The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Interesting that Conservative commentators are debating about attacking her from the left, or excessively focussing on her personal life. They want Trump to stick to attacking her from the right on policy, and let a few of the commentators do the negative campaigning.
What they are going big on at the moment, is the fact that they’re attacking Trump as being a threat to democracy, while ignoring democracy in their own party by seeking to crown a replacement candidate without reference to their own voters.
They are not 'crowning' a replacement. The rules are quite clear; it's just that no one else is prepared to stand against her.
The GOP are just shit stirring, while standing in a midden.
It's not a matter of the rules but the lack of a contest is far from ideal. Surely you can see that?
Changing the nominee this late is the day is not ideal. Replacing him with the VP was going to be pretty well the only way it worked.
In the context of $80m plus in small donations in the 24hrs after Harris declared, how do you manufacture a contest ?
I don't know much about how American politics works. They've got themselves in a mess thanks largely to Biden or those around him. Clearly it would have been better had Harris won the nomination in a contest than simply being given it. I also have little time for the cowards who think 2024 isn't a great time to run so they are going to give it a miss and try for 2028.
How important is it actually to defeat Trump for these people? Is the Republic at risk or not?
The highlighted bit is the point. But Biden's presidency proved rather more successful than his pessimistic party expected (remember 'adequate in the circumstances'), and he made the mistake of thinking it a good idea that he run for a second term - which most people back in 2020 probably didn't expect. (FWIW, I was laying him as the 2024 nominees almost as soon as it was possible to do so, to my cost.)
US politics makes it very hard indeed to challenge a sitting president for the nomination, unless they have made a complete hash of the presidency - and even then they're probably still favourite. LBJ, for example, shocked his party when he withdrew voluntarily. And there are very few other examples of voluntary one term presidents.
No one really knew what would happen when Biden stepped down, despite it being discussed for weeks beforehand. The speed with which support coalesced around Harris came as a surprise, I think, but it made the idea of arranging a contest, which had been floated by quite a number of the party's leaders, completely redundant within 24 hours.
The coalessing of support around Harris wasn't a surprise to many observers.
- There is no one in the party who is head and shoulders above the others. - So "other than Harris" doesn't really improve the chances of a win that much - Going with Harris is much easier on financial (donation to campaign), procedural reasons. - A floor fight at the convention might work. It *might* even produce a winner. But if a non-Harris nominee fails, they will be blamed. And all their supporters. For Trump getting in again. Which means their careers are ended.
So everyone else stepping back and ushering Harris forward is the easy solution.
Well I too predicted it the most likely outcome. But it was the speed, and the enthusiasm with which it happened that was the surprise.
Watching the whole party pivot, inside 72 hours, from “Biden’s doing just fine” to “Kamala for President”, cheered on so uncritically and enthusiastically by much of the media, has certainly been a sight to behold watching from afar.
Well yes, it has. But in a manner which somehow failed to much excite my natural scepticism.
You can't really fake grassroots enthusiasm.
So far she has surprised on the upside. That may not last, of course.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Interesting that Conservative commentators are debating about attacking her from the left, or excessively focussing on her personal life. They want Trump to stick to attacking her from the right on policy, and let a few of the commentators do the negative campaigning.
What they are going big on at the moment, is the fact that they’re attacking Trump as being a threat to democracy, while ignoring democracy in their own party by seeking to crown a replacement candidate without reference to their own voters.
They are not 'crowning' a replacement. The rules are quite clear; it's just that no one else is prepared to stand against her.
The GOP are just shit stirring, while standing in a midden.
It's not a matter of the rules but the lack of a contest is far from ideal. Surely you can see that?
Changing the nominee this late is the day is not ideal. Replacing him with the VP was going to be pretty well the only way it worked.
In the context of $80m plus in small donations in the 24hrs after Harris declared, how do you manufacture a contest ?
I don't know much about how American politics works. They've got themselves in a mess thanks largely to Biden or those around him. Clearly it would have been better had Harris won the nomination in a contest than simply being given it. I also have little time for the cowards who think 2024 isn't a great time to run so they are going to give it a miss and try for 2028.
How important is it actually to defeat Trump for these people? Is the Republic at risk or not?
The highlighted bit is the point. But Biden's presidency proved rather more successful than his pessimistic party expected (remember 'adequate in the circumstances'), and he made the mistake of thinking it a good idea that he run for a second term - which most people back in 2020 probably didn't expect. (FWIW, I was laying him as the 2024 nominees almost as soon as it was possible to do so, to my cost.)
US politics makes it very hard indeed to challenge a sitting president for the nomination, unless they have made a complete hash of the presidency - and even then they're probably still favourite. LBJ, for example, shocked his party when he withdrew voluntarily. And there are very few other examples of voluntary one term presidents.
No one really knew what would happen when Biden stepped down, despite it being discussed for weeks beforehand. The speed with which support coalesced around Harris came as a surprise, I think, but it made the idea of arranging a contest, which had been floated by quite a number of the party's leaders, completely redundant within 24 hours.
The coalessing of support around Harris wasn't a surprise to many observers.
- There is no one in the party who is head and shoulders above the others. - So "other than Harris" doesn't really improve the chances of a win that much - Going with Harris is much easier on financial (donation to campaign), procedural reasons. - A floor fight at the convention might work. It *might* even produce a winner. But if a non-Harris nominee fails, they will be blamed. And all their supporters. For Trump getting in again. Which means their careers are ended.
So everyone else stepping back and ushering Harris forward is the easy solution.
Well I too predicted it the most likely outcome. But it was the speed, and the enthusiasm with which it happened that was the surprise.
no Watching the whole party pivot, inside 72 hours, from “Biden’s doing just fine” to “Kamala for President”, cheered on so uncritically and enthusiastically by much of the media, has certainly been a sight to behold watching from afar.
We have skipped past the bit of who knew Biden was senile and for how long...we had one day of the media pearl clutching of how dry could they have hidden it from us.
Not really. I doubt there is private evidence that is markedly more damaging than what we all saw at the debate. Unless there's a written diagnosis of dementia which comes to the surface there's nothing to see here and nobody cares. Same as we are not holding our breath about the inquiry into those Tory twats betting on the GE date. It no longer matters.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
No she isn't, she was one of the most leftwing Democratic Senators as rated by GovTrack, she is only right of AOC and Sanders she is certainly not on the right of the Democratic party
It used to be a standard career track thing for DAs - if you are gong for the Democrat party, you balance "2000 convictions, no loses" with "look at my liberal policies on everything else"
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
I've often wondered what I'd do if I fell foul of American prosecutors and was extradited.
