddenly all going to admit that Brexit was a good idea, even if it turns out better than they expected.