Pricing of a bet – Part 2 – The bet – politicalbetting.com
Pricing of a bet – Part 2 – The bet – politicalbetting.com
This is the second thread on the theory behind the recently established Smarkets market on the prospects of a Conservative lead by end of January (covered here).
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No. Not like anything I can think of just now.
Betting on a Tory lead this month is a fool’s bet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jFesZ-jxRw
1. The US / EU have essentially done a backroom deal with Putin that says "fine, you can intervene in Kazakhstan but the quid pro quo is no Ukraine movements (for now)"
OR
2. Putin knows Biden / the EU is so spineless that he can send his troops into Kazakhstan without serious implications, in which case he is probably going to be emboldened to do something in the Ukraine.
I hope it's the first, I fear it's the second.
We are beginning to see what a world Not run by the West will look like. Not pretty; quite sad
The world will miss its just and boyish master
https://twitter.com/DuncanWeldon/status/1479041428055597056
Tory peer Michelle Mone secretly involved in PPE firm she referred to government
Exclusive: Leaked files suggest Mone and her husband were involved in business given £200m contracts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/06/tory-peer-michelle-mone-involved-ppe-medpro-government-contracts
BritNat Mone was “incandescent with rage”. I’ll bet she was.
And what would you suggest "the West" does? The government of Kazakhstan asked for help for help from the Russians. And they gave it.
Now, it's a brutal repressionary regime in Kazakhstan, that you would not wish to be a citizen of. It's also a Russian client state (like most of the other poor countries on Russia's southern border). But ultimately, there's nothing the West can do about it.
https://twitter.com/carldinnen/status/1479174644036943874
"In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists."
NY Times
One would be an invasion of a hostile power over 120 miles of Ocean guarded by a well equipped air force and navy.
The other is a regime inviting Russian troops in.
What are we supposed to re Kazakhstan? We can say "please don't murder your citizens". But the fact is that the regimes in the Caucuses have pretty much all got (Russian supported) despots who behave pretty poorly. And they can do so, because the Russians come running with tanks and soldiers whenever necessary.
This is a regime that's brutally repressed its citizens for decades, and what do we do? We invite them to the White House for pictures with the President.
We’re toothless and fatigued. In decline.
I've also never thought Putin had any real interest in taking over Ukraine, though I agree there's more evidence that he might. He'd like to destabilise and unnerve it and get some Western concessions - could be wrong, but I doubt if it's more than that.
"[Christian] Movement leaders now appear to be working to prime the base for the next attempt to subvert the electoral process."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/opinion/jan-6-christian-nationalism.html
Would we really go to war with Xi to stop him taking Taiwan? I doubt it. No more than we would go to war with Putin over Ukraine
As for “Xi shows no real sign of remotely contemplating invasion” that’s remarkably naive. The Taiwanese certainly don’t agree with you
‘Taiwan fears Chinese invasion by 2025’
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-could-invade-by-2025-taiwan-fears-3wwfb7mv8
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/desk-russie-putin-plan-for-europe-and-ukraine/
These are tough times, but to call it a deliberate act is too strong.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/06/boris-johnson-accused-corruption-great-exhibition-text-flat-refurb
Never mind thatbdoing so would blow up the world economy (via shattering compiter chip supplies) that China is currently entirely dependent on. If ASML ever sell top end machinery to China then otnos a different matter but everything goes boom if China invades Taiwan.
If he does, he probably thinks it only applies to the little people in junior ranks.
"29 November 2020, 12.59pm
Hi David
I am afraid parts of our flat are still a bit of a tip and am keen to allow Lulu Lytle to get on with it. Can I possibly ask her to get in touch with you for approvals ?
Many thanks and all best
Boris "
...with the idea that Boris claims not to have known that Brownlow was funding renovations to the No 11 residence?
– Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean.
If it wasn’t deliberate, it was an act of gross stupidity - I don’t know which is worse.
And that will embolden Putin.
I wonder if China might choose to strangle Taiwan into submission. Refuse to trade with countries that feed Taiwan. Try and shut down the internet. Same way the USSR tried to strangle West Berlin
They took Hong Kong without a bullet being fired…
And the point so often made about the EU's biggest two mistakes could stop being merely comic. Mistake one: to be in denial about the EU's state like ambitions. Mistake two: to think that in 'ever closer union' having a common currency and central bank, to say nothing about harmonising standards for My Little Pony stickers, was way ahead of all EU members being in the same defence alliance and having proper defence forces.
If only the medical elite of a major G20 nation at the vanguard of the outbreak had told us this at the time.
Similarly an invasion of Ukraine would presumably bring massive sanctions down on Russia (exclusion from Swift has been mentioned), which would not make life very pleasant in the Kremlin.
Nobody would weep if the UK government took control of Chelsea FC, sold off all the players and ground and closed Chelsea FC down.