I'd probably feel immense pressure to plea bargain for a 2-3 year term in a moderate jail to avoid the 200+ years in a horrible one, even if i was innocent.
You'd have to have deep pockets and balls of steel to do anything else.
On the plus side if your 20 stone cellmate ordered you to toss his salad you could just tell him you’re a meat eater.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
I've often wondered what I'd do if I fell foul of American prosecutors and was extradited.
I'd probably feel immense pressure to plea bargain for a 2-3 year term in a moderate jail to avoid the 200+ years in a horrible one, even if i was innocent.
You'd have to have deep pockets and balls of steel to do anything else.
I often wonder whether the American woman who accidentally killed a British motorcyclist by driving on the wrong side of the road before going back to the US assumed that she would get a tough sentence because that's what Americans are used to for even minor crimes, whereas in fact she probably would have just got fined and a community order.
The Man in Seat 61 @seatsixtyone · 2h There's no easy way to extend existing platforms at Manchester Piccadilly, and HS2 trains are already ordered as 8-car, designed to run on key services as 2x8-car. Basically, HS2 Ph[ase]2 is needed to make sense of Ph1, end of. 3/3.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Interesting that Conservative commentators are debating about attacking her from the left, or excessively focussing on her personal life. They want Trump to stick to attacking her from the right on policy, and let a few of the commentators do the negative campaigning.
What they are going big on at the moment, is the fact that they’re attacking Trump as being a threat to democracy, while ignoring democracy in their own party by seeking to crown a replacement candidate without reference to their own voters.
They are not 'crowning' a replacement. The rules are quite clear; it's just that no one else is prepared to stand against her.
The GOP are just shit stirring, while standing in a midden.
It's not a matter of the rules but the lack of a contest is far from ideal. Surely you can see that?
Changing the nominee this late is the day is not ideal. Replacing him with the VP was going to be pretty well the only way it worked.
In the context of $80m plus in small donations in the 24hrs after Harris declared, how do you manufacture a contest ?
I don't know much about how American politics works. They've got themselves in a mess thanks largely to Biden or those around him. Clearly it would have been better had Harris won the nomination in a contest than simply being given it. I also have little time for the cowards who think 2024 isn't a great time to run so they are going to give it a miss and try for 2028.
How important is it actually to defeat Trump for these people? Is the Republic at risk or not?
The highlighted bit is the point. But Biden's presidency proved rather more successful than his pessimistic party expected (remember 'adequate in the circumstances'), and he made the mistake of thinking it a good idea that he run for a second term - which most people back in 2020 probably didn't expect. (FWIW, I was laying him as the 2024 nominees almost as soon as it was possible to do so, to my cost.)
US politics makes it very hard indeed to challenge a sitting president for the nomination, unless they have made a complete hash of the presidency - and even then they're probably still favourite. LBJ, for example, shocked his party when he withdrew voluntarily. And there are very few other examples of voluntary one term presidents.
No one really knew what would happen when Biden stepped down, despite it being discussed for weeks beforehand. The speed with which support coalesced around Harris came as a surprise, I think, but it made the idea of arranging a contest, which had been floated by quite a number of the party's leaders, completely redundant within 24 hours.
The coalessing of support around Harris wasn't a surprise to many observers.
- There is no one in the party who is head and shoulders above the others. - So "other than Harris" doesn't really improve the chances of a win that much - Going with Harris is much easier on financial (donation to campaign), procedural reasons. - A floor fight at the convention might work. It *might* even produce a winner. But if a non-Harris nominee fails, they will be blamed. And all their supporters. For Trump getting in again. Which means their careers are ended.
So everyone else stepping back and ushering Harris forward is the easy solution.
Well I too predicted it the most likely outcome. But it was the speed, and the enthusiasm with which it happened that was the surprise.
no Watching the whole party pivot, inside 72 hours, from “Biden’s doing just fine” to “Kamala for President”, cheered on so uncritically and enthusiastically by much of the media, has certainly been a sight to behold watching from afar.
We have skipped past the bit of who knew Biden was senile and for how long...we had one day of the media pearl clutching of how dry could they have hidden it from us.
Not really. I doubt there is private evidence that is markedly more damaging than what we all saw at the debate. Unless there's a written diagnosis of dementia which comes to the surface there's nothing to see here and nobody cares. Same as we are not holding our breath about the inquiry into those Tory twats betting on the GE date. It no longer matters.
I disagree, it absolutely matters what the outcome is of the Tory betting probe.
I believe Swindon is entirely without redeeming features. Or so I am constantly told by a good friend who grew up there and couldn’t wait to leave
You mean the Magic Roundabout isn’t a tourist attraction, and that most people of means who live there there aren’t on the first train to London or Bristol every morning?
Swindon includes part of the North Wessex Downs AONB, so there must be some pleasant parts at least.
There are, outside Swindon.
I think the criteria I would use for the geographic spread of "interest" within a local area are:
Within the council district boundary, or Within an easy distance of the boundary (say 10km) for the average cyclist (though I'm not insisting a bike is used)
So the AONB, including the Ridgeway, Hinton Parva and probably the White Horse are in.
Just got an email from the Tories recommending to join as a member by 7pm tonight in order to be able to vote in the leadership election. They must be slightly desperate for new members!
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Gave away? It was only ever on lease, what kind of lawyer are you?
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Gave away? It was only ever on lease, what kind of lawyer are you?
She should have broken international law like Boris Johnson did.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Interesting that Conservative commentators are debating about attacking her from the left, or excessively focussing on her personal life. They want Trump to stick to attacking her from the right on policy, and let a few of the commentators do the negative campaigning.
What they are going big on at the moment, is the fact that they’re attacking Trump as being a threat to democracy, while ignoring democracy in their own party by seeking to crown a replacement candidate without reference to their own voters.
They are not 'crowning' a replacement. The rules are quite clear; it's just that no one else is prepared to stand against her.
The GOP are just shit stirring, while standing in a midden.
It's not a matter of the rules but the lack of a contest is far from ideal. Surely you can see that?
Changing the nominee this late is the day is not ideal. Replacing him with the VP was going to be pretty well the only way it worked.
