Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
But only now, momentarily: lots of catching up to do with the inflation accumulated over the last 2-3 years. An instantaneous differential rate is one thing: what hits people in the pocket is the integral.
Edit: and real wages *still* going down, even on your figure.
Inflation fallen from 10% to under 8%, if you had your way we would have an inflationary wage spiral and inflation rising from 10% not falling
Surely, at bottom, all we want is wages rising faster than prices? If wages are rising lest fast than prices, this is bad news. The fact that wages rising above the increase in prices may, down the line, lead to prices rising is not a reason to celebrate prices rising faster than wages. Now we probably all agree than this is most easily achieved in a low-inflation scenario. But that's a secondary issue.
No as even if wages rise faster than prices that still hits pensioners and those reliant on savings
This is fantastic. I hope Trump wins the nomination and the White House. The US needs to go through another revolution and what better way than having a lunatic like Trump in charge to actually galvanise the less insane members of the population into action is there?
Be careful what you wish for. Lets think about what a Trump win does: Serious threat to NATO Serious risk of war in the middle east Emboldened Putin taking back ex-Soviet states Dismantling of democratic institutions and processes in America Potential for widespread boycotts and embargoes in a global trade war America as a pariah state
America's allies are already considering what a Trump win would mean for their alliances and its not good.
Leaving aside the quite valid Marxist accelerationist perspective a Trump win would be top bantz and more entertaining than that time Johnson got Covid.
Biden is just a straightforward hegemonist and slave to capital so when you get down to it, he's not that different from DJT just infinitely more boring.
PB's most devoted Trumpton back again I see. Go pleasure yourself over a fast car or something, get it out of your system.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
Alanbrooke isn't a loon. He's just trolling again.
In this case not. The police screwed up thats all there is to it. An insurrection requires planning and organisation and Trump cant do either of those. The Dems are simply using the matter to get at Trump. If Trump had done all the things he;s accused of he would have been in jail two years ago,
It appears the man tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the new President. Just ask Mike Pence. Or John Bolton
'The Federal indictment against Donald Trump unsealed this afternoon is stunning and persuasive, but there should be no celebrating. This is a dark day for our country: an elected president, while in office, is alleged to have violated his sworn constitutional obligations. But it will be even darker if Trump can postpone the trial of these charges until after November 2024. He complains the charges should have been filed long ago, and if he were innocent he would want a speedy trial. Without that, or if he is acquitted, he may well be elected president again.'
That would be the Jon Bolton who Trump sacked and who has sulked ever since ?
But only now, momentarily: lots of catching up to do with the inflation accumulated over the last 2-3 years. An instantaneous differential rate is one thing: what hits people in the pocket is the integral.
Edit: and real wages *still* going down, even on your figure.
Inflation fallen from 10% to under 8%, if you had your way we would have an inflationary wage spiral and inflation rising from 10% not falling
Surely, at bottom, all we want is wages rising faster than prices? If wages are rising lest fast than prices, this is bad news. The fact that wages rising above the increase in prices may, down the line, lead to prices rising is not a reason to celebrate prices rising faster than wages. Now we probably all agree than this is most easily achieved in a low-inflation scenario. But that's a secondary issue.
What does the BoE expect people to do - not accept a wage increase in a cost-of-living crisis as interest rates surge?
This is all very messy. Despite record net migration, the fall in participation rates has seen the labour market tighten, putting pressure on wages.
There was record saving during the pandemic for richer households, so they have plenty to burn during this period even while the "furlough class" suffer. And interest rates on savings are not high enough to reduce their propensity to spend.
Meanwhile, people who own their homes outright (those richer people again, generally) aren't feeling the pinch as much, and the only tool available to the BoE hurts mortgage holders and renters the most, many of whom cannot reduce their spending any further.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
Alanbrooke isn't a loon. He's just trolling again.
In this case not. The police screwed up thats all there is to it. An insurrection requires planning and organisation and Trump cant do either of those. The Dems are simply using the matter to get at Trump. If Trump had done all the things he;s accused of he would have been in jail two years ago,
It appears the man tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the new President. Just ask Mike Pence. Or John Bolton
'The Federal indictment against Donald Trump unsealed this afternoon is stunning and persuasive, but there should be no celebrating. This is a dark day for our country: an elected president, while in office, is alleged to have violated his sworn constitutional obligations. But it will be even darker if Trump can postpone the trial of these charges until after November 2024. He complains the charges should have been filed long ago, and if he were innocent he would want a speedy trial. Without that, or if he is acquitted, he may well be elected president again.'
That would be the Jon Bolton who Trump sacked and who has sulked ever since ?
And Pence?
Pence is standing for GOP nomination for POTUS.
However one of Trumps less attractive characteristic's is he treats people like shit. He has a long list of people he has sacked and who owe him no favours, In that respect he is his own worst enemy and frankly deserves to reap what he sows.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
I would agree on all this. I think the one thing that is missing is the personal element. I put a lot of the blame on Obama. He so personally detested Trump - and you only have to see the look in his eyes when he dropped the mic to see how much he hated the man with a passion - that he encouraged the Democrats to go after Trump. I do think Clinton was miffed but she had little real influence post-her defeat and, in any event, I am sure Bill would have been advising her not to rock the boat.
Obama really does have a lot to answer for.
What exactly did Obama do? I mean I get he disliked the racist birther-promoting Trump, but what did he actually do?
Obama had good reason to hate Trump, but all he did was make fun of him. Like all narcissists, Trump has no ability to laugh at himself so took this badly, but that's on him.
But only now, momentarily: lots of catching up to do with the inflation accumulated over the last 2-3 years. An instantaneous differential rate is one thing: what hits people in the pocket is the integral.
Edit: and real wages *still* going down, even on your figure.
Inflation fallen from 10% to under 8%, if you had your way we would have an inflationary wage spiral and inflation rising from 10% not falling
Surely, at bottom, all we want is wages rising faster than prices? If wages are rising lest fast than prices, this is bad news. The fact that wages rising above the increase in prices may, down the line, lead to prices rising is not a reason to celebrate prices rising faster than wages. Now we probably all agree than this is most easily achieved in a low-inflation scenario. But that's a secondary issue.
No as even if wages rise faster than prices that still hits pensioners and those reliant on savings
Wages rising faster than prices, is usually a good thing for anyone earning wages.
However, the situation at the moment means that the cost of housing, absent from the official inflation stats, is significantly higher than inflation, which is why the cost of living tops the issues list in polls.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
It's a death spiral. Everything is too expensive, so wages need to go up. Wages go up, The bank shits its pants, cries about inflation and puts rates up. Capitalism works until it doesn't! We're screwed.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
I would agree on all this. I think the one thing that is missing is the personal element. I put a lot of the blame on Obama. He so personally detested Trump - and you only have to see the look in his eyes when he dropped the mic to see how much he hated the man with a passion - that he encouraged the Democrats to go after Trump. I do think Clinton was miffed but she had little real influence post-her defeat and, in any event, I am sure Bill would have been advising her not to rock the boat.
Obama really does have a lot to answer for.
What exactly did Obama do? I mean I get he disliked the racist birther-promoting Trump, but what did he actually do?
Obama had good reason to hate Trump, but all he did was make fun of him. Like all narcissists, Trump has no ability to laugh at himself so took this badly, but that's on him.
But only now, momentarily: lots of catching up to do with the inflation accumulated over the last 2-3 years. An instantaneous differential rate is one thing: what hits people in the pocket is the integral.
Edit: and real wages *still* going down, even on your figure.
Inflation fallen from 10% to under 8%, if you had your way we would have an inflationary wage spiral and inflation rising from 10% not falling
Surely, at bottom, all we want is wages rising faster than prices? If wages are rising lest fast than prices, this is bad news. The fact that wages rising above the increase in prices may, down the line, lead to prices rising is not a reason to celebrate prices rising faster than wages. Now we probably all agree than this is most easily achieved in a low-inflation scenario. But that's a secondary issue.
No as even if wages rise faster than prices that still hits pensioners and those reliant on savings
Don't pensioners have a triple lock - so it's somewhat academic?
And yes, reliance on savings - but surely no-one has, say, £1m cash in the bank that they are gloomily chewing through hoping to die before they get to the end of. The trick, as I'm sure you know, is to structure your capital so that it doesn't get eroded by inflation, by finding a portfolio which grows with inflation. Now that's more difficult to do in a high inflation world. But not so difficult that we should be celebrating wage growth below inflation. Surely?
Trump's indictment may be a matter of much interest, comment and amusement, but it also reflects well on the USofA. Inconceivable for the like to happen in Russia, China or Iran.
The indictment matters much less than the convictions, which we do not have yet.
The US *appears* to have very narrowly dodged a bullet. I don't expect them to learn any lessons from this, and there will soon be other charlatans - perhaps cleverer than Trump - playing similar games. Which would be bad for the USA and the world.
The Trump has affair has exposed the huge flaw in the US system whee the loser gets to stay in office for over two months after the election, with full executive powers. As much as I dislike the UK system, the fact the losing government is kicked out the following morning is a definite plus.
I understand this relates to the non-partisan civil service in the UK. Politicians can come and go, but the civil servants stay, minimising disruption to the day-to-day running of government. However, in the US, many more government jobs are political appointees, so you need the longer handover period.
Trump's indictment may be a matter of much interest, comment and amusement, but it also reflects well on the USofA. Inconceivable for the like to happen in Russia, China or Iran.
