Your regular reminder that words matter – politicalbetting.com
Your regular reminder that words matter – politicalbetting.com
Good example on how framing makes a big difference on poll questions. Using a split sample – there's a 10 point difference in the number of people who say train services would be better run if they were publicly owned (39%) vs run by the Government (29%). pic.twitter.com/WjVsyybdEh
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“You leave it at the door and your religion is journalism at the BBC. And the problem I’ve got is that people react quite chemically to that,” Mr Davie told the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
“So you can’t come into the newsroom with a Black Lives Matter T-shirt.
“We stand absolutely firmly against racism in any form. I find some of the hatred in society at the moment utterly abhorrent, and personally really upsetting.
“But that is a campaign that has politicised objectives, therefore is not appropriate for a journalist who may be covering that issue to be campaigning in that way,” he told an audience at the festival.
“And for some people joining the BBC, that is a very difficult thing to accept.
“I feel very strongly that if you walk into the BBC newsroom you cannot be holding a Kamala Harris mug when you come to the [US] election. No way.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/19/black-lives-matter-not-welcome-bbc-newsroom-tim-davie/
Its a misunderstanding about a lot of Swedish "public" services. Paid for by the state i.e. the taxpayer, but commonly privately operated e.g. free child care.
F1: I think this is the first time since I made the bet that Verstappen's been shorter than 4 for the title. Not inclined to hedge it, at the moment.
For what it's worth, I think Las Vegas is going to be a Russell circuit, which may have title implications. But Piastri really needs to get his head together.
The latter took his behind-closed-doors reprimand on the chin, and has got on with business.
Piastri, having had a good whine about Norris's driving, proceeded to do very much the same thing to Norris, taking them both out of the sprint race.
And had a miserable race to follow that.
Trump posted an AI video showing him DUMPING FECES on No Kings protesters. Here is how the media covered it:
1. NYT: Trump Posts Fake Video of Himself Flying a ‘King Trump’ Jet Over Protesters
2. Axios: Trump posts fake video in "KING TRUMP" jet as GOP dismisses No Kings marches
3. USA Today: Trump jabs 'No Kings' protesters with AI videos of himself wearing crown
4. People: President Donald Trump Fires Back at 'No Kings Day' by Posting AI Video of Himself Bombing Protesters with Brown Liquid
5. The Hill: Trump posts AI video in which he dumps brown liquid on ‘No Kings’ protesters
https://x.com/JuddLegum/status/1980064800974508468
Because I could quite easily see them holding over the current session for a very very long time
Verstappen has to make up good ground pretty much every weekend. But, right now, he looks capable of achieving that.
Norris is just 14 points off the lead, but Verstappen's only 26 points behind him. If the Ferraris get ahead of Piastri consistently, and Russell sometimes too, that'll make things much harder for the Aussie.
Edited: also, Hulkenberg's 9th in the standings. He's still never reached Q3.
Except that he wouldn't call it a budget; it would be "emergency funding".
The SC might even nod at that.
The midterms would still happen, assuming we haven't gone full military rule by then. And a Democrat majority, if there were one, could open the House in a basketball stadium, if it chose.
Then it gets interesting.
Government run = them
Just a demonstartion of how we hate our overlords.
We had some stunning successes with rail privatisation, as the government bit by bit encroached back into the management, regulation and functioning however we have ended up in the worst of both worlds. Paralysed indecision, destruction of corporate invention and renewal. The dead hand of the state and rent seeking by private enterprise leaves us with what feels in many situations and unworkable and unreliable transport system.
So how much further will they take it?
This is really fundamental constitutional stuff. It's what Macron is struggling with in France. It's why the civil war was fought in England in the 17th century. Trump is gathering all the power of an absolute monarch.
“You wanna have a public owned network in France? ,You better make sure that a German train company is free to bid for the service to run it. “
The irony of course… the irony…
Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine submit to Vladimir Putin’s peace terms or face destruction in an angry meeting at the White House last week, it has emerged.
The US president, who spoke with his Russian counterpart shortly before hosting Volodymyr Zelensky, warned that Putin would “destroy” Ukraine unless a peace deal was in place.
Shouting and swearing, Mr Trump threw aside Ukrainian maps of the battlefield and pressured Mr Zelensky to surrender the Donetsk region to Russia.
Putin is demanding the withdrawal of Ukraine’s army from the crucial eastern territory as a precondition for peace.