In the context of $80m plus in small donations in the 24hrs after Harris declared, how do you manufacture a contest ?
I don't know much about how American politics works. They've got themselves in a mess thanks largely to Biden or those around him. Clearly it would have been better had Harris won the nomination in a contest than simply being given it. I also have little time for the cowards who think 2024 isn't a great time to run so they are going to give it a miss and try for 2028.
How important is it actually to defeat Trump for these people? Is the Republic at risk or not?
The highlighted bit is the point. But Biden's presidency proved rather more successful than his pessimistic party expected (remember 'adequate in the circumstances'), and he made the mistake of thinking it a good idea that he run for a second term - which most people back in 2020 probably didn't expect. (FWIW, I was laying him as the 2024 nominees almost as soon as it was possible to do so, to my cost.)
US politics makes it very hard indeed to challenge a sitting president for the nomination, unless they have made a complete hash of the presidency - and even then they're probably still favourite. LBJ, for example, shocked his party when he withdrew voluntarily. And there are very few other examples of voluntary one term presidents.
No one really knew what would happen when Biden stepped down, despite it being discussed for weeks beforehand. The speed with which support coalesced around Harris came as a surprise, I think, but it made the idea of arranging a contest, which had been floated by quite a number of the party's leaders, completely redundant within 24 hours.
The coalessing of support around Harris wasn't a surprise to many observers.
- There is no one in the party who is head and shoulders above the others. - So "other than Harris" doesn't really improve the chances of a win that much - Going with Harris is much easier on financial (donation to campaign), procedural reasons. - A floor fight at the convention might work. It *might* even produce a winner. But if a non-Harris nominee fails, they will be blamed. And all their supporters. For Trump getting in again. Which means their careers are ended.
So everyone else stepping back and ushering Harris forward is the easy solution.
Well I too predicted it the most likely outcome. But it was the speed, and the enthusiasm with which it happened that was the surprise.
no Watching the whole party pivot, inside 72 hours, from “Biden’s doing just fine” to “Kamala for President”, cheered on so uncritically and enthusiastically by much of the media, has certainly been a sight to behold watching from afar.
We have skipped past the bit of who knew Biden was senile and for how long...we had one day of the media pearl clutching of how dry could they have hidden it from us.
Not really. I doubt there is private evidence that is markedly more damaging than what we all saw at the debate. Unless there's a written diagnosis of dementia which comes to the surface there's nothing to see here and nobody cares. Same as we are not holding our breath about the inquiry into those Tory twats betting on the GE date. It no longer matters.
I disagree, it absolutely matters what the outcome is of the Tory betting probe.
All these gamblers who have attached themselves to the tory party are fucking idiots.
The new leader should (metaphorically) publicly lynch all of them.
And distance themselves from the gambling industry, while they're at it.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Gave away? It was only ever on lease, what kind of lawyer are you?
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
He's trying to raise the retirement age from 50, or 55. Which given China's demographics is likely inevitable.
I believe Swindon is entirely without redeeming features. Or so I am constantly told by a good friend who grew up there and couldn’t wait to leave
You mean the Magic Roundabout isn’t a tourist attraction, and that most people of means who live there there aren’t on the first train to London or Bristol every morning?
The Magic Roundabout is a brownfield development site occupying 2 acres.
If it was reduced to a more suitable size the wasted space could have dozens of flats built on it.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
I've often wondered what I'd do if I fell foul of American prosecutors and was extradited.
I'd probably feel immense pressure to plea bargain for a 2-3 year term in a moderate jail to avoid the 200+ years in a horrible one, even if i was innocent.
You'd have to have deep pockets and balls of steel to do anything else.
I often wonder whether the American woman who accidentally killed a British motorcyclist by driving on the wrong side of the road before going back to the US assumed that she would get a tough sentence because that's what Americans are used to for even minor crimes, whereas in fact she probably would have just got fined and a community order.
It's very rare for extraditions to work the other way.
Generally, the US embassy will move heaven and earth to get their citizens out of any trouble they get into abroad and simply ignore any requests to the contrary.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
She did explore keeping just Hong Kong island and Kowloon but it was pointed out to her it made no sense and wasn't sustainable without the New Territories for water, power and some food, and China wouldn't extend the lease.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Gave away? It was only ever on lease, what kind of lawyer are you?
The island wasn’t on lease.
Only the New Territories were leased, but that was also where the water supply and mote than two thirds of the total land area was and is...
For those dissing Swindon it did have the Oasis Swimming Pool which had some awesome (for the early 80s) slides and a wave machine where I spend several happy days celebrating friends' birthdays. It was shut on New Years' Day though so we couldn't celebrate mine there The eponymous band were named after it.
The Museum of the Great Western Railway is also worth a visit.
This is kind of my point. The country is built on towns (large villages, small cities, whatever) and they've all gotten a bit dowdy and run down. Swindon, Devizes, Salisbury, Reading, Northampton, Milton Keynes.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
Their members have a vote in November , like everyone else. But no say in the party's selection, unless they're delegates ?
Kamala lived until aged 12 in Berkeley, at a time the Black Panthers had quite a strong presence there. She and her mother would have seen both the positives (free food for hungry kids) and the negatives (descent of the Panthers into criminality). Quite a pivotal time and place to be young, including being bussed as part of a desegregation programme.
For those dissing Swindon it did have the Oasis Swimming Pool which had some awesome (for the early 80s) slides and a wave machine where I spend several happy days celebrating friends' birthdays. It was shut on New Years' Day though so we couldn't celebrate mine there The eponymous band were named after it.
The Museum of the Great Western Railway is also worth a visit.
This is kind of my point. The country is built on towns (large villages, small cities, whatever) and they've all gotten a bit dowdy and run down. Swindon, Devizes, Salisbury, Reading, Northampton, Milton Keynes.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
I've often wondered what I'd do if I fell foul of American prosecutors and was extradited.
I'd probably feel immense pressure to plea bargain for a 2-3 year term in a moderate jail to avoid the 200+ years in a horrible one, even if i was innocent.
You'd have to have deep pockets and balls of steel to do anything else.
I often wonder whether the American woman who accidentally killed a British motorcyclist by driving on the wrong side of the road before going back to the US assumed that she would get a tough sentence because that's what Americans are used to for even minor crimes, whereas in fact she probably would have just got fined and a community order.