Not sure that being better than those 3 is the standard to which the leader of the free world should be aspiring to. Why was he not indicted 2 years ago so we wouldn't be troubled with him now?
Because justice is slow. They needed to gather evidence and get their legal arguments in a row.
One of the younger rowers at my club commented that pubs are for rich people now. With £7 pints, that doesn't seem an exaggeration.
Pubs which serve £7 pints are definitely for rich people!
But even a night out at you local suburban adequate pub is bafflingly expensive nowadays. I'm a middle aged man - and even I find myself, on the rare occasions I go out drinking, frontloading. I'd say 30 years ago the difference between drinking equivalent-quality beer out as opposed to at home was about 40% - now it's well over 100%.
Weirdly, wine is now sometimes the cheaper option - in terms of alcohol per £ (and sometimes tastier too, as wine options have improved)
I had this experience in a pub in Borough the other day. Wine better value
Most pubs charging £6:80 for a pint are charging around £22 for a basic, drinkable white wine. Which is still multiple of the off license value.
You’re talking £22 for a bottle
I said “alcohol per £”
I had a large white wine the other day for £12. Very pleasant. A pint was about £7 or more
Per alcohol unit the wine was slightly cheaper I think
Same thing - a bottle is either 5 good glasses, or 6 slightly mean ones.
Interestingly, most places like that try and charge a premium per glass. So you buy three glasses, you've bought the bottle.
But only now, momentarily: lots of catching up to do with the inflation accumulated over the last 2-3 years. An instantaneous differential rate is one thing: what hits people in the pocket is the integral.
Edit: and real wages *still* going down, even on your figure.
Inflation fallen from 10% to under 8%, if you had your way we would have an inflationary wage spiral and inflation rising from 10% not falling
Surely, at bottom, all we want is wages rising faster than prices? If wages are rising lest fast than prices, this is bad news. The fact that wages rising above the increase in prices may, down the line, lead to prices rising is not a reason to celebrate prices rising faster than wages. Now we probably all agree than this is most easily achieved in a low-inflation scenario. But that's a secondary issue.
No as even if wages rise faster than prices that still hits pensioners and those reliant on savings
Don't pensioners have a triple lock - so it's somewhat academic?
And yes, reliance on savings - but surely no-one has, say, £1m cash in the bank that they are gloomily chewing through hoping to die before they get to the end of. The trick, as I'm sure you know, is to structure your capital so that it doesn't get eroded by inflation, by finding a portfolio which grows with inflation. Now that's more difficult to do in a high inflation world. But not so difficult that we should be celebrating wage growth below inflation. Surely?
Most pensioners have private pensions and personal savings not just the state pension and so are hit by high inflation even if wages rise more than inflation.
High inflation also weakens sterling, making imported goods much more expensive too
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
I wonder if Andrew Bailey will lead by example and freeze all wages at the Bank of England ?
Starting with his own £500k salary, £100k bonus, and a very nice index-linked DB pension.
IIRC he’s the highest-paid public-sector employee in the UK.
The foolish mistake Bailey made was in calling for pay restraint. Not only totally impractical but outside of his remit. It also gave the impression of a man who did not want to use the tools available to him.
Trump's indictment may be a matter of much interest, comment and amusement, but it also reflects well on the USofA. Inconceivable for the like to happen in Russia, China or Iran.
The indictment matters much less than the convictions, which we do not have yet.
The US *appears* to have very narrowly dodged a bullet. I don't expect them to learn any lessons from this, and there will soon be other charlatans - perhaps cleverer than Trump - playing similar games. Which would be bad for the USA and the world.
You seem to be assuming that Trump will be stopped by being in jail. I am not so sure.
TDS in full force.
He is not going to be Potus from prison.
Enough of the gratuitous bedwetting.
He can only get the top job if enough Americans vote for him. If they do, then they get what they deserve. As batshit crazy as he is, only the yanks can stop him or enable him. That they've got to this point, with a pair of geriatric white fellas as the only choice should be the real issue.
One of the younger rowers at my club commented that pubs are for rich people now. With £7 pints, that doesn't seem an exaggeration.
Pubs which serve £7 pints are definitely for rich people!
But even a night out at you local suburban adequate pub is bafflingly expensive nowadays. I'm a middle aged man - and even I find myself, on the rare occasions I go out drinking, frontloading. I'd say 30 years ago the difference between drinking equivalent-quality beer out as opposed to at home was about 40% - now it's well over 100%.
Weirdly, wine is now sometimes the cheaper option - in terms of alcohol per £ (and sometimes tastier too, as wine options have improved)
I had this experience in a pub in Borough the other day. Wine better value
Most pubs charging £6:80 for a pint are charging around £22 for a basic, drinkable white wine. Which is still multiple of the off license value.
You’re talking £22 for a bottle
I said “alcohol per £”
I had a large GLASS of white wine the other day for £12. Very pleasant. A pint was about £7 or more
Per alcohol unit the wine was slightly cheaper I think
@Leon, re the pint is that price because it is London, posh/busy place, a lager, or combination of some or all?
In my local, which is posh Surrey a pint of Shere Drop is £5.30.
One thing noticeable on my cycling trips in France is the difference in price between towns and the countryside. I know it varies here, particularly steep in London, but the difference was nothing compared to France. In a town the price was similar to the UK. They practically gave it away in the bars in out of the way villages in the middle of nowhere.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
Wage growth reflective of underlying productivity growth is great. Wage growth that isn't simply drives up inflation, which is not great. Unfortunately the BOE has allowed too much of the latter by responding too timidly earlier in the hiking cycle, and will now have to do more to bring inflation to heel. This is bad news for everyone (and especially for the incumbent government, from a political betting POV).
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
Alanbrooke isn't a loon. He's just trolling again.
In this case not. The police screwed up thats all there is to it. An insurrection requires planning and organisation and Trump cant do either of those. The Dems are simply using the matter to get at Trump. If Trump had done all the things he;s accused of he would have been in jail two years ago,
A remarkable display of ignorance, wilful or otherwise.
So why is he not in jail ?
Why are all the indictments coming out in the middle of an election ?
Because complex investigations with obstructive witnesses take a lot of time. And because he's been granted bail, so far.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
It's a death spiral. Everything is too expensive, so wages need to go up. Wages go up, The bank shits its pants, cries about inflation and puts rates up. Capitalism works until it doesn't! We're screwed.
Inflation has happened before. Just because it's been a while...
I've had people telling me that the world is ending because house prices have gone down a bit in some areas. Because in their memory this has never happened.
See for instance the Sally Clark case, where the infamous Roy Meadow opined on the chance of two cot deaths in one family, without understanding statistics (Bayes theory, for @Miklosvar ).
coughcoughassumingindependencecoughcough
Equation 1: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B) if B is independent of A
Equation 2: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B|A) if B is not independent of A
Roy Meadow thought that the second cot death (B) was independent of the first cot death (A), so he used the first equation. But apparently they aren't and he should have used the second equation instead
That is still very poor probability maths for the situation.
While for any specific individual the probability of two unlikely things happening together is small, in a large enough population the probability that it will happen to someone will be a lot higher, and you shouldn't prosecute that someone simply for being unlucky.
1 in 73 million was his number 140 million births a year, says the internet. So ignoring slight fiddling needed to count only second or subsequent births, it's a twice a year occurrence even on his numbers.
Disappointing that neither the defence nor the judge saw and questioned the fishiness in the statistics. Meadows was a paediatrician not a statistician.
A classic case of an 'expert' not being an expert out of their field of experience.
Additionally, the question the jury have to answer is not "What's the likelyhood this event happens?" but "Given that it has happened, what's the chance the defendant did it?". Because when this happens to an innocent mother, the chance of a prosecution is very high indeed, even if it only happens every twenty years.
But only now, momentarily: lots of catching up to do with the inflation accumulated over the last 2-3 years. An instantaneous differential rate is one thing: what hits people in the pocket is the integral.
Edit: and real wages *still* going down, even on your figure.
Inflation fallen from 10% to under 8%, if you had your way we would have an inflationary wage spiral and inflation rising from 10% not falling
Surely, at bottom, all we want is wages rising faster than prices? If wages are rising lest fast than prices, this is bad news. The fact that wages rising above the increase in prices may, down the line, lead to prices rising is not a reason to celebrate prices rising faster than wages. Now we probably all agree than this is most easily achieved in a low-inflation scenario. But that's a secondary issue.
No as even if wages rise faster than prices that still hits pensioners and those reliant on savings
Don't pensioners have a triple lock - so it's somewhat academic?
And yes, reliance on savings - but surely no-one has, say, £1m cash in the bank that they are gloomily chewing through hoping to die before they get to the end of. The trick, as I'm sure you know, is to structure your capital so that it doesn't get eroded by inflation, by finding a portfolio which grows with inflation. Now that's more difficult to do in a high inflation world. But not so difficult that we should be celebrating wage growth below inflation. Surely?
Most pensioners have private pensions and personal savings not just the state pension and so are hit by high inflation even if wages rise more than inflation.
High inflation also weakens sterling, making imported goods much more expensive too
I'm not arguing that inflation isn't bad - but the selective badness of high inflation isn't as bad as the universal badness of wages rising more slowly than prices. It seems odd to cheer for the latter in the hope that it might - might - lead to less of the former.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
Alanbrooke isn't a loon. He's just trolling again.
In this case not. The police screwed up thats all there is to it. An insurrection requires planning and organisation and Trump cant do either of those. The Dems are simply using the matter to get at Trump. If Trump had done all the things he;s accused of he would have been in jail two years ago,
A remarkable display of ignorance, wilful or otherwise.