However, the surrender of Donetsk is a red line for Ukraine, which has long refused to cede the territory, which Russia has failed to capture despite fighting since 2014.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/10/19/trump-tells-ukraine-accept-putin-demands-or-be-destroyed/
Is it something really bad? This century, it's usually something really bad.
I don’t know if it is the Equality Act that is to blame, or is an excuse, but we now have normalised radical political and social action from charitable, private and public institutions that wouldn’t have in the past touched such things with a barge pole.
That goes for domestic policy, too.
Of course, the reaction to Trump being convicted would be pandemonium.
I wasn't aware the House had been out of session for just over a month now, with no sign of returning.
As you say, it's a concerning precedent just over 12 months from the mid-terms.
Can't or won't see that the line of breadcrumbs leads from "they" to the people who got voted for "they" by the same ornery voters.
It will probably take a month or so before people get annoyed with government services that are not working, or government workers not being paid, that’s what brings them back to the table.
It’s a crazy system that even allows for government to shut down at all, not sure any other country has the same constitutional process of brinkmanship. Wasn’t it Belgium that ran just fine for a year with no government after electing a a very hung Parliament?
IIRC in the UK there’s very little that has to be done, but there’s a few annual renewals such as for income tax and various terrorism-related legislation.
You had to be served through a hatch (yes, no bar), you couldn’t buy other people a drink, and you couldn’t run up a bill either. All kinds of very weird and restricted practices, only stopped in 1971.
In the US the divisions are so great that a government shutdown has been used to try to force passage of a budget that doesn't otherwise have the votes necessary to pass, that radically changes the status quo.
* In Britain the failure to pass a budget would bring down the government and force an election. The need to pass a budget by the end of the year is what is forcing the pace of the political crisis in France right now.
Kings need successors. Time to fire Vance and install Don Jnr.
The schools my grandchildren go to, my children went to, and the schools I was chairman of governors of are all, more or less 'publicly owned' though that is a fairly loose description. But it is misleading to say that they are 'run by the government'. Tax payer funded, subject to law and regulation in including that which is quite specific to education, and many other things are true. But 'run by the government' doesn't quite capture it.
Trump is having a toddler tantrum because Zelensky and Putin won't bow down before His Majesty and do as he instructs. Putin because he won't and Zelensky because he can't.
The consequences for everyone looks horrific
The breakdown in law and order, and decency, is deeply disturbing and I have no idea where this ends
@Mexicanpete makes a good point about Nathan Gill acceptance of Russian brides and Farage closeness to Putin and why it is not cutting through
Indeed in Caerphilly this Thursday Llyr Powell is favourite to take the Senedd seat from labour for Reform despite him previously working for Gill
I have come to the conclusion the public are so disenchanted with the political class they will vote for anyone who is different and not interested in the details as they are 'all the same'
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-19-2025/
The GOP controls all three branches if government, and benefits from a rock solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Whatever is going on with government is 100% down to them.
Too many folk think they have an untrammelled right to express their opinions without a filter, whether that be "black lives matter" T-shirts or "burn them in their hotels".
That seems extremely unlikely.
I recall reading about an alleged Golden Shower video filmed in a Moscow hotel room. Should this video exist there were also questions regarding the ages of some of the participants. It might of course all be 24 carat bullshine...
I think it’s more about what Trump can get from this - would you be surprised if there was some huge financial incentive “listen Donald, you get me what I want and I will make you a shareholder in x y z when the war is over, the oil/gas/minerals shares will be worth $100billion to you.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_government_shutdown
Senate is back today to vote it down again.
Consequently, when trying to anticipate what is going to happen in the future we should remember that the way things have been done in the US in the past, and what the rules say about the way things should be done, are both not good guides to what is likely to happen.
We do not know the extent or speed at which Trump is going to break the Constitution. Nor do we know how the opposition will react. My guess is further then we dare imagine, quickly, ineffectively.
There’s very much a war going on.
As another example, BR was owned by and - some would say - 'interfered with by Government' and the latter would also apply to modern train companies, both publicly owned and privately owned ...
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/sainz-handed-five-place-grid-penalty-after-antonelli-collision-in-united.17jPJgvBxHpaVL6ubyY2Xq
The problem I always have with private provision of public services is the profit (or rather, non loss) motive. If a private company can't run or provide a service at a profit, tough, frankly. They took the job on and I'd rather their shareholders suffer than the customers.