It's very rare for extraditions to work the other way.
Generally, the US embassy will move heaven and earth to get their citizens out of any trouble they get into abroad and simply ignore any requests to the contrary.
IIRC the US have sent over everyone we *put in an extradition request* for, since the new treaty was signed. In the case above, she was covered by diplomatic immunity and no extradition request was made.
In a number of cases, the UK courts have blocked extradition to the US.
For those dissing Swindon it did have the Oasis Swimming Pool which had some awesome (for the early 80s) slides and a wave machine where I spend several happy days celebrating friends' birthdays. It was shut on New Years' Day though so we couldn't celebrate mine there The eponymous band were named after it.
The Museum of the Great Western Railway is also worth a visit.
This is kind of my point. The country is built on towns (large villages, small cities, whatever) and they've all gotten a bit dowdy and run down. Swindon, Devizes, Salisbury, Reading, Northampton, Milton Keynes.
They aren't intrinsically terrible places though, although Reading is a bit of a sprawl.
Mrs Flatlander's response to this conversation was (and I quote):
I believe Swindon is entirely without redeeming features. Or so I am constantly told by a good friend who grew up there and couldn’t wait to leave
You mean the Magic Roundabout isn’t a tourist attraction, and that most people of means who live there there aren’t on the first train to London or Bristol every morning?
The Magic Roundabout is a brownfield development site occupying 2 acres.
If it was reduced to a more suitable size the wasted space could have dozens of flats built on it.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Interesting that Conservative commentators are debating about attacking her from the left, or excessively focussing on her personal life. They want Trump to stick to attacking her from the right on policy, and let a few of the commentators do the negative campaigning.
What they are going big on at the moment, is the fact that they’re attacking Trump as being a threat to democracy, while ignoring democracy in their own party by seeking to crown a replacement candidate without reference to their own voters.
They are not 'crowning' a replacement. The rules are quite clear; it's just that no one else is prepared to stand against her.
The GOP are just shit stirring, while standing in a midden.
It's not a matter of the rules but the lack of a contest is far from ideal. Surely you can see that?
Changing the nominee this late is the day is not ideal. Replacing him with the VP was going to be pretty well the only way it worked.
In the context of $80m plus in small donations in the 24hrs after Harris declared, how do you manufacture a contest ?
I don't know much about how American politics works. They've got themselves in a mess thanks largely to Biden or those around him. Clearly it would have been better had Harris won the nomination in a contest than simply being given it. I also have little time for the cowards who think 2024 isn't a great time to run so they are going to give it a miss and try for 2028.
How important is it actually to defeat Trump for these people? Is the Republic at risk or not?
The highlighted bit is the point. But Biden's presidency proved rather more successful than his pessimistic party expected (remember 'adequate in the circumstances'), and he made the mistake of thinking it a good idea that he run for a second term - which most people back in 2020 probably didn't expect. (FWIW, I was laying him as the 2024 nominees almost as soon as it was possible to do so, to my cost.)
US politics makes it very hard indeed to challenge a sitting president for the nomination, unless they have made a complete hash of the presidency - and even then they're probably still favourite. LBJ, for example, shocked his party when he withdrew voluntarily. And there are very few other examples of voluntary one term presidents.
No one really knew what would happen when Biden stepped down, despite it being discussed for weeks beforehand. The speed with which support coalesced around Harris came as a surprise, I think, but it made the idea of arranging a contest, which had been floated by quite a number of the party's leaders, completely redundant within 24 hours.
The coalessing of support around Harris wasn't a surprise to many observers.
- There is no one in the party who is head and shoulders above the others. - So "other than Harris" doesn't really improve the chances of a win that much - Going with Harris is much easier on financial (donation to campaign), procedural reasons. - A floor fight at the convention might work. It *might* even produce a winner. But if a non-Harris nominee fails, they will be blamed. And all their supporters. For Trump getting in again. Which means their careers are ended.
So everyone else stepping back and ushering Harris forward is the easy solution.
Well I too predicted it the most likely outcome. But it was the speed, and the enthusiasm with which it happened that was the surprise.
Watching the whole party pivot, inside 72 hours, from “Biden’s doing just fine” to “Kamala for President”, cheered on so uncritically and enthusiastically by much of the media, has certainly been a sight to behold watching from afar.
Except for the fact that "the whole [Democratic] party" was NOT saying "Biden's doing just fine" post-debate and before his withdrawl.
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Rory Stewart would be a good candidate and is at a loose end, they tend to like liberal Tories like Patten or Stewart or social democrats like Jenkins for the role
I believe Swindon is entirely without redeeming features. Or so I am constantly told by a good friend who grew up there and couldn’t wait to leave
You mean the Magic Roundabout isn’t a tourist attraction, and that most people of means who live there there aren’t on the first train to London or Bristol every morning?
The Magic Roundabout is a brownfield development site occupying 2 acres.
If it was reduced to a more suitable size the wasted space could have dozens of flats built on it.
Not that many flats, I'd wager.
Photo of the day to salivate over...
You could fit the Bullring Rotunda or one of the Barbican Towers on much less than half of it.
Just got an email from the Tories recommending to join as a member by 7pm tonight in order to be able to vote in the leadership election. They must be slightly desperate for new members!
I find it very odd. It's inviting the sort of trolling/entryism that the Corbyn election attracted. Also irritates me for paying for a membership in anticipation of this if I could have joined at last minute.
(I appreciate that in the end Corbyn did not win because of the troll vote, but in a different timeline it could have been what made the difference)
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
Their members have a vote in November , like everyone else. But no say in the party's selection, unless they're delegates ?
Kamala lived until aged 12 in Berkeley, at a time the Black Panthers had quite a strong presence there. She and her mother would have seen both the positives (free food for hungry kids) and the negatives (descent of the Panthers into criminality). Quite a pivotal time and place to be young, including being bussed as part of a desegregation programme.
JD Vance 25% Ron DeSantis 14% Vivek Ramaswamy 10% Nikki Haley 9% Ted Cruz 4% Sarah Huckabee Sanders 3% Marco Rubio 2% Tim Scott 2% Josh Hawley 2% Glenn Youngkin 1% Byron Donalds 1% Katie Britt 1% https://x.com/Politics_Polls/status/1815791813279547659
And why no Trump ?
As Trump will be ineligible if he wins as Presidents can only serve 2 terms under the US constitution.