The other way I would look at this is to say, if you are Putin or Xi, why would you NOT invade now? I would argue there might not be a better time - the US is run by a weak President (and, let's be honest, who would bet their mortgage on saying that the Chinese / Russians also don't have something on Hunter Biden - an interesting parallel with Hitler's coming to power in 1933), the EU is weak, America's allies are disheartened by its lack of spine and there are mid-terms coming up where the President's party faces electoral disaster if things continue. If I was Putin or Xi, I would be seriously tempted to call Biden's bluff.
Thanks to @Fishing for making my efforts to try to work out the winner of the 2.30 at Lingfield seem positively amateurish.
There's a thing about "value" in all this but as any horse racing punter will tell you, that one is in the eye of the beholder. Back when I punted seriously, I would create my own tissue prices for some races and compare with how the bookies priced up a race.
On other matters, Kazakhstan becomes another thing in the Putin in-tray so we may see the rhetoric on the Ukraine toned down a little. "Helping out" in Almaty, as in Minsk, is a low-risk strategy for Putin in terms of any Russian casualties or any serious destabilisation of the ruling group in each country. If anything, it binds Kazakhstan closer to Russia.
Ukraine is a very different pot of beluga by comparison - there are too many risks and not enough rewards for anything to really happen. It helps to keep the pot simmering and the West and Kiev on edge but that's all it is.
Elsewhere, a single Council by-election tonight at Gedling - a Labour seat but with Conservative, Labour, LD, Green and No Description parties running. I've always wondered about voting No Description - I presume they can have whatever policy you want.
Quick look at the latest Infratest poll from Germany - very little change since last September's election. The SPD-FDP-Green coalition still enjoys majority support at 53% (+1) with the Union still well behind on 23% (-1).
Beyond that, there are sound reasons to believe that future Covid variants will be more transmissible and less virulent than Omicron - because the former seems to be contingent upon the latter. It looks encouragingly as if the pandemic is almost over, thank goodness.
OT
Anyone seen this vid from Dr John Campbell about Omicron from mice?
Very interesting
Who do you reckon blinks first?
(Edit: I've no idea what's causing that new line.)
I think the advice to prioritise was fine. Not great for hospitality but you cannot do everything.
With power must come responsibility. Labour should have this in their manifesto. A reckoning for ALL when this horror eventually ends
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication#U.S._government_involvement
However... as we captured Hong Kong during the first Opium War, and ceded to the UK at the Treaty of Nanking, the Chinese never really - shall we say... - let it go. They regard it as something of theirs they were forced at gunpoint to give up.
Unfortunately (for the UK), when it came to the talks, the Chinese government informed Mrs Thatcher that (a) they would not be releasing the New Territories, and (b) that the existing water supply arrangement would not be renewed. So, would the UK like to discuss the peaceful handover of Hong Kong?
There is no Hong Kong without a supply of fresh water, so the UK didn't have a whole bunch of choice.
This makes any kind of bloody conflict a little difficult, because the Taiwanese aren't supposed to be fighting, they're supposed to be throwing flowers.
Xi would need to strangle Taiwan via a blockade. Which is possible, but far from easy.
...On the other hand it's an economic basket case living on borrowed time.
Which is closest to the truth, I wonder?
"Salami tactics?"
"Slice by slice."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4
Wonder what the Spaniards would ever be tempted to do the same with Gibraltar?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/06/kelly-ernby-california-prosecutor-dies-covid
Ot would have to be the threat of a blockade rather than am actual blockade as an actual blockade crashes China.
And then let's say the US does this, does Putin stick or twist? Withdraw from Ukraine or invade the Baltics (with help from Belarus) and dare the US and its allies to take the ultimate step?
How many US / EU citizens would be prepared to perish for the Balts?
(PS there is a reason why Russia kept relatively quiet when Trump was in office and it wasn't because he was a Russian spy, it's because he was considered nuts enough to possibly go OTT)
Now, could they, if they committed, invade Taiwan?
Yes, absolutely. But it wouldn't be an "out the blue" thing, because this would be an amphibious invasion over a distance much greater than the channel with at least as many troops as the D-Day landings (against a heavily armed enemy with the latest Western fighter jets and French submarines). Sure, they could do it. But not tomorrow.
So, the question is a very different one. If China was building a force of barges and martialling them in the ports nearest Taiwan, what would the West do? And I suspect the answer is that they'd happily sell the Taiwanese lots more weapons. The French certainly would and I suspect the Americans would too. You might also see some exercises around Taiwan, that would make the Chinese job much more difficult.
If the Chinese wanted to take Taiwan, the only plausible way is via strangulation. It would be a slow uptick in diplomatic pressure; you'd refuse flights from Taiwan being able to overfly China; combined with - eventually - ships outside Taiwanese ports.