We've seen company after company underbid for services and then when they can't do the job come begging to the Government for extra funding which ends up as bonuses for Directors or Senior Managers. Meanwhile, service provision suffers.
In the days of compulsory competitive tendering, so beloved of Thatcherites, we had the grotesque sight of councils being forced to award contracts to the lowest bidder and that left us with a legacy of poorly maintained school and other public buildings as the cowboys who got the tender couldn't do the job for the money and couldn't handle the work.
I've no problem with private provision of public services as long as the private operator/contractor understands if they can't run the service for what was agreed, they absorb the loss rather than compromising the service or begging for extra funds.
The issue is twofold: they don't have a completely reliable majority in the House, and they're trying to shove through controversial stuff which a few GOP representatives won't vote for. And in the Senate they are using the 60 vote threshold as an excuse - they've happily set that aside (for example) to confirm scores of Trump judges on a straight majority vote.
The complex rules can all be set aside on a simple majority vote.
Previous governments have been exceedingly unwilling to do that; in recent years both parties have done it when they really want to (the GOP more often than the Democrats).
The only ones which can't are those mandated by the constitution (the impeachment supermajority being one example; the fact that setting budgets is the preserve of Congress, not the executive, another).
Did you see the debate where Powell was comprehensively taken down by a Caerphilly born young man and his mother. The boy's father I believe was of Asian descent. He and his mother said that having lived in Caerphilly all their lives (where they quoted the non-white population at around 3%) had no racial tensions prior to Powell's candidacy?
The problem is Starmer (and unfortunately Davey and Badenoch) are panicking and falling for the winning Reform narrative. Maccabi Tel Aviv is a case in point, the outrage shown by Starmer (Davey and Badenoch) at the Villa decision which has been contextualised this weekend by Maccabi fans being restricted in Israel for race related hooliganism promoted the Reform narrative of good and bad (or on their agenda white and non-white-and their supporters) actors.
It has been set aside several time in recent years.
Edit: Looks like there's a problem with AWS.
ETA or a YouTuber's drone videoing the Prime Minister's police convoy on its way to Chequers? Or an illegal streamer's drone over the Arsenal game?
It's also why the early medieval English kings would head to Winchester first, before being crowned in London. For a long while the treasury was kept in Winchester.
I believe the Polish government refused to shoot down actual Russian drones due to the risks to people on the ground.
Yay! Amazon have gone bust!
See the pre privatisation railway - where ticket prices were increased to reduce demand. Since demand meant needing to invest...
We've seen with the Post Office just how our Public Servants serve the public - with the level of fuckwittery that only the very worst private companies can match.
When you add in the Vital Requirement of Too Big To Fail - for both the public and private options, the result is that private vs public ends up as more of the same.
Between midnight and 6 I was in another consulting room, with two armchairs and a screen between them. In the other chair was mad Irish 88yo Mary. They had a nurse sat with her, and Mary talked very loudly to her for the whole six hours, about five feet from me. I really was struggling to cope..
I’m still in quite a lot of pain, but I’m a lot more relaxed now. I haven’t seen a doctor for about fifteen hours, and he was quite junior. I’m hoping to see a consultant today who can tell me what’s actually wrong with me
So the war is existential for Ukraine and existential for the current leadership of Russia.
Trump wants an end to the war - to sell as part of his The Peacemaker Shtick. He is bouncing around, between US allies telling him to support Ukraine, ultra-MAGA wanting Russia to win, who he last talked to and Russian threats to escalate further.
"The Library of Lost Maps by James Cheshire, Professor of Geographic Information and Cartography, tells the story of the discovery of a treasure-trove at the heart of University College London. In a long-forgotten room James found thousands of maps and atlases. This abandoned archive reveals how maps have traced the contours of the world, inspiring some of the greatest scientific discoveries, as well as leading to terrible atrocities and power grabs.
But maps have not always been used to navigate or reveal the world, according to a new exhibition at the British Library on Secret Maps (from 24 October 2025 to 18 January 2026). Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London, and author of Four Points of the Compass, explains how mysterious maps throughout history have been used to hide, shape and control knowledge.
The biographer Jenny Uglow celebrates a different kind of mapping in her new book, A Year with Gilbert White: The First Great Nature Writer. In 1781 the country curate Gilbert White charted the world around him – from close observation of the weather, to the migration of birds to the sex lives of snails and the coming harvest – revealing a natural map of his Hampshire village."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm
https://x.com/gideonfalter/status/1980158882212118622?s=46
That gives them some leverage to get some of what they want but ultimately, as they're in a minority, they will have to accept some things they don't want.