If Trump wins then yes I would expect VP Vance to be GOP nominee in 2028, if Trump-Vance lose then I think DeSantis is favourite though Haley would also run again.
Therefore do not be surprised if DeSantis and Haley would not be too upset if Harris beats Trump in November
For those dissing Swindon it did have the Oasis Swimming Pool which had some awesome (for the early 80s) slides and a wave machine where I spend several happy days celebrating friends' birthdays. It was shut on New Years' Day though so we couldn't celebrate mine there The eponymous band were named after it.
The Museum of the Great Western Railway is also worth a visit.
This is kind of my point. The country is built on towns (large villages, small cities, whatever) and they've all gotten a bit dowdy and run down. Swindon, Devizes, Salisbury, Reading, Northampton, Milton Keynes.
They aren't intrinsically terrible places though, although Reading is a bit of a sprawl.
Mrs Flatlander's response to this conversation was (and I quote):
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
I've often wondered what I'd do if I fell foul of American prosecutors and was extradited.
I'd probably feel immense pressure to plea bargain for a 2-3 year term in a moderate jail to avoid the 200+ years in a horrible one, even if i was innocent.
You'd have to have deep pockets and balls of steel to do anything else.
I often wonder whether the American woman who accidentally killed a British motorcyclist by driving on the wrong side of the road before going back to the US assumed that she would get a tough sentence because that's what Americans are used to for even minor crimes, whereas in fact she probably would have just got fined and a community order.
She would have got porridge for Death by Dangerous Driving. It wasn't up to her anyway. She and her family were flown out of "RAF" Mildenhall the next day on a dedicated C-17 movement. There is no way she could have organised that herself so the order came from on high to get her out. She was probably a CIA illegal that they didn't want compromised in a British jail.
Just got an email from the Tories recommending to join as a member by 7pm tonight in order to be able to vote in the leadership election. They must be slightly desperate for new members!
I find it very odd. It's inviting the sort of trolling/entryism that the Corbyn election attracted. Also irritates me for paying for a membership in anticipation of this if I could have joined at last minute.
(I appreciate that in the end Corbyn did not win because of the troll vote, but in a different timeline it could have been what made the difference)
Not odd really. Their finances are shocking and donors are backing away now that there's no quid pro quo.
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Indeed. Wasn't there a rumour that Mandelson was interested?
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
Just got an email from the Tories recommending to join as a member by 7pm tonight in order to be able to vote in the leadership election. They must be slightly desperate for new members!
I find it very odd. It's inviting the sort of trolling/entryism that the Corbyn election attracted. Also irritates me for paying for a membership in anticipation of this if I could have joined at last minute.
(I appreciate that in the end Corbyn did not win because of the troll vote, but in a different timeline it could have been what made the difference)
Not odd really. Their finances are shocking and donors are backing away now that there's no quid pro quo.
It's not odd to be promoting becoming a member. It's odd - or at least risky - to allow people to join now to vote on the new leader.
Speaking of beautiful towns I am now in La Cavalerie, a small and near-perfectly preserved fortified Templar town, complete with mighty ramparts and slightly noomy church*. Its lovely. We are now enjoying rose wine and a coffee by the sunlit walls overlooking the Larzac plateau
And there are maybe 3 tourists. On a perfect summer’s day
This corner of France is superbly unvisited and unknown. I anticipate a gazette article which will ruin it by attracting thousands of Brits
Eluned Morgan is to become Welsh Labour leader and next first minister of Wales. Health Secretary Eluned Morgan has secured the support of almost all Labour Members of the Senedd (MSs) and has been confirmed as the only candidate to become Welsh Labour leader
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Indeed. Wasn't there a rumour that Mandelson was interested?
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
Boris is campaigning hard for the role. My son advises me many are campaigning equally hard to make sure he doesn't get it.
Just got an email from the Tories recommending to join as a member by 7pm tonight in order to be able to vote in the leadership election. They must be slightly desperate for new members!
I find it very odd. It's inviting the sort of trolling/entryism that the Corbyn election attracted. Also irritates me for paying for a membership in anticipation of this if I could have joined at last minute.
(I appreciate that in the end Corbyn did not win because of the troll vote, but in a different timeline it could have been what made the difference)
Not odd really. Their finances are shocking and donors are backing away now that there's no quid pro quo.
It's not odd to be promoting becoming a member. It's odd - or at least risky - to allow people to join now to vote on the new leader.
If the existing members look likely to pick the worst candidate, I guess they think it's worth a try.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
I've often wondered what I'd do if I fell foul of American prosecutors and was extradited.
I'd probably feel immense pressure to plea bargain for a 2-3 year term in a moderate jail to avoid the 200+ years in a horrible one, even if i was innocent.
You'd have to have deep pockets and balls of steel to do anything else.
I often wonder whether the American woman who accidentally killed a British motorcyclist by driving on the wrong side of the road before going back to the US assumed that she would get a tough sentence because that's what Americans are used to for even minor crimes, whereas in fact she probably would have just got fined and a community order.
She got a suspended sentence which was fair enough and would probably have had a community order had she stayed in the UK.
In the US it would probably not have been that much different, Ted Kennedy killed someone while driving, probably under the influence of alcohol and left the scene and also got a suspended sentence (albeit in relatively liberal Massachusetts and like us most states have toughened driving laws since)
I believe Swindon is entirely without redeeming features. Or so I am constantly told by a good friend who grew up there and couldn’t wait to leave
You mean the Magic Roundabout isn’t a tourist attraction, and that most people of means who live there there aren’t on the first train to London or Bristol every morning?
The Magic Roundabout is a brownfield development site occupying 2 acres.
If it was reduced to a more suitable size the wasted space could have dozens of flats built on it.
Not that many flats, I'd wager.
Photo of the day to salivate over...
You could fit the Bullring Rotunda or one of the Barbican Towers on much less than half of it.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
Their members have a vote in November , like everyone else. But no say in the party's selection, unless they're delegates ?
Kamala lived until aged 12 in Berkeley, at a time the Black Panthers had quite a strong presence there. She and her mother would have seen both the positives (free food for hungry kids) and the negatives (descent of the Panthers into criminality). Quite a pivotal time and place to be young, including being bussed as part of a desegregation programme.