So why is he not in jail ?
Why are all the indictments coming out in the middle of an election ?
Because complex investigations with obstructive witnesses take a lot of time. And because he's been granted bail, so far.
Well believe what you will. However I see the US going down a route it will regret and the Dems dont need to do what theyre doing, they have won the popular vote in the last two elections and can win the coming election with a decent candidate.
One of the younger rowers at my club commented that pubs are for rich people now. With £7 pints, that doesn't seem an exaggeration.
Pubs which serve £7 pints are definitely for rich people!
But even a night out at you local suburban adequate pub is bafflingly expensive nowadays. I'm a middle aged man - and even I find myself, on the rare occasions I go out drinking, frontloading. I'd say 30 years ago the difference between drinking equivalent-quality beer out as opposed to at home was about 40% - now it's well over 100%.
Weirdly, wine is now sometimes the cheaper option - in terms of alcohol per £ (and sometimes tastier too, as wine options have improved)
I had this experience in a pub in Borough the other day. Wine better value
Most pubs charging £6:80 for a pint are charging around £22 for a basic, drinkable white wine. Which is still multiple of the off license value.
You’re talking £22 for a bottle
I said “alcohol per £”
I had a large GLASS of white wine the other day for £12. Very pleasant. A pint was about £7 or more
Per alcohol unit the wine was slightly cheaper I think
@Leon, re the pint is that price because it is London, posh/busy place, a lager, or combination of some or all?
In my local, which is posh Surrey a pint of Shere Drop is £5.30.
One thing noticeable on my cycling trips in France is the difference in price between towns and the countryside. I know it varies here, particularly steep in London, but the difference was nothing compared to France. In a town the price was similar to the UK. They practically gave it away in the bars in out of the way villages in the middle of nowhere.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
It's a death spiral. Everything is too expensive, so wages need to go up. Wages go up, The bank shits its pants, cries about inflation and puts rates up. Capitalism works until it doesn't! We're screwed.
It’s really not quite that bad, even if it feels pretty bad at the moment.
Most of the inflation is imported, as a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which outweigh any inflation caused by wage rises, especially at the bottom end of the labour market where there is the greatest wage pressure, and where wage rises are countered to some extent by benefits withdrawal.
The massive spike in fuel prices from last summer is about to fall out of the inflation figures, and while there’s been recent rises in oil, there’s some indication that the OPEC countries might be about to reverse recent cuts, as that nice Mr Putin has upset them somewhat by trying to play politics with food supplies.
The BoE really needs to hold its nerve on rate rises at this point, rather than pontificating about wage rises being bad for the economy.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
Wage growth reflective of underlying productivity growth is great. Wage growth that isn't simply drives up inflation, which is not great. Unfortunately the BOE has allowed too much of the latter by responding too timidly earlier in the hiking cycle, and will now have to do more to bring inflation to heel. This is bad news for everyone (and especially for the incumbent government, from a political betting POV).
Time for a 250% tax allowance on investing in productivity.
Looks like a complicated indictment, especially with so many defendants. Some might flip buy they seem committed to just hoping Trump will win and it'll go away (even though its a state not federal matter).
I saw a lawyer online once who on RICO speculations would say 'it's never RICO', so that'll br interesting.
See for instance the Sally Clark case, where the infamous Roy Meadow opined on the chance of two cot deaths in one family, without understanding statistics (Bayes theory, for @Miklosvar ).
coughcoughassumingindependencecoughcough
Equation 1: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B) if B is independent of A
Equation 2: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B|A) if B is not independent of A
Roy Meadow thought that the second cot death (B) was independent of the first cot death (A), so he used the first equation. But apparently they aren't and he should have used the second equation instead
That is still very poor probability maths for the situation.
While for any specific individual the probability of two unlikely things happening together is small, in a large enough population the probability that it will happen to someone will be a lot higher, and you shouldn't prosecute that someone simply for being unlucky.
See also winning the jackpot on the national lottery...
But only now, momentarily: lots of catching up to do with the inflation accumulated over the last 2-3 years. An instantaneous differential rate is one thing: what hits people in the pocket is the integral.
Edit: and real wages *still* going down, even on your figure.
Inflation fallen from 10% to under 8%, if you had your way we would have an inflationary wage spiral and inflation rising from 10% not falling
My way? What on earth are you talking about?
You're proud of inflation at 8% ... positvely proud of it. And a situation where actual workers' wages play little part in inflation. As pointed out many times here.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
Wage growth reflective of underlying productivity growth is great. Wage growth that isn't simply drives up inflation, which is not great. Unfortunately the BOE has allowed too much of the latter by responding too timidly earlier in the hiking cycle, and will now have to do more to bring inflation to heel. This is bad news for everyone (and especially for the incumbent government, from a political betting POV).
Time for a 250% tax allowance on investing in productivity.
Careful - the easiest way to achieve that is to reduce hours per job while keeping salaries the same (if you are talking labour productivity).
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
It's a death spiral. Everything is too expensive, so wages need to go up. Wages go up, The bank shits its pants, cries about inflation and puts rates up. Capitalism works until it doesn't! We're screwed.
Inflation has happened before. Just because it's been a while...
I've had people telling me that the world is ending because house prices have gone down a bit in some areas. Because in their memory this has never happened.
If you take inflation into account, don't house prices stay reasonably flat over the long term? House prices are heading south for the next few years anyway, so they had better get used to it!
Had an experience with a real life Saturday morning Russian troll today.
Opened with small talk, then for no reason switched to talking about an 'interesting' podcast by RFK Jr, and how he laid out a timeline about Ukraine and you cannot blame the Russians really. I opined I really could, and they started on the checklist - NATO expansion, ethnic Russians being oppressed, look at the USA in Iraq, the works. By the end I was preempting all the points they were raising.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
Also "inflation is down a little bit so everyone is just as happy as they were 3 years ago"-ism.
This is fantastic. I hope Trump wins the nomination and the White House. The US needs to go through another revolution and what better way than having a lunatic like Trump in charge to actually galvanise the less insane members of the population into action is there?
Be careful what you wish for. Lets think about what a Trump win does: Serious threat to NATO Serious risk of war in the middle east Emboldened Putin taking back ex-Soviet states Dismantling of democratic institutions and processes in America Potential for widespread boycotts and embargoes in a global trade war America as a pariah state
America's allies are already considering what a Trump win would mean for their alliances and its not good.
Project Fear is back I see,
We had all the above in 2016 and none of it happened.
Biden is doing a lot of the above anyway and nobody seems that worried.
We did see an emboldened Putin and damaged US democratic institutions and processes under Trump when he was President. He tried to overthrow the 2020 election, which is why he is now facing unprecedented charges!
Meanwnile, I don’t see now Biden is doing anything on that list.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
The system did do its job. He was voted out for having failed as president.
The issue became that he then repeatedly tried to overthrow the system to stay in power.
Whatever her many and egregious shortcomings, that was hardly the fault of Hilary Clinton.
As @Sandpit has pointed out, American politicians on both sides are so immersed in the system, there are plenty of things which you could investigate.
Clinton and classified government documentation on her personal e-mail servers? Tick
Biden and the payments to his family? Tick
Obama's failure to stop Biden's activities as VP and whether he therefore allowed foreign countries to influence US policy? Tick
Nancy Pelosi and her share deals? Tick
Once you start down this route, there is no end.
Clinton was investigated regarding classified documents. She cooperated with the investigation (unlike Trump), and the matter is closed.
Hunter Biden has been investigated for the last five years - by a Trump appointee - and the investigation continued under Biden's presidency. It's impossible to imagine the converse happening under Trump.
The reality is that, by international standards, the US political class is quite clean (as is ours, BTW). Ironically, Donald "drain the swamp" Trump is the most notable exception, a grifter and liar focused on personal enrichment with no respect for the rule of law or the normal constraints on power. He is a figure absolutely recognisable from badly run poor countries - where this kind of leader is the key reason why these countries remain poor and badly run. It is incredible to me that there are apparently sane and lucid people who can't see this.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
It's a death spiral. Everything is too expensive, so wages need to go up. Wages go up, The bank shits its pants, cries about inflation and puts rates up. Capitalism works until it doesn't! We're screwed.
Inflation has happened before. Just because it's been a while...
I've had people telling me that the world is ending because house prices have gone down a bit in some areas. Because in their memory this has never happened.
If you take inflation into account, don't house prices stay reasonably flat over the long term? House prices are heading south for the next few years anyway, so they had better get used to it!
Mortgage costs have been on an essentially flat path in real terms with some random walk both above and below since at least 1990. House PRICES have been rising due to declining interest rates. I think we're headed for small falls in nominal house prices and yes declining in real terms, hypothecated mortgage cost is above the long term line at the moment.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
Wage growth reflective of underlying productivity growth is great. Wage growth that isn't simply drives up inflation, which is not great. Unfortunately the BOE has allowed too much of the latter by responding too timidly earlier in the hiking cycle, and will now have to do more to bring inflation to heel. This is bad news for everyone (and especially for the incumbent government, from a political betting POV).
Time for a 250% tax allowance on investing in productivity.
That will certainly increase productivity in sections of the legal and accounting profession that specialise in tax avoidance.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
Alanbrooke isn't a loon. He's just trolling again.
In this case not. The police screwed up thats all there is to it. An insurrection requires planning and organisation and Trump cant do either of those. The Dems are simply using the matter to get at Trump. If Trump had done all the things he;s accused of he would have been in jail two years ago,
A remarkable display of ignorance, wilful or otherwise.
