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Will the delay in voting impact on the outcome? – politicalbetting.com
Will the delay in voting impact on the outcome? – politicalbetting.com
Following Intelligence from GCHQ that the ballots of Tory members could be altered through online interference there’s been a delay in postal ballots being issued.
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In terms of Truss’s tax cut plans this looks even more ridiculous. She should be targeting help to those most in need and not dishing out cuts to people who don’t need them . Equally her policy is at loggerheads with the BOE who are trying to rein in overall spending .
The back and forth was prompted by the Jenkins article. Which effectively argues for imposing a ceasefire against Ukraine's wishes.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the west should impose a decision to fight on Ukraine against its will. The reality is quite the opposite - we didn't start fully supporting them until they's demonstrated their determination to defeat the invasion.
He's just seen the Orc army and is yelling Flee! Flee for your lives!
1.09 Liz Truss 92%
11.5 Rishi Sunak 9%
Next Conservative leader
1.09 Liz Truss 92%
11.5 Rishi Sunak 9%
Now he sees the corollary of that, rampant inflation, something anybody with a brain cell could see 18 months ago, he is cr*pping his daipers.
I could easily imagine that the attitude would be "We may not be perfect, but we're not making the same f***ing mistake twice in a row." Especially given Boris's parting shot "right back atcha" about something he called "the deep state".
On the predecessor:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5041103/Security-services-wary-Foreign-Secretary.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-access-to-state-secrets-was-restricted-when-he-was-foreign-secretary-2019-7?r=US&IR=T
At least they are not Boris who has gone absent on holiday and will not be missed by the public at large to whom he had become a complete liability
Whoever wins the leadership contest, they may well be thinking: better to go to the country with the excuse of needing a mandate for a new direction /now/ before the winter hits hard followed up by a year or more of grinding recession.
Alternatively, two years is a long time. Maybe something will turn up & it’s better to have the guarantee of two years of power to steer the narrative?
Thoughts?
The intelligence community appear fine with Putin's activities though. I assume that's who you're referring to?
I did see your post, but didn't have a chance to respond. I have of course just quit my job without anything to go to and without redundancy. However, two things:
(1) that was partly because of the ridiculous notice rules in education, which means in effect there are only two times a year you can quit. I didn't want to get trapped in a difficult situation so I walked. I'm assuming that you wouldn't have crazy notice periods totally out of sync with what the real world wants.
(2) although I left with only a modest safety net I also left with a definite plan for what I'm doing next (in fact, I've already started with tutoring and have a meeting on Monday about further options).
In your shoes, unless you are utterly fed up with your company I would definitely take the pay rise unless you have another job lined up. That should in any case stand you in better stead if you are looking for another job when it comes to salary bargaining.
That's my input. It's your life - use it or ignore it as you see fit!
Too expensive? How many billions did we spend on lockdowns, furlough, dodgy PPE and eat out to help out?
The next election will be won on who has the best answers to the cost of living crisis. At the moment, I'm not sure that Labour are proposing anything better than the Conservatives.
Germany can give them Schleswig Holstein.
France can give them Corsica.
The Irish can give them Cork.
Italy can give them ….
Etc
Seems reasonable to me
Thing is, while I support the Ukrainian decision to fight (and die) on, we (the West) have imposed all kinds of situations on all kinds of countries and to impose a ceasefire (did he say who would police it?) would stop the dying at this point right now. Would it help to achieve Ukraine's aims? Probably not and hence I would on balance not be in favour of it.
But right now we certainly aren't "fully supporting" Ukraine and hence we are in a way complicit in prolonging the war, with thousands of dead on each side.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11042775/And-favourite-Boris-Grassroots-backlash-putsch-growing.html
Even amongst Tory members voting for Truss 49% would prefer Boris as PM to just 45% for Truss
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1554797759290642433?s=20&t=V6Qc_AZ5m8Y0FUL6hpgUWQ
Ask again if the Tories have a 15% vi lead in September.
Sunak and Bailey are the architects of the situation we find ourselves in.
Sunak's the 'sensible' choice apparently, when its fast becoming apparent that lockdown was the most reckless policy in peacetime by any British government ever.
The excuse is they all did it. Fair enough I guess, but allow this guy to carry on? How nuts is that?
Her best option is a capitulation by Russia in Ukraine and then strike. I am not sure even that mitigates the economic catastrophe heading our way, but it might.
What Truss policy would make the country better
I think thats why there is a policy vacumn and Labour's attacks are more about personalities than policies.
If the Conservative leadership election goes to plan, we get a new PM on Tuesday 6 September. 25 days for the campaign takes us to Friday 1 October. So it looks like the earliest a General Election can be is Thursday 6 October, just after the new energy price cap comes in.