*the noominess of the church in La Cavalerie may have been accentuated by the fact that, when we walked in, a small boy was beautifully and spontaneously singing Gounod’s Ave Maria to his adoring parents. Even as the light streamed through the ancient Templar windows into the limestoned gloom
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
He's trying to raise the retirement age from 50, or 55. Which given China's demographics is likely inevitable.
It's not popular.
Indeed but as Chinese elections are basically 'Vote X here for Communist Party of China or don't and go to jail' I doubt he is too worried what Chinese polls show! Basically Chinese leaders are elected by the party alone even more than Truss or Gordon Brown were
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
Their members have a vote in November , like everyone else. But no say in the party's selection, unless they're delegates ?
Kamala lived until aged 12 in Berkeley, at a time the Black Panthers had quite a strong presence there. She and her mother would have seen both the positives (free food for hungry kids) and the negatives (descent of the Panthers into criminality). Quite a pivotal time and place to be young, including being bussed as part of a desegregation programme.
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Indeed. Wasn't there a rumour that Mandelson was interested?
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
Boris is campaigning hard for the role. My son advises me many are campaigning equally hard to make sure he doesn't get it.
Really? I can't think of an electorate less likely to vote for Boris, although I suppose it depends on how many trolls there are at large in the Provinces...
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Indeed. Wasn't there a rumour that Mandelson was interested?
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
Boris is campaigning hard for the role. My son advises me many are campaigning equally hard to make sure he doesn't get it.
Really? I can't think of an electorate less likely to vote for Boris, although I suppose it depends on how many trolls there are at large in the Provinces...
Oh yes, he has been very high profile. He is, of course, a former President of the Oxford Union. And the student body in Oxford seems very well to do on the whole and with an active Tory group.
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Indeed. Wasn't there a rumour that Mandelson was interested?
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
Boris is campaigning hard for the role. My son advises me many are campaigning equally hard to make sure he doesn't get it.
Really? I can't think of an electorate less likely to vote for Boris, although I suppose it depends on how many trolls there are at large in the Provinces...
Boris would be more likely to be elected Chancellor of the University of Wolverhampton than Oxford now!
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Indeed. Wasn't there a rumour that Mandelson was interested?
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
Rumour has it he is being lined up to be our man in Washington.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Firstly, the only bit we could claim any kind of sovereignty to was not a viable unit on its own. Secondly, whatever one thought of the lease arrangement it had undeniably come to an end. And thirdly, as you point out, HK was not exactly defensible. It is ridiculous to argue that she could have done anything else.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Firstly, the only bit we could claim any kind of sovereignty to was not a viable unit on its own. Secondly, whatever one thought of the lease arrangement it had undeniably come to an end. And thirdly, as you point out, HK was not exactly defensible. It is ridiculous to argue that she could have done anything else.
One of the biggest regrets of UK foreign policy was that we never got the freehold to or 999 year lease on Hong Kong.
The Opium Wars were a real high in UK foreign policy.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Surely Thatcher versus a million-string People's Liberation Army would have been an easy victory for Thatcher?
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Surely Thatcher versus a million-string People's Liberation Army would have been an easy victory for Thatcher?
Not forgetting, one slight rusty Covenanter tank....
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Firstly, the only bit we could claim any kind of sovereignty to was not a viable unit on its own. Secondly, whatever one thought of the lease arrangement it had undeniably come to an end. And thirdly, as you point out, HK was not exactly defensible. It is ridiculous to argue that she could have done anything else.
The lease was with the pre-revolutionary government, so perhaps she should have given it to the Republic of China.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Firstly, the only bit we could claim any kind of sovereignty to was not a viable unit on its own. Secondly, whatever one thought of the lease arrangement it had undeniably come to an end. And thirdly, as you point out, HK was not exactly defensible. It is ridiculous to argue that she could have done anything else.
One of the biggest regrets of UK foreign policy was that we never got the freehold to or 999 year lease on Hong Kong.
The Opium Wars were a real high in UK foreign policy.
I know you are just trying to wind me up but for me the Opium wars were in many ways as shameful as the slave trade. A real blot of shame.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
She had a nuclear deterrent.
China had even more nuclear bombs too, Argentina had no nukes
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
Their members have a vote in November , like everyone else. But no say in the party's selection, unless they're delegates ?
Kamala lived until aged 12 in Berkeley, at a time the Black Panthers had quite a strong presence there. She and her mother would have seen both the positives (free food for hungry kids) and the negatives (descent of the Panthers into criminality). Quite a pivotal time and place to be young, including being bussed as part of a desegregation programme.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
I've often wondered what I'd do if I fell foul of American prosecutors and was extradited.
I'd probably feel immense pressure to plea bargain for a 2-3 year term in a moderate jail to avoid the 200+ years in a horrible one, even if i was innocent.
You'd have to have deep pockets and balls of steel to do anything else.
I often wonder whether the American woman who accidentally killed a British motorcyclist by driving on the wrong side of the road before going back to the US assumed that she would get a tough sentence because that's what Americans are used to for even minor crimes, whereas in fact she probably would have just got fined and a community order.
She got a suspended sentence which was fair enough and would probably have had a community order had she stayed in the UK.
In the US it would probably not have been that much different, Ted Kennedy killed someone while driving, probably under the influence of alcohol and left the scene and also got a suspended sentence (albeit in relatively liberal Massachusetts and like us most states have toughened driving laws since)
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
The last one was the proximate cause of my falling out with the Member for Brighton Pavillion. It’s being done remotely this time and oven rumour has it that Fat Johnson is running. If so I think even Sian could be persuaded to vote this time.
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Indeed. Wasn't there a rumour that Mandelson was interested?
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
Boris is campaigning hard for the role. My son advises me many are campaigning equally hard to make sure he doesn't get it.
Really? I can't think of an electorate less likely to vote for Boris, although I suppose it depends on how many trolls there are at large in the Provinces...
Oh yes, he has been very high profile. He is, of course, a former President of the Oxford Union. And the student body in Oxford seems very well to do on the whole and with an active Tory group.
Just 8% of Oxford Uni students voted Tory on 4th July according to a poll for the Student Newspaper and Reform were 5th even further behind.
Christ Church was the only college where most voted Tory. Rory Stewart might be able to win over LD and Green voters to get it, Boris has no chance
Tenuously related, Fat Pang stands down as chancellor of Oxford in October and graduates get to elect his successor. Truly a golden year for democracy fans.