So why is he not in jail ?
Why are all the indictments coming out in the middle of an election ?
Because complex investigations with obstructive witnesses take a lot of time. And because he's been granted bail, so far.
Note, for example, the nine month delay in the DC investigation to allow Trump's claims of executive privilege to work their ways through the courts before evidence could be accessed. That's just one example.
Alanbrooke seems to imagine prosecutors can , for example, just say 'hand me you mobile phone so I can look at your text messages'.
In effect they often can - but only after very lengthy legal arguments.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
Ah, so you’re on to victim blaming now? We can’t blame people beating police officers lying on the ground. No, we must blame the police for lying on the ground being beaten.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
The system did do its job. He was voted out for having failed as president.
The issue became that he then repeatedly tried to overthrow the system to stay in power.
Whatever her many and egregious shortcomings, that was hardly the fault of Hilary Clinton.
As @Sandpit has pointed out, American politicians on both sides are so immersed in the system, there are plenty of things which you could investigate.
Clinton and classified government documentation on her personal e-mail servers? Tick
Biden and the payments to his family? Tick
Obama's failure to stop Biden's activities as VP and whether he therefore allowed foreign countries to influence US policy? Tick
Nancy Pelosi and her share deals? Tick
Once you start down this route, there is no end.
Clinton was investigated regarding classified documents. She cooperated with the investigation (unlike Trump), and the matter is closed.
Hunter Biden has been investigated for the last five years - by a Trump appointee - and the investigation continued under Biden's presidency. It's impossible to imagine the converse happening under Trump.
The reality is that, by international standards, the US political class is quite clean (as is ours, BTW). Ironically, Donald "drain the swamp" Trump is the most notable exception, a grifter and liar focused on personal enrichment with no respect for the rule of law or the normal constraints on power. He is a figure absolutely recognisable from badly run poor countries - where this kind of leader is the key reason why these countries remain poor and badly run. It is incredible to me that there are apparently sane and lucid people who can't see this.
The refusal to accept defeat and trashing support for institutions without basis is right out of the budding authoritarian playbook.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
They didn't call for the death of anyone. They sat around smoking weed. Do you think Otis Ferry et al breaking into the Houses of Parliament shouting the odds about foxhunting was "an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent"?
The cries to “hang Pence”, those weren’t calling for his death? Can you explain this special sort of hanging that doesn’t kill someone? Thanks.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
Lots of thinly veiled Trumptons on PB.
I'm not sure about lots, but when the false equivalence is brought out in preposterous fashion it cannot be ignored as potentially true.
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
It's a death spiral. Everything is too expensive, so wages need to go up. Wages go up, The bank shits its pants, cries about inflation and puts rates up. Capitalism works until it doesn't! We're screwed.
Inflation has happened before. Just because it's been a while...
I've had people telling me that the world is ending because house prices have gone down a bit in some areas. Because in their memory this has never happened.
If you take inflation into account, don't house prices stay reasonably flat over the long term? House prices are heading south for the next few years anyway, so they had better get used to it!
Mortgage costs have been on an essentially flat path in real terms with some random walk both above and below since at least 1990. House PRICES have been rising due to declining interest rates. I think we're headed for small falls in nominal house prices and yes declining in real terms, hypothecated mortgage cost is above the long term line at the moment.
I think that the ‘correction’ in the most expensive areas* will be significant. Perhaps 25% in London in money terms, with a lot of people stuck unable to remortgage due to negative equity, like 1991 all over again. There’s many people with high six figures on their mortgages, who face needing to find thousands extra per month as fixed-rate deals expire.
For the rest of the country, it won’t be too bad though, at least for those with repayment mortgages. Prices off 10% in money terms will be okay.
*the very top of the market will likely be surprisingly unaffected, as most of the super-prime London real estate is purchased in cash.
See for instance the Sally Clark case, where the infamous Roy Meadow opined on the chance of two cot deaths in one family, without understanding statistics (Bayes theory, for @Miklosvar ).
coughcoughassumingindependencecoughcough
Equation 1: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B) if B is independent of A
Equation 2: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B|A) if B is not independent of A
Roy Meadow thought that the second cot death (B) was independent of the first cot death (A), so he used the first equation. But apparently they aren't and he should have used the second equation instead
That is still very poor probability maths for the situation.
While for any specific individual the probability of two unlikely things happening together is small, in a large enough population the probability that it will happen to someone will be a lot higher, and you shouldn't prosecute that someone simply for being unlucky.
See also winning the jackpot on the national lottery...
I believe their is at least one documented case of the same numbers coming up twice in a row. (Not UK)
Bulgaria, IIRC.
There is a fun chapter on lottery numbers in a book called Humble Pi, by, I think, Matt Parker. My favourite anecdote is that there are tens of thousands who buy lottery tickets with the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6. Which of course is as likely to come up as any other - but should it do so, they will share a very disappointing prize, probably in the hundreds of pounds. There are also at least three cases of people who have mistakenly bought two tickets with the same numbers for the same draw, which has won the jackpot, leading them to win, say 2/5th of the jackpot rather than 1/4. And there was also the story of the UK lottery, about 15 years ago, where the numbers were 7, 14, 21, 35, 41, 42 - i.e. only one ball off successive multiples of seven. There were thousands and thousands of people who got five numbers that week (presumably their numbers were 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42, though this data doesn't get released) - such that the prize for guessing five numbers was less than the prize for winning three numbers that week.
But only now, momentarily: lots of catching up to do with the inflation accumulated over the last 2-3 years. An instantaneous differential rate is one thing: what hits people in the pocket is the integral.
Edit: and real wages *still* going down, even on your figure.
Inflation fallen from 10% to under 8%, if you had your way we would have an inflationary wage spiral and inflation rising from 10% not falling
My way? What on earth are you talking about?
You're proud of inflation at 8% ... positvely proud of it. And a situation where actual workers' wages play little part in inflation. As pointed out many times here.
I am proud of the government reducing inflation from 11.1% last year at its peak to just 7.9% this month ie little more than the 7.8% rise in wages on today's figures.
Had you been in charge inflation would probably now be 12%+ and rising
Had an experience with a real life Saturday morning Russian troll today.
Opened with small talk, then for no reason switched to talking about an 'interesting' podcast by RFK Jr, and how he laid out a timeline about Ukraine and you cannot blame the Russians really. I opined I really could, and they started on the checklist - NATO expansion, ethnic Russians being oppressed, look at the USA in Iraq, the works. By the end I was preempting all the points they were raising.
They walk among us.
One of my son's schoolfriends, nine years old, was pro-Russia in the war. He apparently got chatting to another 'kid' in an online game, who told him all about the war, and how whilst it is regrettable, it is Russia defending itself.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
I'm the opposite. I don't think Trump's presidency was actually disastrous. But I think his re-election would be.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
Also "inflation is down a little bit so everyone is just as happy as they were 3 years ago"-ism.
“Wages are up almost as high as inflation!” is my new favourite copium from the Brexit die-hards.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
But what’s the alternative to trying to jail your political opponents for actions committed while they were in office, *when* they have broken the law? Why should Trump be allowed to break the law just because he’s a politician?
The law applies to everyone is a bedrock of a democratic system. Immunity for those in office is a recipe for disaster. We’ve all heard the phone call. Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes for him. That seems like prima facie evidence of legal wrongdoing.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
I'm the opposite. I don't think Trump's presidency was actually disastrous. But I think his re-election would be.
I think that depends on how you define 'disastrous'. His actions whilst in power were limited; but the after-effects (such as the way the supreme court has acted, Roe v Wade, the increasing immunity to reality of the Republican Party, restrictions of rights generally) could be tremendously harmful in the short-term. Much of this is in his name.
Although some (I guess the anti-wokeists) might see this reverses as 'progress'...
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
The system did do its job. He was voted out for having failed as president.
The issue became that he then repeatedly tried to overthrow the system to stay in power.
Whatever her many and egregious shortcomings, that was hardly the fault of Hilary Clinton.
As @Sandpit has pointed out, American politicians on both sides are so immersed in the system, there are plenty of things which you could investigate.
Clinton and classified government documentation on her personal e-mail servers? Tick
Biden and the payments to his family? Tick
Obama's failure to stop Biden's activities as VP and whether he therefore allowed foreign countries to influence US policy? Tick
Nancy Pelosi and her share deals? Tick
Once you start down this route, there is no end.
H Clinton was investigated. Her errors were deemed too minor to prosecute.
Biden and his son have been investigated. Nothing has been found to link any payments to Joe. Hunter has been charged with some minor crimes.
The problem with your argument of equivalence is that the facts don’t agree with you.
See for instance the Sally Clark case, where the infamous Roy Meadow opined on the chance of two cot deaths in one family, without understanding statistics (Bayes theory, for @Miklosvar ).
coughcoughassumingindependencecoughcough
Equation 1: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B) if B is independent of A
Equation 2: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B|A) if B is not independent of A
Roy Meadow thought that the second cot death (B) was independent of the first cot death (A), so he used the first equation. But apparently they aren't and he should have used the second equation instead
That is still very poor probability maths for the situation.
While for any specific individual the probability of two unlikely things happening together is small, in a large enough population the probability that it will happen to someone will be a lot higher, and you shouldn't prosecute that someone simply for being unlucky.
Agreed.
The other problem is that we have very little idea what value P(B|A) takes.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
Also "inflation is down a little bit so everyone is just as happy as they were 3 years ago"-ism.