The alternative is governmental shutdown whereby the people lose out and become ever more disenchanted by federal politicians.
This pattern will repeat, in various forms, irrespective of who controls Congress.
The problem, at the root, is that the permanent system of Government has no understanding or interest in really managing things. As opposed to some accounting stuff - some nice double entry book keeping. Or some very abstract legalisms. Strangely, all the people with real power are accountants and lawyers by training.
So, when it came to the Post Office, beyond money coming in and money going out, no one wanted to know. The whole structure was about creating Abstract Management. Which is a system based on the belief that all you need to run an organisation is legal briefs, accounts and Big Reports. You get rid of all that nasty, dirty handed stuff about selling stamps etc. That can be left to The Scum.
A (very) long read on Russ Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that insiders say they feel like “he is the commander in chief.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/russ-vought-trump-shadow-president-omb
..The ultimate radical constitutionalist, Vought says, is Donald Trump. In Vought’s view, Trump, the subject of four indictments during his time out of office, is a singular figure in the history of the American republic, a once persecuted leader who returns to power to defeat the deep state. “We have in Donald Trump a man who is so uniquely positioned to serve this role, a man whose own interests perfectly align with the interests of the country,” Vought said in his 2024 speech. “He has seen what it has done to him, and he has seen what they are trying to do to the country. That is nothing more than a gift of God.” As Bannon put it, sitting onstage with Vought at a closed-door conference in 2023, Trump is “a very imperfect instrument, right? But he’s an instrument of the Lord.”
In Vought’s vision for the U.S. government, an all-powerful executive branch would be able to fire workers, cancel programs, shutter agencies, and undo regulations that govern air and water quality, financial markets, workplace protections and civil rights. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, would shed its historical independence and operate at the direction of the White House. All of this puts Vought at the center of what Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown, described to me as the Trump administration’s “complete disregard” for the law...
...Vought and his colleagues at the center also worked closely with the House Freedom Caucus to urge other congressional Republicans to use government shutdowns as a way of forcing through major policy changes. One of their first targets was critical race theory, a once obscure academic concept that had become a flashpoint during the 2020 racial justice protests.
According to previously unreported recordings of briefings held by Citizens for Renewing America, Vought said that he had pressured members of the Freedom Caucus to yoke a ban on critical race theory to must-pass bills on raising the debt limit and funding the government. “We have to have a speaker that goes into these funding fights with a love for the shutdowns,” Vought said during a November 2022 briefing call, “because they create an opportunity to save the country.”..
Nobody died as a result of that tweet, close to fifty died from the blm riots, and billions of dollars of property burnt to the ground.
You give cover to extreme violence, you get extreme violence, don’t pretend you aren’t part of the problem.
Democrats are not obliged to vote for eyewatering increases in health costs.
Everywhere else it is accepted that the status quo continues until there are the votes for change. Only in the US do we see a government shutdown as a tactic to coerce legislators.
@NicholasTyrone
The Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban was wrong on every level. Please stop trying to excuse it because you think it plays into some corner of the omnicause nicely."
https://x.com/NicholasTyrone/status/1979140025666167017
The GOP have chosen not to go with another continuing resolution, and have shut the government down, rather than compromise. Their best offer is "vote for the budget, and trust us to negotiate"; it doesn't work that way round, not least with a party which has demonstrated to everyone that its wod means nothing at all.
Though of course they would be publicly owned franchises
rather than government run directly
"Ring, Lloyds Bank and Snapchat knocked offline in huge internet blackout
Amazon web hosting crash takes down dozens of apps and websites
Dozens of internet services, games and apps including the HMRC website and banks are offline after a crash involving hosting company Amazon Web Services.
Web users were also unable to access services including the Ring doorbell app, Snapchat and Fortnite on Monday morning.
The blackout affected the Government’s Gateway login service, which includes HMRC and many other public services. Users also reported problems with Lloyds Bank and Halifax’s apps."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/10/20/ring-snapchat-amazon-and-more-go-down-in-blackout
I think it'd be better to simply revert to a simple majority being needed to pass bills. And make sure each law passed has property scrutiny, and no need for the opposition to vote for things they are against to stop the government shutting down.