Hard to see the Conservatives winning then, and it will have meant another month of zombie government.
The interesting thing is that all the assumptions are that it is Russia and China that would try to interfere. Usually there's a strand of thinking that believes the US/CIA would be involved. Maybe that would just be for a Labour leader.
There are so many Conservatives on here who are clinging to the hope that the economic catastrophe unfolding can be blamed on circumstances. I am unsure that it can. The incumbent is deemed responsible when one can't heat the home or put food on the table.
But chin-up, there are two and a half years left for something to turn up.
Get ready for some LOW turnouts...
And that of the Ukrainian government.
Obviously this is all leadership election fluff, but those things are at least a bit encouraging.
Nope.
However there is a narrative here. New PM, new broom, snap election in October. Message is "we hear you" on cost of living crisis -- cuts to fuel duty, nationalisation of gas supply, temporary cut in VAT etc.
The onus would then be on Labour to see what their response would be.
I do think the Conservatives' best chance of winning is to go for a snap election now on such a platform. No matter what policies are implemented to try to mitigate the crisis, the next couple of years are going to be horrific for most people's standard of living, so it may be the case they lose now by a little or cling on a little while longer and end up out of power for a generation.
If I were Truss, I would be looking to go for a snap election this year. Might even stick a few quid on it. Current odds of 13/1 are quite tempting.
Edit - actually, I'm wondering if that's a bit unfair. Surely zombies would do better than Braverman?
She doesn't have to be stopped by tempting enough gammonians to vote for Mr Sunak. Stop her by revealing something or by stitching her up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsHoTj-bScY#t=16s
That said, the bet is not whether you personally think it would be advantageous for the Tories, but if they think it would be. I'm still fairly confident that they'd take the certainty of a comfortable majority for more than two years over the uncertain possibility of extending that for another three. The potential upside is relatively small compared to the potential downside. However, sometimes people make choices that we think are wrong. Truss might do that, and might gamble.
I also doubt Truss's success against the economic policy incumbent (Sunak) can be replicated when she is the economic policy incumbent (she has personally been in Government for a decade) when the opposition parties are critical of our precarious financial situation.
Medical complications which threaten the life of pregnant women are not rare.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/03/texas-abortion-law-pregnancy/
...The crisis the Wellers endured is emblematic of the vast and perhaps unintended medical impacts of the criminalization of abortion in Republican-led states. The new abortion bans — or the old laws being resurrected in a post-Roe world — are rigidly written and untested in the courts. Many offer no exemptions for rape, incest, or fetal anomalies.
But the most confusing development involves the exemptions that exist for the woman’s life or health, or because of a “medical emergency.” These terms are left vague or undefined.
The result has been disarray and confusion for doctors and hospitals in multiple states, and risky delays and complications for patients facing obstetric conditions such as ectopic pregnancies, incomplete miscarriages, placental problems, and premature rupture of membranes...
...“I can tell that she’s been beat down, because she has been trying to fight for me all day, advocating on my behalf,” Elizabeth said. “And she starts to cry, and she tells me: ‘They’re not going to touch you.’ And that ‘you can either stay here and wait to get sick where we can monitor you, or we discharge you and you monitor yourself. Or you wait till your baby’s heartbeat stops.’”
It was because of the state law that forbids termination of a pregnancy as long as there is fetal cardiac activity. The law, which remains in effect, does contain one exception — for a “medical emergency.” But the statute doesn’t define that term. No one really knows what the legislature meant by that, and doctors are afraid of overstepping.
To Elizabeth, it seemed obvious that things were deteriorating. She had cramps and was passing clots of blood. Her discharge was yellow and smelled weird. But hospital staffers told her those weren’t the right symptoms yet...
Some fool lying on some Third World beach wearing
Spandex, psychedelic trousers, smoking damn dope
Pretending he gettin' consciousness expansion. I want
Consciousness expansion, I go to my local tabernacle
An' I sing
So I think the voters might wonder about why she's holding the election, and realise that if she's misleading them they have to wait five years before they get another chance to turf them out.
I think that's one reason the election in 2017 went badly. It looked opportunistic rather than necessary. The same would be true now.
I’ve always been sure to have a firm grasp on the next branch before letting go of the previous one, but leaving a job for a new one is always scary - you just have to be brave enough to do it.
So no, she doesn't need an election to implement a fuel duty cut / gas nationalisation / etc plan, but she'll get a poll boost for doing so and could win an election off the back of it. New PM seeking renewed mandate doesn't feel opportunistic to me.