“Wages are up almost as high as inflation!” is my new favourite copium from the Brexit die-hards.
The thing is, increased real terms wages for a given section of the workforce - largely that one which had been most disadvantaged by the previous 20 years - was a genuine benefit of Brexit, albeit only for that section - and was one of the reasons I favoured Brexit. But government rather balked at how expensive it suddenly was to do everything like care for the elderly or deliver stuff, and so started up the immigration engine again.
Of course, it's always hard to pick out what causes what. My view is that inflation is 95% Covid+Ukraine - as shown by the fact that there is inflation about wage levels on the continent too - but if I am to celebrate increase in wages of lorry drivers, for example, I would also have to note that lorry drivers on the continent were doing rather well in 2021 too.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
Ah, so you’re on to victim blaming now? We can’t blame people beating police officers lying on the ground. No, we must blame the police for lying on the ground being beaten.
I think the attempting to steal the election, and the classified documents, offences, may be the ones that will get him. And there seems to be an increasing chance of him getting pre-trial detention by his attacks on witnesses and judges.
As ever I am surprised by the continuing 18C nature of the US Justice System - in this case juries not being allowed majority verdicts. Do they wear silver buckles on their shoes?
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
Alanbrooke isn't a loon. He's just trolling again.
In this case not. The police screwed up thats all there is to it. An insurrection requires planning and organisation and Trump cant do either of those. The Dems are simply using the matter to get at Trump. If Trump had done all the things he;s accused of he would have been in jail two years ago,
A remarkable display of ignorance, wilful or otherwise.
So why is he not in jail ?
Why are all the indictments coming out in the middle of an election ?
We’re hardly in the “middle” of an election. The first primary is 5 months away.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
The system did do its job. He was voted out for having failed as president.
The issue became that he then repeatedly tried to overthrow the system to stay in power.
Whatever her many and egregious shortcomings, that was hardly the fault of Hilary Clinton.
As @Sandpit has pointed out, American politicians on both sides are so immersed in the system, there are plenty of things which you could investigate.
Clinton and classified government documentation on her personal e-mail servers? Tick
Biden and the payments to his family? Tick
Obama's failure to stop Biden's activities as VP and whether he therefore allowed foreign countries to influence US policy? Tick
Nancy Pelosi and her share deals? Tick
Once you start down this route, there is no end.
And, in case you hadn't noticed, they all have been investigated.
Just as Trump's record is:
1) Attempted to rig a vote? Tick 2) Tried to falsify election returns? Tick 3) Attempted to prevent the certifying of the election? Tick
I mean, there's whataboutery, there's one eyed bias and then there's sheer lunacy.
They haven't really - and, indeed I am old enough to remember that if you even made the mention of Hunter Biden's name, you were a fully paid up loon who supported Russian disinformation. Who is the loon now? *
* I don't think you are a loon, I think you have extreme one-eyed bias. If it came out to ban the GOP, you would probably argue the case for it (actually, I think you already did at one point).
I suppose I should be glad your projection isn't 100%.
Yes, I think there is a good case for banning a party that has committed multiple criminal acts to overturn election results.
Just as I do not think there is a good case for banning one that hasn't.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
But what’s the alternative to trying to jail your political opponents for actions committed while they were in office, *when* they have broken the law? Why should Trump be allowed to break the law just because he’s a politician?
The law applies to everyone is a bedrock of a democratic system. Immunity for those in office is a recipe for disaster. We’ve all heard the phone call. Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes for him. That seems like prima facie evidence of legal wrongdoing.
Quite. No one wants abuse of legal processes to silence opponents, we see it in authoritarian regimes, but refusing to legitimately use processes because someone runs for office is not a solution.
Someone like Christie is interesting because I think he has said the New York case should not have been brought but the others are legitimate. Barr may have as well. Very flawed people, but treading a line between saying any charge is warranted, or that Trump should be above the law.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
I would agree on all this. I think the one thing that is missing is the personal element. I put a lot of the blame on Obama. He so personally detested Trump - and you only have to see the look in his eyes when he dropped the mic to see how much he hated the man with a passion - that he encouraged the Democrats to go after Trump. I do think Clinton was miffed but she had little real influence post-her defeat and, in any event, I am sure Bill would have been advising her not to rock the boat.
Obama really does have a lot to answer for.
Unfathomable how a person would take offence at somebody waging a vicious racist smear campaign against him.
See for instance the Sally Clark case, where the infamous Roy Meadow opined on the chance of two cot deaths in one family, without understanding statistics (Bayes theory, for @Miklosvar ).
coughcoughassumingindependencecoughcough
Equation 1: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B) if B is independent of A
Equation 2: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B|A) if B is not independent of A
Roy Meadow thought that the second cot death (B) was independent of the first cot death (A), so he used the first equation. But apparently they aren't and he should have used the second equation instead
That is still very poor probability maths for the situation.
While for any specific individual the probability of two unlikely things happening together is small, in a large enough population the probability that it will happen to someone will be a lot higher, and you shouldn't prosecute that someone simply for being unlucky.
Wasn't this a problem with early DNA matching that nobody wanted to talk about?
If you have reason to test your suspect and you get a match, fine. If you trawl a database of x million people and get a match, not so good.
More that early DNA testing used a cheap, quick method for a "match" which wasn't actually matching DNA. More that one sample was fairly like the other. The probability of a "match" was quite low.
There was that too.
But there were a number of cases where the evidence was presented that a DNA match was a 1 in 10m chance - or something like that - and there wasn't much else to go on.
At that point you should be thinking, well, that means there are 6 people out there in the UK who you could have trawled from a database. This isn't a 99.9999999% chance you having the right person, it is a 17% chance.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
Alanbrooke isn't a loon. He's just trolling again.
In this case not. The police screwed up thats all there is to it. An insurrection requires planning and organisation and Trump cant do either of those. The Dems are simply using the matter to get at Trump. If Trump had done all the things he;s accused of he would have been in jail two years ago,
It appears the man tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the new President. Just ask Mike Pence. Or John Bolton
'The Federal indictment against Donald Trump unsealed this afternoon is stunning and persuasive, but there should be no celebrating. This is a dark day for our country: an elected president, while in office, is alleged to have violated his sworn constitutional obligations. But it will be even darker if Trump can postpone the trial of these charges until after November 2024. He complains the charges should have been filed long ago, and if he were innocent he would want a speedy trial. Without that, or if he is acquitted, he may well be elected president again.'
That would be the Jon Bolton who Trump sacked and who has sulked ever since ?
That would be the John Bolton who Trump appointed.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
I'm the opposite. I don't think Trump's presidency was actually disastrous. But I think his re-election would be.
I think that depends on how you define 'disastrous'. His actions whilst in power were limited; but the after-effects (such as the way the supreme court has acted, Roe v Wade, the increasing immunity to reality of the Republican Party, restrictions of rights generally) could be tremendously harmful in the short-term. Much of this is in his name.
Although some (I guess the anti-wokeists) might see this reverses as 'progress'...
Hm, yes, but there's a question of cause and effect here. I would agree that large sections of the American right have got a lot more uncompromising, and that this is highly regrettable, but I would argue that Trump is a result, not a cause, of this.
Had an experience with a real life Saturday morning Russian troll today.
Opened with small talk, then for no reason switched to talking about an 'interesting' podcast by RFK Jr, and how he laid out a timeline about Ukraine and you cannot blame the Russians really. I opined I really could, and they started on the checklist - NATO expansion, ethnic Russians being oppressed, look at the USA in Iraq, the works. By the end I was preempting all the points they were raising.
They walk among us.
There's a few like that on our village FB group usually with a garnish of de-dollarization, Freeman of the Land bullshit, burying precious metals in their back garden and 5G-phobia.
We also have one UFO obsessive who posts with a frequency and intensity that makes leon look like a slacker. I chucked a saucepan lid out of an upstairs window, got my Ukrainian sidekick to make a shaky iPhone video of the 'UAP' then posted it. For the next three months the enthusiast was so excited they posted ENTIRELY IN CAPS.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
But what’s the alternative to trying to jail your political opponents for actions committed while they were in office, *when* they have broken the law? Why should Trump be allowed to break the law just because he’s a politician?
The law applies to everyone is a bedrock of a democratic system. Immunity for those in office is a recipe for disaster. We’ve all heard the phone call. Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes for him. That seems like prima facie evidence of legal wrongdoing.
Also that call was well after most legal challenges had failed, iirc, which could be important. If most matters were legally settles and legal avenues exhausted, the same basic urgings are much worse, since even if you believe it all still, you don't have a right to try to change things in a non legal way.
I see as predicted I'mnofanofTrumpbutism is back in vogue. To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
I'm the opposite. I don't think Trump's presidency was actually disastrous. But I think his re-election would be.
I think that depends on how you define 'disastrous'. His actions whilst in power were limited; but the after-effects (such as the way the supreme court has acted, Roe v Wade, the increasing immunity to reality of the Republican Party, restrictions of rights generally) could be tremendously harmful in the short-term. Much of this is in his name.
Although some (I guess the anti-wokeists) might see this reverses as 'progress'...
Hm, yes, but there's a question of cause and effect here. I would agree that large sections of the American right have got a lot more uncompromising, and that this is highly regrettable, but I would argue that Trump is a result, not a cause, of this.
I think he's both a result (which is how he got power) and a cause of the apparent acceleration of this trend.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
The system did do its job. He was voted out for having failed as president.
The issue became that he then repeatedly tried to overthrow the system to stay in power.
