Categories
Options
Punters are far from convinced that LizT can turn the tide – politicalbetting.com
Punters are far from convinced that LizT can turn the tide – politicalbetting.com
The demise of the Queen has totally dominated the news for the first fortnight of the premiership of Liz Truss that it is hard to come to any conclusions about the way things are going or how she is being perceived. What is clear is that the first state funeral since Churchill has effectively led to her being deprived of a normal honeymoon that new prime ministers generally enjoy.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I’ll kick it off. Liz Truss at the funeral. She didn’t say much, but she delivered it in proper common Yorkshire like I would sound like. SO NOWT WRONG WITH THAT 😌
Edit. On topic and first, all from the comfort of my bed.
Andy_JS said:
If Biden doesn't run, will it most likely be Kamala Harris?
eek said:
The default replacement option of Kamala Harris is probably the reason why people are looking at Biden running again. Harris definitely isn't in a position to succeed if Trump is the opposition...
16.0 on Harris at Smarkets is a nice price. I think she's a shoo in if Biden decides not to run (With the greatest of respect to Pete Buttigieg) as the party faithful won't rally against a sitting VP.
The implied odds are also a bit long in the general.
I'm long Biden generally so have taken £116 as a bit of insurance.
Here's some money for Ukraine
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/19/germanys-die-linke-on-verge-of-split-over-sanctions-on-russia
Now back to life, with a Queen Elizabeth sized hole in it. To think that, only two weeks ago today, we were all following the journey of the new Prime Minister to be asked to form a government by Her Majesty.
"Fornication, such as we have witnessed today....
....sorry, I'll repeat that - For an occasion, such as we have witnessed today..."
33,000 went through St Giles' in Edinburgh - 0.6% of Scotland's population.
Meanwhile, in London (England), a frankly pathetic 0.4% paid their respects to our late Sovereign.
The people of Scotland were so overcome with grief that we couldn't even make it to Holyrood park to watch the funeral. Most stayed at home, distraught.
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1572086168467931136
It might just be that she's the moron.
Trump team resists special master’s request to explain declassification of Mar-a-Lago documents
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3651209-trump-team-resists-special-masters-request-to-explain-declassification-of-mar-a-lago-documents/
Former President Trump’s legal team on Monday night resisted a request to elaborate on his claims around declassifying the documents recovered last month from his Mar-a-Lago home.
In a filing to the court-appointed special master that Trump requested, his attorneys said the “time and place” for making such a disclosure would come in a motion in a criminal trial as an effort to recover his property.
“Otherwise, the Special Master process will have forced the Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order,” Trump’s legal team wrote.
The resistance comes after Trump’s attorneys insinuated the former president declassified the more than 300 documents recovered from his Florida home but stopped short of fully making the claim in court filings.
“The government’s stance assumes that if a document has a classification marking, it remains classified irrespective of any actions taken during President Trump’s term in office,” Trump’s legal team wrote in a filing last week.
“There is no legitimate contention that the chief executive’s declassification of documents requires approval of bureaucratic components of the executive branch,” they added.
The Justice Department’s legal team seized on the hinting from Trump’s lawyer in their next filing.
“Plaintiff principally seeks to raise questions about the classification status of the records and their categorization under the Presidential Records Act (‘PRA’). But plaintiff does not actually assert — much less provide any evidence — that any of the seized records bearing classification markings have been declassified,” the department wrote.
“Such possibilities should not be given weight absent plaintiff’s putting forward competent evidence,” it added....
Evidence free assertions have no weight in a court of law.
Truss has two years to do what she believes in to transform Britain for the better. If she does that and does it well she might earn another term, if she doesn't earn another term at least she will have left her mark on the country.
Or she could spend two years vapidly chasing headlines and doing whatever pollsters say. If she does that, she doesn't deserve a second term.
He doesn’t dare introduce conscription, because it would be wildly unpopular and he doesn’t have the resources to train and equip tens of thousands of conscripts. He’s already played the gas card, and while it’s going to be a difficult winter it won’t be existential for European economies. Western sanctions are biting, especially on capital equipment needed to maintain domestic production, but also on Western consumer goods that the Muscovite middle-classes are used to.
So what happens next? Hopefully not something stupid.
Irrespective of partygate and so forth what did the man actually do that was any good - I for one am glad she's replaced Boris - a Prime Minister whose main virtue to the public seemed to be that he was "Good old Boris" and plenty of bluster. Furlough was all Sunak's work, and even though it was seemingly doomed to failure, like it or loathe it Patel's work on immigration was clearly not backed up by the hard yards from her boss.
A man without the patience or understanding required and completely unsuited to be PM.
Now Russia's withdrawing those same submarines.
Russia's not pressing the red button, they're stupid but not that stupid.