Indeed. Wasn't there a rumour that Mandelson was interested?
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
Boris is campaigning hard for the role. My son advises me many are campaigning equally hard to make sure he doesn't get it.
Really? I can't think of an electorate less likely to vote for Boris, although I suppose it depends on how many trolls there are at large in the Provinces...
Oh yes, he has been very high profile. He is, of course, a former President of the Oxford Union. And the student body in Oxford seems very well to do on the whole and with an active Tory group.
Undergraduates don't get to vote. Not sure if you have to cough up £25 for an MA, you do to vote for the professor of poetry.
Personally I would vote for Richard Burgon if that was what was needed to keep Johnson out.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
The Falklands was a gamble. One that had to be taken but by no means a foregone conclusion. We clearly had a much higher quality fighting force, but were lucky in many ways - including with the weather and some of the choices Argentinian military leaders made. When the taskforce set out I remember feeling there was no way it could lose. But when you read the history and hear some of the on-the-ground testimony, it becomes an even greater victory - for Thatcher and those who fought.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Firstly, the only bit we could claim any kind of sovereignty to was not a viable unit on its own. Secondly, whatever one thought of the lease arrangement it had undeniably come to an end. And thirdly, as you point out, HK was not exactly defensible. It is ridiculous to argue that she could have done anything else.
One of the biggest regrets of UK foreign policy was that we never got the freehold to or 999 year lease on Hong Kong.
The Opium Wars were a real high in UK foreign policy.
I know you are just trying to wind me up but for me the Opium wars were in many ways as shameful as the slave trade. A real blot of shame.
Speaking of beautiful towns I am now in La Cavalerie, a small and near-perfectly preserved fortified Templar town, complete with mighty ramparts and slightly noomy church*. Its lovely. We are now enjoying rose wine and a coffee by the sunlit walls overlooking the Larzac plateau
And there are maybe 3 tourists. On a perfect summer’s day
This corner of France is superbly unvisited and unknown. I anticipate a gazette article which will ruin it by attracting thousands of Brits
That is because everyone is in Paris for the Olympics. How many tourists visited Swindon in 2012 ffs?
That is much closer than Biden was polling. It is getting interesting.
HYUFD appears to post polls selectively for pro trump bias which reinforces the point
And to fail to make the point that (+1) means he is 1 ahead in this poll, not has put on one point since last time
US polls are all over the place. A primer on which to believe would make a welcome threader.
That (+1) business is the norm for reporting on US polls, nothing unusual about it.
I know that and doubtless I will come to take it in my stride between now and November. But it's damnably unBritish and I think best practice is delete it or explain it.
The thing I hadn't really spotted about Harris before is that she's a very smiley person. Big contrast to snarly, pouty Trump.
She is an intense relief after the malevolent Trump and the sad and crazy Biden
I think that might be enough to make her POTUS. Also she is centrist. Not very Woke at all. She will appeal for all these reasons to swing voters
Centrist? Trump has already called her radical left and said that even Biden was more mainstream.
Harris has now refused to attend PM Netanyahu's address to Congress in a snub to Israel and 'she was rated by the non-partisan congressional scorekeeper GovTrack as one of the most left-wing among dozens of Democratic senators during her tenure.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn053pnv0k1o
She was attacked by the left when she was a prosecutor. For being too harsh
Harris may not be as radical left as AOC or Sanders yes but she will still be the most left liberal presidential candidate the Democrats have nominated since Dukakis, indeed arguably since McGovern
Harris is on the right of the Democratic party.
A lot of American leftists don't like her because she did things like prosecute cannabis users in California when it was against the law, whereas in fact she was doing exactly the right thing at that time.
She also used the standard tactic of American DAs - using the threat of enormous sentences to get people to plead guilty. Even when there is substantial doubt about their guilt. All to get that perfect 100% conviction record.
She didn't do much different to other DAs, but in the age of Black Lives Matter, jamming up ethnic minority defendants in huge numbers is not the cool look.
BLM are already calling for a proper nomination process, as they dislike Harris as much as they dislike any other prosecutor.
Their members have a vote in November , like everyone else. But no say in the party's selection, unless they're delegates ?
Kamala lived until aged 12 in Berkeley, at a time the Black Panthers had quite a strong presence there. She and her mother would have seen both the positives (free food for hungry kids) and the negatives (descent of the Panthers into criminality). Quite a pivotal time and place to be young, including being bussed as part of a desegregation programme.
That is much closer than Biden was polling. It is getting interesting.
HYUFD appears to post polls selectively for pro trump bias which reinforces the point
And to fail to make the point that (+1) means he is 1 ahead in this poll, not has put on one point since last time
US polls are all over the place. A primer on which to believe would make a welcome threader.
Hardly, the Georgia poll was relatively good for Harris and below the national swing to Trump in polls since 2020 when Biden won nationally by 4% but Georgia by less than 1%
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Firstly, the only bit we could claim any kind of sovereignty to was not a viable unit on its own. Secondly, whatever one thought of the lease arrangement it had undeniably come to an end. And thirdly, as you point out, HK was not exactly defensible. It is ridiculous to argue that she could have done anything else.
One of the biggest regrets of UK foreign policy was that we never got the freehold to or 999 year lease on Hong Kong.
The Opium Wars were a real high in UK foreign policy.
I know you are just trying to wind me up but for me the Opium wars were in many ways as shameful as the slave trade. A real blot of shame.
Brilliantly explained by Flashman as "it was like a trader turning up on the Clyde with a cargo of Glenlivet, to find the Scots had never heard of whisky".
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Surely Thatcher versus a million-string People's Liberation Army would have been an easy victory for Thatcher?
Thatcher would have taken on most nations alone but not China or the USSR or the US (though she ensured the latter was a close ally). As a scientist she let facts override emotional nationalism despite her patriotism
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Firstly, the only bit we could claim any kind of sovereignty to was not a viable unit on its own. Secondly, whatever one thought of the lease arrangement it had undeniably come to an end. And thirdly, as you point out, HK was not exactly defensible. It is ridiculous to argue that she could have done anything else.
One of the biggest regrets of UK foreign policy was that we never got the freehold to or 999 year lease on Hong Kong.
The Opium Wars were a real high in UK foreign policy.
I know you are just trying to wind me up but for me the Opium wars were in many ways as shameful as the slave trade. A real blot of shame.