Whatever her many and egregious shortcomings, that was hardly the fault of Hilary Clinton.
As @Sandpit has pointed out, American politicians on both sides are so immersed in the system, there are plenty of things which you could investigate.
Clinton and classified government documentation on her personal e-mail servers? Tick
Biden and the payments to his family? Tick
Obama's failure to stop Biden's activities as VP and whether he therefore allowed foreign countries to influence US policy? Tick
Nancy Pelosi and her share deals? Tick
Once you start down this route, there is no end.
H Clinton was investigated. Her errors were deemed too minor to prosecute.
Biden and his son have been investigated. Nothing has been found to link any payments to Joe. Hunter has been charged with some minor crimes.
The problem with your argument of equivalence is that the facts don’t agree with you.
Hunter plead guilty to some, but the deal was rescinded. While it's entirely reasonable to argue it was too lenient, withdrawing the plea deal might backfire on his pursuers.
Any evidence from the laptop, for example, is seriously dodgy in terms of chain of custody.
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
They didn't call for the death of anyone. They sat around smoking weed. Do you think Otis Ferry et al breaking into the Houses of Parliament shouting the odds about foxhunting was "an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent"?
The cries to “hang Pence”, those weren’t calling for his death? Can you explain this special sort of hanging that doesn’t kill someone? Thanks.
I get that there are a range of views on the severity and 'coup-iness' of the invasion of the capital (and FWIW in isolation I think it was awful and troubling for a number of reasons, but certainly not of itself a coup - it was the broad pattern of behaviours, of which the tacit approval of this by Trump was a part). But it is substantively different to Otis Ferry.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
But what’s the alternative to trying to jail your political opponents for actions committed while they were in office, *when* they have broken the law? Why should Trump be allowed to break the law just because he’s a politician?
The law applies to everyone is a bedrock of a democratic system. Immunity for those in office is a recipe for disaster. We’ve all heard the phone call. Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes for him. That seems like prima facie evidence of legal wrongdoing.
And if Trump were not charged, he would claim complete exoneration.
Which would be a bit tough on the Jan 6th rioters already convicted of conspiracy. Whose trials the Trump defenders have been pretty quiet about.
Off thread - we're rewatching Parks and Recreation. In series 5 (so probably about 2009), Joe Biden makes an appearance. Now, acting is hard (anyone remember Maggie's appearance in Yes Minister?). People who aren't actors tend to be wooden at best. But Joe Biden was not only very good, but also charming, articulate and charismatic. For those who didn't really come across him until he was president in his dotage, it was quite a shock. (And I know they can shoot and reshoot and reshoot, but presumably when he's recording stuff as president he can too.)
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
I wonder if Andrew Bailey will lead by example and freeze all wages at the Bank of England ?
Starting with his own £500k salary, £100k bonus, and a very nice index-linked DB pension.
IIRC he’s the highest-paid public-sector employee in the UK.
The foolish mistake Bailey made was in calling for pay restraint. Not only totally impractical but outside of his remit. It also gave the impression of a man who did not want to use the tools available to him.
AIUI he has/had only one tool - Interest Rates. Most control theorists would be horrified by a hugely complex system with only one control lever...
Mr. Brooke, in 2016 Trump seemed less bonkers than now.
The storming of the Capitol was a less than edifying spectacle.
J6 was a fk up where the police lost control of a crowd. The correct response is to sack the police chief and put better measures in place for next time,
They broke into the Capitol you loon! This is like people running amok through the Houses of Parliament calling for the execution of key government ministers or members of the Royal Family. It was not "police losing control of a crowd". It was an insurrectionist riot with murderous intent ffs. Nothing less.
Alanbrooke isn't a loon. He's just trolling again.
In this case not. The police screwed up thats all there is to it. An insurrection requires planning and organisation and Trump cant do either of those. The Dems are simply using the matter to get at Trump. If Trump had done all the things he;s accused of he would have been in jail two years ago,
A remarkable display of ignorance, wilful or otherwise.
So why is he not in jail ?
Why are all the indictments coming out in the middle of an election ?
We’re hardly in the “middle” of an election. The first primary is 5 months away.
Cases take time to come to court.
Indeed. It was a bloody dim comment from Alan. He needs to invest in a diary.
After its slightly puzzling buoyancy last year, the decline of the ruble this last few months has been quite stark and not often remarked on. Presumably they have significantly burned through their reserves. I wonder how much the war has cost them?
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
I would agree on all this. I think the one thing that is missing is the personal element. I put a lot of the blame on Obama. He so personally detested Trump - and you only have to see the look in his eyes when he dropped the mic to see how much he hated the man with a passion - that he encouraged the Democrats to go after Trump. I do think Clinton was miffed but she had little real influence post-her defeat and, in any event, I am sure Bill would have been advising her not to rock the boat.
See for instance the Sally Clark case, where the infamous Roy Meadow opined on the chance of two cot deaths in one family, without understanding statistics (Bayes theory, for @Miklosvar ).
coughcoughassumingindependencecoughcough
Equation 1: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B) if B is independent of A
Equation 2: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B|A) if B is not independent of A
Roy Meadow thought that the second cot death (B) was independent of the first cot death (A), so he used the first equation. But apparently they aren't and he should have used the second equation instead
That is still very poor probability maths for the situation.
While for any specific individual the probability of two unlikely things happening together is small, in a large enough population the probability that it will happen to someone will be a lot higher, and you shouldn't prosecute that someone simply for being unlucky.
Wasn't this a problem with early DNA matching that nobody wanted to talk about?
If you have reason to test your suspect and you get a match, fine. If you trawl a database of x million people and get a match, not so good.
More that early DNA testing used a cheap, quick method for a "match" which wasn't actually matching DNA. More that one sample was fairly like the other. The probability of a "match" was quite low.
There was that too.
But there were a number of cases where the evidence was presented that a DNA match was a 1 in 10m chance - or something like that - and there wasn't much else to go on.
At that point you should be thinking, well, that means there are 6 people out there in the UK who you could have trawled from a database. This isn't a 99.9999999% chance you having the right person, it is a 17% chance.
Assumes no contamination of the sample etc. Wasn't there a recent case of a mystery woman showing up in multiple unlinked cases that turned out to be someone not being careful in the manufacture of the kits?
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
I wonder if Andrew Bailey will lead by example and freeze all wages at the Bank of England ?
Starting with his own £500k salary, £100k bonus, and a very nice index-linked DB pension.
IIRC he’s the highest-paid public-sector employee in the UK.
The foolish mistake Bailey made was in calling for pay restraint. Not only totally impractical but outside of his remit. It also gave the impression of a man who did not want to use the tools available to him.
AIUI he has/had only one tool - Interest Rates. Most control theorists would be horrified by a hugely complex system with only one control lever...
Bailey has one lever he can use in tandem with the other MPC members, though Hunt & Sunak have the other levers in the form of taxation, budgets & borrowing. Freezing thresholds in the face of rising wages ought to be doing some legwork on reducing aggregate demand though not as much as rising interest rates will.
After its slightly puzzling buoyancy last year, the decline of the ruble this last few months has been quite stark and not often remarked on. Presumably they have significantly burned through their reserves. I wonder how much the war has cost them?
I think that last year’s buoyancy was caused both by a lack of access to the markets, and the Russians burning what reserves they had available.
They’re making good money now from O&G exports, but that’s their only source of foreign reserves, and there’s a lot of rich people leaving town who have been selling their rubles.
Somewhat ironically, it appears that Bitcoin has finally found a use for itself, as there’s few ways to get hold of Benjamins in Moscow at the moment, at least not at anything close to the official exchange rate. There’s stories of Russians turning up in Dubai trying to liquidate hundreds or even thousands of BTC, carried with them on memory sticks!
See for instance the Sally Clark case, where the infamous Roy Meadow opined on the chance of two cot deaths in one family, without understanding statistics (Bayes theory, for @Miklosvar ).
coughcoughassumingindependencecoughcough
Equation 1: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B) if B is independent of A
Equation 2: P(A and B ) = P(A) x P(B|A) if B is not independent of A
Roy Meadow thought that the second cot death (B) was independent of the first cot death (A), so he used the first equation. But apparently they aren't and he should have used the second equation instead
That is still very poor probability maths for the situation.
While for any specific individual the probability of two unlikely things happening together is small, in a large enough population the probability that it will happen to someone will be a lot higher, and you shouldn't prosecute that someone simply for being unlucky.
Wasn't this a problem with early DNA matching that nobody wanted to talk about?
If you have reason to test your suspect and you get a match, fine. If you trawl a database of x million people and get a match, not so good.
More that early DNA testing used a cheap, quick method for a "match" which wasn't actually matching DNA. More that one sample was fairly like the other. The probability of a "match" was quite low.
There was that too.
But there were a number of cases where the evidence was presented that a DNA match was a 1 in 10m chance - or something like that - and there wasn't much else to go on.
At that point you should be thinking, well, that means there are 6 people out there in the UK who you could have trawled from a database. This isn't a 99.9999999% chance you having the right person, it is a 17% chance.
Assumes no contamination of the sample etc. Wasn't there a recent case of a mystery woman showing up in multiple unlinked cases that turned out to be someone not being careful in the manufacture of the kits?
Sample contamination, given the extreme sensitivity of detection, is very easy.
DNA evidence alone, while extremely persuasive, must be confirmed by supporting evidence.