I wouldn't underestimate the desire for stability. If people are scared then a change of government might feel like a change too far. If Truss can merely put the chaos and confusion of Johnson's Ministry behind her, then that would go a long way at the next GE.
https://twitter.com/guyelster/status/1572142903056793600?s=21&t=OI56aZKz12GcahyMaha19A
A good analysis of the carefully-chosen diplomatic language. https://youtube.com/watch?v=P5Om_G2JTvk
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1570774514119880704?s=20&t=6pPs05o57ExD9nCjoyL_Og
Also, everyone seems to have forgotten again, that there’s a 15-20% shortfall in supply. ANY solution MUST involve a 15-20% reduction in demand this winter.
Also I suspect there will be a lot of hand waving as NI changes are made but little to nothing is said about Social care funding which is a fundamental issue that is destroying the NHS from bed blocking down to Ambulances...
Time has shown that someone did indeed blunder and it wasn’t 4D chess:
https://twitter.com/timsarson1/status/1494800023841918988?s=21&t=OI56aZKz12GcahyMaha19A
I'll stick to my principles instead. I said it was wrong to raise NI, it is right to reverse that rise.
* Cutting = Reversing the rise, not cutting below where it was.
If the Russian Navy has effectively relocated out of Sevastopol then there isn't much left for Russia to fight for in Ukraine. They've lost already and that loss has not led to a nuclear escalation.
There seems to be a desperation from the Luhansk and Donetsk so-called People's Republics to be recognised as part of Russia, presumably because they realise that if that doesn't happen it is easier for Russia to withdraw and leave them to fight Ukraine with minimal support.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/19840380/support-scottish-independence-queens-death/
Suspect that will stop completely under Truss and she will join Labour in doing f**k all for the folks round here
Oh, and there’s still no supply routes into Kherson, except across the river. The enemy are in the process of being starved out, many of the commanding officers have gone East over the river already.
It is possible they are banking on people reducing their energy us because the price now is still a ton more than last winter's.
I am certainly keeping the boiler off as long as possible.
Better to slowly merge NI into income tax and business rates, which has the added side-effect of getting rid of the massive IR35 mess that’s strangling the most dynamic part of the white-collar labour market.
Employers can't get enough staff you seriously saying a bit of NI is the reason they will stop trying
Enough is Enough. There will be a rebalanced of society either via policy or direct action IMO
What's interesting were all the big leads for Yes were during the pandemic, but pre-vaccine. Since the 2021 election it's been mainly No leads (but smaller).
What's now being proposed is to reverse the NI rise but with no replacement other than borrowing. It is therefore not something one would expect these people (eg me) to support. They'd only support it if they preferred unfunded spending to spending that's funded but sub-optimally.
Including undecideds is like including the 15.41% of the registered electorate that didn't vote in 2014 in which case Yes got 37.8% in 2014 and 42% is higher than that.
Using HYUFDematics, Yes down 3 points from 2014 and No down a MASSIVE 7 points. Golly!
Barber advised that he might be using different premises soon, smaller ones, due to the rise in electricity prices. Self-employed sole trader. And he's not the only one in our town centre talking about closing due to increased costs!
I'm wondering whether they are scared of putting the price up on our main house to what it should be in case we can't pay, whereas on our 2nd house it was peanuts.
There is a massive cache of kit and munitions for the Ukrainians if they do get a collapse/surrender in Kherson. And up to 20,000 POWs. At the moment it is a very slow move forward by the Ukrainian troops, probing for weaknesses, causing the Russians to use up their ever more limited supplies of shells to repulse them. Not a great outlook for the Russians.
Seriously though it's not a good likeness!
More instructive is this talk of withdrawal from the Crimea. If they think there's a chance they can't hold that at least through the winter they must be in an even worse mess than it looks from outside.
Mood matters, and when people look back on this 5 year parliament they will remember the worst pandemic since the great plague, war returning to Europe, the worst economic and cost of living crisis in a generation, and the death of the Queen.
Ill fortune seems to have followed the Conservatives around.
People want a change and there is nothing Liz Truss or her party can now do to restore belief.
They are in for a shellacking.
Despite the great gains Ukraine has made pushing out of Kharkiv, it is Kherson that is still their big prize. Which is why Russia sent its best troops there - and in doing so left an unholdable front line further east, breaking the Russian supply lines and leaving Kherson under siege.
1 US trade deal
2 Fracking
3 Grammar schools
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1572139777251581954
Quite a thread of replies developing…
Russia was asked for military support by Armenia and did not provide any. As long as Donetsk/Luhansk are recognised by the Kremlin as independent, rather than part of Russia, the easier it is for Russia to withdraw, because they will lose less as a result.
Crimea is more important to them. At some point Russia will have to withdraw from everywhere else in an attempt to hold Crimea. Their puppets in Luhansk/Donetsk can see that day coming closer and want to forestall it.
That said, she is less boorish than her predecessor to the point of being rather invisible – easy to forget she is actually PM.
The future is unwritten. Anyone who thinks it is certain is only kidding themselves.