As Horse says, it will be hard to win an election after five successive quarters of recession. So better to go to the country now - it's probably her best window of opportunity.
Sandi Toksvig:
“I have had several credible death threats over the years, sometimes requiring the very kind assistance of the police hate crime squad.
“Each and every one of those threats has come from an evangelical Christian. Inevitably they have wanted to kill me on God’s behalf.”
And if this gets death threats over here, imagine what it will do in Nigeria.
Odd stance for a cult based around an overtly homosexual shaman to take.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1555157122958123010
FL civics teachers are speaking out after attending DeSantis’s new mandatory 3-day ‘patriotic history’ indoctrination seminars. One example they cited was that students would be told Washington & Jefferson opposed slavery, while omitting the fact that they owned them.
I quit my last job telling people that I would go freelance and see where it took me, and everyone thought I was completely mad. But actually I had thought it through and planned it all out in a lot of detail; and it has worked out unbelievably well. I'm seriously contemplating spending a week travelling around Norway working on my laptop next month, doing the whole rail network; and also spending time in Rome and Athens later in the year, just working on my laptop the whole time. All this has suddenly become possible.
If it did impact things, imagine the conspiracies that would abound.
“In the clearest sign that the referendums will go ahead … Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that Russia had changed the geography in Ukraine, effectively redrawing its borders. He threatened that Moscow would claim even more Ukrainian territory unless the West stopped arming Kyiv.”
What’s fascinating here is complete lack of pretence from Lavrov that this is anything other than an arbitrary land grab—nothing to do with protecting Russians, liberating Donbas etc. It’s 1930/40s style territorial aggrandisement. Chilling vision for Europe & has to be stopped.
Shashank Joshi
@shashj
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/
'Weaving slavery into a narrative about Thomas Jefferson usually presents a challenge to authors, but one writer managed to spin this vicious attack and terrible punishment of a nailery boy into a charming plantation tale. In a 1941 biography of Jefferson for “young adults” (ages 12 to 16) the author wrote: “In this beehive of industry no discord or revilings found entrance: there were no signs of discontent on the black shining faces as they worked under the direction of their master....The women sang at their tasks and the children old enough to work made nails leisurely, not too overworked for a prank now and then.”
It might seem unfair to mock the misconceptions and sappy prose of “a simpler era,” except that this book, The Way of an Eagle, and hundreds like it, shaped the attitudes of generations of readers about slavery and African-Americans. Time magazine chose it as one of the “important books” of 1941 in the children’s literature category, and it gained a second life in America’s libraries when it was reprinted in 1961 as Thomas Jefferson: Fighter for Freedom and Human Rights.'
At least the 1940s book admitted that J owned slaves ... but perhaps the modern reluctance to admit it points to a greater understanding of guilt.
See this link:
https://twitter.com/BurkowskiJohnny/status/1555177950974189570
Florida teacher and historian here. I took one of their presentations and did a peer review...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/04/sussex-police-officers-investigated-over-death-of-man-93-after-being-tasered
Indeed I do not feel much like arguing, as it is pointless as one of Sunak or Truss will be PM in early September
Incidentally, Betfair has just put markets up for the Senate races.
I want to see ones for the Governor elections - Texas might just be interesting.
I think there are two things in play. First there's Biden's natural caution; it's been pretty clear from the start that he's anxious to avoid a larger war which might escalate dangerously. Secondly, there's the deep reluctance of western military establishments to part with weapons which are in their current inventory.
The first I'm grateful for (though the reluctance to send decent ground to air defence systems seems unjustified); the second is, I think, an unnecessarily tight constraint on the help we're offering.
Fracking will only lose the Tories votes. Those fracking sites are nearly all Tory seats, a lot of them not very safe Tory seats.
"In another communication from the early 1790s, Jefferson takes the 4 percent formula further and quite bluntly advances the notion that slavery presented an investment strategy for the future. He writes that an acquaintance who had suffered financial reverses “should have been invested in negroes.” He advises that if the friend’s family had any cash left, “every farthing of it [should be] laid out in land and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5. to 10. per cent in this country by the increase in their value.” "
Labour leads by 8%.
Westminster Voting Intention (4 August):
Labour 40% (+2)
Conservative 32% (-2)
Liberal Democrat 13% (+1)
Green 4% (-3)
Scottish National Party 4% (–)
Reform UK 4% (–)
Plaid Cymru 1% (+1)
Other 2% (+1)
Changes +/-31 July
https://t.co/cWevi4yeqM https://t.co/udqwubgukb
The way you post suggests not
ETA - both "them" references being to grammar schools, not the Tories