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Thatcher was the worst Sinophile, she gave away Hong Kong.
Thatcher was a realist unlike you. She knew she could beat Argentina relatively easily and keep the Falklands but taking on the over a million strong People's Liberation Army to keep Hong Kong was a rather different prospect
Firstly, the only bit we could claim any kind of sovereignty to was not a viable unit on its own. Secondly, whatever one thought of the lease arrangement it had undeniably come to an end. And thirdly, as you point out, HK was not exactly defensible. It is ridiculous to argue that she could have done anything else.
One of the biggest regrets of UK foreign policy was that we never got the freehold to or 999 year lease on Hong Kong.
The Opium Wars were a real high in UK foreign policy.
I know you are just trying to wind me up but for me the Opium wars were in many ways as shameful as the slave trade. A real blot of shame.
Comments
But in a manner which somehow failed to much excite my natural scepticism.
You can't really fake grassroots enthusiasm.
So far she has surprised on the upside.
That may not last, of course.
So it's a question of will Trump really solve any of their problems or just make them worse...
Xi : "We cannot engage in welfarism. In the past, high welfare in some populist Latin American countries fostered lazy people who got something for nothing. Their national finances were overwhelmed, and these countries fell into the middle-income trap. Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,”
No wonder some Tories were so sinophillic.
Not the Farage and Trump and Le Pen and Meloni loving, woke hating rightwinger we all thought he was?
The Man in Seat 61
@seatsixtyone
·
2h
There's no easy way to extend existing platforms at Manchester Piccadilly, and HS2 trains are already ordered as 8-car, designed to run on key services as 2x8-car. Basically, HS2 Ph[ase]2 is needed to make sense of Ph1, end of.
3/3.
And when Biden decided not to run, the whole thing became pointless.
He wasn't invited by the administration.
Within the council district boundary, or
Within an easy distance of the boundary (say 10km) for the average cyclist (though I'm not insisting a bike is used)
So the AONB, including the Ridgeway, Hinton Parva and probably the White Horse are in.
Edit: In Donny, the biggest "visitor attraction" is probably this:
https://www.yorkshirewildlifepark.com/
The new leader should (metaphorically) publicly lynch all of them.
And distance themselves from the gambling industry, while they're at it.
But no say in the party's selection, unless they're delegates ?
It's not popular.
If it was reduced to a more suitable size the wasted space could have dozens of flats built on it.
Generally, the US embassy will move heaven and earth to get their citizens out of any trouble they get into abroad and simply ignore any requests to the contrary.
The Reporter Who Made Us Love Politics—Or Tried
Walter Shapiro’s journalism was big-hearted, clear-eyed, and guided by a deep reverence for the whole operating-level panorama of American democracy.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/07/23/the-reporter-who-made-us-love-politics-or-tried/
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/07/21/how-kamala-harris-childhood-in-berkeley-shaped-her
In a number of cases, the UK courts have blocked extradition to the US.
Total nonsense, of course.
2028 National Republican Primary:
JD Vance 25%
Ron DeSantis 14%
Vivek Ramaswamy 10%
Nikki Haley 9%
Ted Cruz 4%
Sarah Huckabee Sanders 3%
Marco Rubio 2%
Tim Scott 2%
Josh Hawley 2%
Glenn Youngkin 1%
Byron Donalds 1%
Katie Britt 1%
https://x.com/Politics_Polls/status/1815791813279547659
And why no Trump ?
The convictions should be referred back to the Court of Appeal
Adam King is a criminal barrister at QEB Hollis Whiteman."
https://unherd.com/2024/07/the-questions-haunting-the-lucy-letby-trial/
Mrs Flatlander's response to this conversation was (and I quote):
There are no shitty places, only shitty people.
Photo of the day to salivate over...
Rather the opposite!
Needs appropriate design, of course.
(I appreciate that in the end Corbyn did not win because of the troll vote, but in a different timeline it could have been what made the difference)
Leadership warned lawmakers during a closed-door meeting to focus on the vice president’s record, not her race."
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/23/gop-race-comments-harris-00170735
If Trump wins then yes I would expect VP Vance to be GOP nominee in 2028, if Trump-Vance lose then I think DeSantis is favourite though Haley would also run again.
Therefore do not be surprised if DeSantis and Haley would not be too upset if Harris beats Trump in November
"How Phones Are Making Parents the Anxious Generation
Smartphones are trust blockers for parents
Lenore Skenazy"
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/parents-are-the-anxious-generation
I do wonder how many candidates there will be on the ballot paper and whether it will be more than one.
And there are maybe 3 tourists. On a perfect summer’s day
This corner of France is superbly unvisited and unknown. I anticipate a gazette article which will ruin it by attracting thousands of Brits
Eluned Morgan is to become Welsh Labour leader and next first minister of Wales. Health Secretary Eluned Morgan has secured the support of almost all Labour Members of the Senedd (MSs) and has been confirmed as the only candidate to become Welsh Labour leader
In the US it would probably not have been that much different, Ted Kennedy killed someone while driving, probably under the influence of alcohol and left the scene and also got a suspended sentence (albeit in relatively liberal Massachusetts and like us most states have toughened driving laws since)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1+Charlie+Chaplin+Walk,+London+SE1+8XR/@51.5041698,-0.1150391,515a,35y,330.59h/data=!3m1!1e3!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x4876035a26b7f145:0xd1c47a2b70881ec2!2sSouthwark
Aristotle
Trump 48% (+1)
Harris 47%
Landmark Communications, 7/22
https://x.com/Politics_Polls/status/1815874154132083116
The Opium Wars were a real high in UK foreign policy.
And to fail to make the point that (+1) means he is 1 ahead in this poll, not has put on one point since last time
US polls are all over the place. A primer on which to believe would make a welcome threader.
Christ Church was the only college where most voted Tory. Rory Stewart might be able to win over LD and Green voters to get it, Boris has no chance
https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2024/07/23/the-oxford-student-general-election/
Personally I would vote for Richard Burgon if that was what was needed to keep Johnson out.
Opium, high.
Eeesh, I am far too subtle for PB.
American polls suffer because they do not have an American Polling Council where we get to see all the questions/tables.
A pollster could ask
‘Who are you planning on voting for? The man anointed by God, Donald Trump or the degenerate whore Kamala Harris?’
and we’d only ever see
Trump 47%
Harris 45%