Off thread - we're rewatching Parks and Recreation. In series 5 (so probably about 2009), Joe Biden makes an appearance. Now, acting is hard (anyone remember Maggie's appearance in Yes Minister?). People who aren't actors tend to be wooden at best. But Joe Biden was not only very good, but also charming, articulate and charismatic. For those who didn't really come across him until he was president in his dotage, it was quite a shock. (And I know they can shoot and reshoot and reshoot, but presumably when he's recording stuff as president he can too.)
Interesting meandering thought on which world leaders would have made good actors. Reagan obviously had previous.
Blair's v natural Catherine Tate bit I think demonstrated at least a solid local am-dram level of acting competence. Obama could cut a decent scene as well.
The other end of the spectrum you've got maybe Brown and Thatcher, both of whom kind of struggled to play themselves in real life.
Hideous; like the tank-sized Bentleys an insult to the elegant heritage of the brand. The sort of car a child would design out of Fimo.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
Arguably, it is Rolls-Royce's lack of self-delusion regarding its market - giving drug barons, gangsters, rappers, tech bros, nepo babies etc a veneer of respectability whilst appealing to their poor taste - that has kept them in business. Arrivistes have money, and nouveaux-pauvres do not.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
Indeed. Someone in the US needs to take a step back from the hyper-polarisation, before a genuine conflict emerges. I don’t think it will be a hot civil war, but it will definitely be violent in places, as we’ve seen sporadically in the past few years.
The biggest problem is that the polarisation is popular; it sells newspapers and cable news eyeballs, it brings in donations and brings out voters. The actual Trump in power, was nothing like the rhetoric from either his own side or his opponents.
Trying to jail your political opponents, for actions committed while they were in office, is possibly the worst example of this polarisation in practice. It doesn’t help that the amount of money in politics, means that almost no-one who’s been around Washington for any length of time is properly clean, so the incentives are there to continue trying to prosecute opppenents whenever there’s a change of government.
There really needs to be an expansion of both term limits and maximum ages. A President or Senator shouldn’t be older than 70 on election, and both limited to two terms. Reps should be limited to five terms, a decade in the House, and not older than the federal retirement age.
But what’s the alternative to trying to jail your political opponents for actions committed while they were in office, *when* they have broken the law? Why should Trump be allowed to break the law just because he’s a politician?
The law applies to everyone is a bedrock of a democratic system. Immunity for those in office is a recipe for disaster. We’ve all heard the phone call. Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes for him. That seems like prima facie evidence of legal wrongdoing.
Also that call was well after most legal challenges had failed, iirc, which could be important. If most matters were legally settles and legal avenues exhausted, the same basic urgings are much worse, since even if you believe it all still, you don't have a right to try to change things in a non legal way.
The BBC have a copy of the call on their website. Sadly it stops immediately after Trump says something like ‘we won the state’. Just after he’s asked for another 11,000 votes. It would have been helpful to have Raffenberger’s reply.
If Trump survives these legal attacks and somehow contrives to win, then he will make sure he is immune forever and he will want vengeance to boot
Truly perilous times for the USA. It’s arguably another step towards actual civil conflict. And as with other civil wars each step towards the war makes logical sense in itself, may indeed be completely justifiable (here is probably an example of that) yet the sense of an impending explosion only grows
A classic example of 'you reap what you sow'. @Alanbrooke is right - we were promised all these things in 2016 and which never happened. The correct response to Trump being elected in 2016 should have been just to ignore his bluster and let the system do its work - either out in 2020 or 2024. But no. Because Clinton couldn't accept she had lost her chance to be the first female President and Obama hated Trump with a passion, it all became about getting rid of him at all costs.
If you believe the man is the Devil, as many on here and on the Democrat side do, then any - and I mean any - means to stop him seems justifiable. And, before you say, 'he's a crook' and 'he should be tried for his crimes', we all know the practice doesn't match the theory in that the authorities turn a blind eye when circumstances dictate. We have the 'not in the public interest' test here for exactly these reasons.
What will happen is as clear as daylight. Even if Trump does go down, whoever is the Republican GOP candidate will only get the nomination - and the turnout - if they promise to go after the Democrat side. Old Joe's payoffs (and, for fuck's sake, who really believes this idea you have to show direct payments to Biden? Nobody in any political position where records are open to disclosure etc), Obama and Clinton et al all under investigation if the GOP wins.
There is a good chance the US is heading towards a potential internal armed conflict within the next 24-36 months.
The system did do its job. He was voted out for having failed as president.
The issue became that he then repeatedly tried to overthrow the system to stay in power.
Whatever her many and egregious shortcomings, that was hardly the fault of Hilary Clinton.
As @Sandpit has pointed out, American politicians on both sides are so immersed in the system, there are plenty of things which you could investigate.
Clinton and classified government documentation on her personal e-mail servers? Tick
Biden and the payments to his family? Tick
Obama's failure to stop Biden's activities as VP and whether he therefore allowed foreign countries to influence US policy? Tick
Nancy Pelosi and her share deals? Tick
Once you start down this route, there is no end.
H Clinton was investigated. Her errors were deemed too minor to prosecute.
Biden and his son have been investigated. Nothing has been found to link any payments to Joe. Hunter has been charged with some minor crimes.
The problem with your argument of equivalence is that the facts don’t agree with you.
Also, as the late and lamented conservative humourist, P J O´Rourke, once said as he- very reluctantly- endorsed Hilary over Trump.. "I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises. It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."
Trump was not only a lousy President, he was, and is, a lousy man. Neither is he a lousy man "within normal parameters". He is not just a liar, a crook, and a rogue- as we keep finding, he is way beyond normal parameters..
Trump is uniquely a performance artist of fakery, a liar so brazen that he is not so much post truth, he is a man who does not even understand what truth is. His personal conduct is industrial strength creepy and slimy, exactly the kind of creep and slime he learned from Roy Cohn when he hired him as his personal attorney, so that he could learn corruption and slime from the master. We can judge a man by his friends: crooked attorneys, mafiosi, call girls, fraudsters and general scum.
So, while his supporters may shout "they are all the same", the truth is inevitably different. He is unique and uniquely he has been impeached twice and indicted four times and rising. This is not normal, it is no where near normal parameters, in fact no one else even comes close.
Trump's indictment may be a matter of much interest, comment and amusement, but it also reflects well on the USofA. Inconceivable for the like to happen in Russia, China or Iran.
The indictment matters much less than the convictions, which we do not have yet.
The US *appears* to have very narrowly dodged a bullet. I don't expect them to learn any lessons from this, and there will soon be other charlatans - perhaps cleverer than Trump - playing similar games. Which would be bad for the USA and the world.
You seem to be assuming that Trump will be stopped by being in jail. I am not so sure.
TDS in full force.
He is not going to be Potus from prison.
Enough of the gratuitous bedwetting.
You really need to show your workings here. The probabilities are on the face of it easily non-zero that Trump is imprisoned, and is elected. Are you saying the probability of one of them is in fact zero, and if so which? Or are you saying that a country so bound by law and precedent that it murders tens of thousands of its citizens every year because of an 18th century rule about muskets, is going to say sod the technicalities, we'll find a workaround? If you are saying that, what is the workaround going to be?
Telegraph and the Bank of England appear to be seriously upset at wages going up.
“Mortgage holders are braced for more pain as spiralling wage growth fuelled predictions that the Bank of England will be forced to further crank up interest rates.
“The surprise jump prompted traders to ramp up bets that the Bank of England will press ahead with a further interest rate rise to 5.5pc in September before going further to 5.75pc by the end of the year.
“Soaring wages also inched up predictions for the peak of inflation. The City of London now expects the Bank of England’s base rate to peak as high as 6pc in March 2023. This is up from expectations of 5.75pc on Monday.
I wonder if Andrew Bailey will lead by example and freeze all wages at the Bank of England ?
Starting with his own £500k salary, £100k bonus, and a very nice index-linked DB pension.
IIRC he’s the highest-paid public-sector employee in the UK.
The foolish mistake Bailey made was in calling for pay restraint. Not only totally impractical but outside of his remit. It also gave the impression of a man who did not want to use the tools available to him.
AIUI he has/had only one tool - Interest Rates. Most control theorists would be horrified by a hugely complex system with only one control lever...
Bailey has one lever he can use in tandem with the other MPC members, though Hunt & Sunak have the other levers in the form of taxation, budgets & borrowing. Freezing thresholds in the face of rising wages ought to be doing some legwork on reducing aggregate demand though not as much as rising interest rates will.
Freezing thresholds may having the opposite effect - if you need an extra £1000 after take home pay you will be asking for a £2000 pay rise rather than £1800.
Hideous; like the tank-sized Bentleys an insult to the elegant heritage of the brand. The sort of car a child would design out of Fimo.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
Arguably, it is Rolls-Royce's lack of self-delusion regarding its market - giving drug barons, gangsters, rappers, tech bros, nepo babies etc a veneer of respectability whilst appealing to their poor taste - that has kept them in business. Arrivistes have money, and nouveaux-pauvres do not.
Totally, and fair play to them - they're delivering to their target audience and presumably actually growing their business, which is what businesses ought to be doing.
Comments
IIRC he’s the highest-paid public-sector employee in the UK.
This is all very messy. Despite record net migration, the fall in participation rates has seen the labour market tighten, putting pressure on wages.
There was record saving during the pandemic for richer households, so they have plenty to burn during this period even while the "furlough class" suffer. And interest rates on savings are not high enough to reduce their propensity to spend.
Meanwhile, people who own their homes outright (those richer people again, generally) aren't feeling the pinch as much, and the only tool available to the BoE hurts mortgage holders and renters the most, many of whom cannot reduce their spending any further.
However one of Trumps less attractive characteristic's is he treats people like shit. He has a long list of people he has sacked and who owe him no favours, In that respect he is his own worst enemy and frankly deserves to reap what he sows.
However, the situation at the moment means that the cost of housing, absent from the official inflation stats, is significantly higher than inflation, which is why the cost of living tops the issues list in polls.
And yes, reliance on savings - but surely no-one has, say, £1m cash in the bank that they are gloomily chewing through hoping to die before they get to the end of. The trick, as I'm sure you know, is to structure your capital so that it doesn't get eroded by inflation, by finding a portfolio which grows with inflation.
Now that's more difficult to do in a high inflation world. But not so difficult that we should be celebrating wage growth below inflation. Surely?
High inflation also weakens sterling, making imported goods much more expensive too
In my local, which is posh Surrey a pint of Shere Drop is £5.30.
One thing noticeable on my cycling trips in France is the difference in price between towns and the countryside. I know it varies here, particularly steep in London, but the difference was nothing compared to France. In a town the price was similar to the UK. They practically gave it away in the bars in out of the way villages in the middle of nowhere.
And because he's been granted bail, so far.
I've had people telling me that the world is ending because house prices have gone down a bit in some areas. Because in their memory this has never happened.
Most of the inflation is imported, as a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which outweigh any inflation caused by wage rises, especially at the bottom end of the labour market where there is the greatest wage pressure, and where wage rises are countered to some extent by benefits withdrawal.
The massive spike in fuel prices from last summer is about to fall out of the inflation figures, and while there’s been recent rises in oil, there’s some indication that the OPEC countries might be about to reverse recent cuts, as that nice Mr Putin has upset them somewhat by trying to play politics with food supplies.
The BoE really needs to hold its nerve on rate rises at this point, rather than pontificating about wage rises being bad for the economy.
To be scrupulously fair, I think some of these lads (despite the occasional fig leaf protestation) are fans of Trump.
I saw a lawyer online once who on RICO speculations would say 'it's never RICO', so that'll br interesting.
You're proud of inflation at 8% ... positvely proud of it. And a situation where actual workers' wages play little part in inflation. As pointed out many times here.
House prices are heading south for the next few years anyway, so they had better get used to it!
Opened with small talk, then for no reason switched to talking about an 'interesting' podcast by RFK Jr, and how he laid out a timeline about Ukraine and you cannot blame the Russians really. I opined I really could, and they started on the checklist - NATO expansion, ethnic Russians being oppressed, look at the USA in Iraq, the works. By the end I was preempting all the points they were raising.
They walk among us.
Meanwnile, I don’t see now Biden is doing anything on that list.
Alanbrooke seems to imagine prosecutors can , for example, just say 'hand me you mobile phone so I can look at your text messages'.
In effect they often can - but only after very lengthy legal arguments.
For the rest of the country, it won’t be too bad though, at least for those with repayment mortgages. Prices off 10% in money terms will be okay.
*the very top of the market will likely be surprisingly unaffected, as most of the super-prime London real estate is purchased in cash.
There is a fun chapter on lottery numbers in a book called Humble Pi, by, I think, Matt Parker. My favourite anecdote is that there are tens of thousands who buy lottery tickets with the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6. Which of course is as likely to come up as any other - but should it do so, they will share a very disappointing prize, probably in the hundreds of pounds.
There are also at least three cases of people who have mistakenly bought two tickets with the same numbers for the same draw, which has won the jackpot, leading them to win, say 2/5th of the jackpot rather than 1/4.
And there was also the story of the UK lottery, about 15 years ago, where the numbers were 7, 14, 21, 35, 41, 42 - i.e. only one ball off successive multiples of seven. There were thousands and thousands of people who got five numbers that week (presumably their numbers were 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42, though this data doesn't get released) - such that the prize for guessing five numbers was less than the prize for winning three numbers that week.
Had you been in charge inflation would probably now be 12%+ and rising
Weighs 2975kg.
Thunderbirds lives.
https://insideevs.com/news/681770/2024-rolls-royce-spectre-makes-north-american-debut-bespoke-model/
The law applies to everyone is a bedrock of a democratic system. Immunity for those in office is a recipe for disaster. We’ve all heard the phone call. Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes for him. That seems like prima facie evidence of legal wrongdoing.
Although some (I guess the anti-wokeists) might see this reverses as 'progress'...
https://www.licarco.com/news/how-much-does-a-tesla-weigh-check-your-teslas-weight
Good for the UK balance of payments figures.
Biden and his son have been investigated. Nothing has been found to link any payments to Joe. Hunter has been charged with some minor crimes.
The problem with your argument of equivalence is that the facts don’t agree with you.
The other problem is that we have very little idea what value P(B|A) takes.
Of course, it's always hard to pick out what causes what. My view is that inflation is 95% Covid+Ukraine - as shown by the fact that there is inflation about wage levels on the continent too - but if I am to celebrate increase in wages of lorry drivers, for example, I would also have to note that lorry drivers on the continent were doing rather well in 2021 too.
As ever I am surprised by the continuing 18C nature of the US Justice System - in this case juries not being allowed majority verdicts. Do they wear silver buckles on their shoes?
Cases take time to come to court.
A Bentley pulling into Aldi's car park.
Yes, I think there is a good case for banning a party that has committed multiple criminal acts to overturn election results.
Just as I do not think there is a good case for banning one that hasn't.
Someone like Christie is interesting because I think he has said the New York case should not have been brought but the others are legitimate. Barr may have as well. Very flawed people, but treading a line between saying any charge is warranted, or that Trump should be above the law.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/15/three-suspected-russia-spies-bulgaria-nationals-arrested-uk/
But there were a number of cases where the evidence was presented that a DNA match was a 1 in 10m chance - or something like that - and there wasn't much else to go on.
At that point you should be thinking, well, that means there are 6 people out there in the UK who you could have trawled from a database. This isn't a 99.9999999% chance you having the right person, it is a 17% chance.
Priors and all that...
Current DNA testing claims to be 1 in a billion, which changes it somewhat, although not completely:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/dna-17-profiling
We also have one UFO obsessive who posts with a frequency and intensity that makes leon look like a slacker. I chucked a saucepan lid out of an upstairs window, got my Ukrainian sidekick to make a shaky iPhone video of the 'UAP' then posted it. For the next three months the enthusiast was so excited they posted ENTIRELY IN CAPS.
Appreciate it's appealing to the core audience of tasteless arrivistes, of course.
While it's entirely reasonable to argue it was too lenient, withdrawing the plea deal might backfire on his pursuers.
Any evidence from the laptop, for example, is seriously dodgy in terms of chain of custody.
13 Russian soldiers dead and 50 injured, in Ukranian attack on enemy base near Mariupol.
Ukranians capture one more town in their way towards the railway line linking to Crimea.
Russian rockets hit civilian areas in Lviv last night. (Thankfully I won’t be there next week. Oh.)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/15/ukraine-russia-war-latest-counteroffensive-vladimir-putin/
Which would be a bit tough on the Jan 6th rioters already convicted of conspiracy.
Whose trials the Trump defenders have been pretty quiet about.
Now, acting is hard (anyone remember Maggie's appearance in Yes Minister?). People who aren't actors tend to be wooden at best. But Joe Biden was not only very good, but also charming, articulate and charismatic. For those who didn't really come across him until he was president in his dotage, it was quite a shock. (And I know they can shoot and reshoot and reshoot, but presumably when he's recording stuff as president he can too.)
I wonder how much the war has cost them?
Only from the PB Trumptons.
Only on PB.
Freezing thresholds in the face of rising wages ought to be doing some legwork on reducing aggregate demand though not as much as rising interest rates will.
They’re making good money now from O&G exports, but that’s their only source of foreign reserves, and there’s a lot of rich people leaving town who have been selling their rubles.
Somewhat ironically, it appears that Bitcoin has finally found a use for itself, as there’s few ways to get hold of Benjamins in Moscow at the moment, at least not at anything close to the official exchange rate. There’s stories of Russians turning up in Dubai trying to liquidate hundreds or even thousands of BTC, carried with them on memory sticks!
If I were in the market for a fabulously expensive BEV, which I'm not, I think I'd get the Cadillac Celestiq.
DNA evidence alone, while extremely persuasive, must be confirmed by supporting evidence.
Blair's v natural Catherine Tate bit I think demonstrated at least a solid local am-dram level of acting competence. Obama could cut a decent scene as well.
The other end of the spectrum you've got maybe Brown and Thatcher, both of whom kind of struggled to play themselves in real life.
It would have been helpful to have Raffenberger’s reply.
Trump was not only a lousy President, he was, and is, a lousy man. Neither is he a lousy man "within normal parameters". He is not just a liar, a crook, and a rogue- as we keep finding, he is way beyond normal parameters..
Trump is uniquely a performance artist of fakery, a liar so brazen that he is not so much post truth, he is a man who does not even understand what truth is. His personal conduct is industrial strength creepy and slimy, exactly the kind of creep and slime he learned from Roy Cohn when he hired him as his personal attorney, so that he could learn corruption and slime from the master. We can judge a man by his friends: crooked attorneys, mafiosi, call girls, fraudsters and general scum.
So, while his supporters may shout "they are all the same", the truth is inevitably different. He is unique and uniquely he has been impeached twice and indicted four times and rising. This is not normal, it is no where near normal parameters, in fact no one else even comes close.
And he will end in jail.
I still think it's minging.