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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Trump is said to be obsessed with the polls and the news for h

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited June 2020 in General

imagepoliticalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Trump is said to be obsessed with the polls and the news for him has been getting worse

With Trump’s poll ratings having taken a nasty shock the President has decided to hold his first big rally in month in Tulsa, Oklahoma next week. The venue looks odd given that the state is one of the most rock solid Republican you can find and it is hard to see any political gain in going there. Perhaps that is the point. He wants to go to an area where he knows he will be given an overwhelmingly friendly welcome and maybe that will boost his morale.

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Comments

  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    First as will be Biden, I suspect Trump will have a complete meltdown before November.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,753
    'The venue looks odd given that the state is one of the most rock solid Republican you can find and it is hard to see any political gain in going there.'

    Donald doing a Hillary?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,404
    The problem with SAGE is that it is full of scientists. Wanting to analyse everything to the nth degree to come up with a perfect solution.

    What they need is a few engineers. Apply some rules of thumb, order of magnitude estimates and 'sniff test' reviews.

    We would have locked down in 5 minutes.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,753

    The problem with SAGE is that it is full of scientists. Wanting to analyse everything to the nth degree to come up with a perfect solution.

    What they need is a few engineers. Apply some rules of thumb, order of magnitude estimates and 'sniff test' reviews.

    We would have locked down in 5 minutes.

    Surely a wipe down with an oily rag should also be required?
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited June 2020

    'The venue looks odd given that the state is one of the most rock solid Republican you can find and it is hard to see any political gain in going there.'

    Donald doing a Hillary?

    As far as Tulsa as an odd venue there's potentially a dark and sinister reason why Tulsa. He could be showing off his white supremacist side.

    The date he has chosen - "Juneteenth" - is the date the final slaves got emancipated.

    While Tulsa is the site of the worst modern violent incident against African Americans where 99 years ago at the start of June was the location of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

    Picking that combination for his rally during these charged times could be a coincidence, or it might not be.
  • Tulsa of course pretty infamous for this in 1921

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

    "mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153
    edited June 2020
    FPT for politeness for "BluestBlue"
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:


    Let's not tussle over irrelevances like Cummings.

    Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
    I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.

    p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
    Haggis-themed.

    Good one, positively Juvenal-esque.
    Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
    Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
    Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
    Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
    not if you understandthe Scots language though
    I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke :smile:
    What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
    Hold on, let me give you a sample:

    Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa,
    Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa,
    Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa,
    Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.

    The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another' :wink:


    On the contrary, it's perfectly comprehensible Lowlands Scots - no worse than, say, Barnes's Dorset poems.

    Perhaps beyond the Wall of Caucasus
    I'll hide from your secret Pashas,
    from those quick/bright eyes that always see all,
    the ears that miss nothing at all.

    The one thing that niggles is 'derne' which I don't recognise - it may just be my memory but a quick check of the DSL Dictionar o the Scots Leid/Dictionary of the Scots Language suggests it is an archaic word indeed.

    And it may be my imagination but there's something slightly off to my ear. If my fellowScots on PB confirm this then I wonder if it was written partly from a dictionary by a Russian?

    https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/derne_vforward Lowlands Scots
    http://www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk/
  • DAlexanderDAlexander Posts: 815
    I still think Trump might win, these protests will make a lot of Americans wary of the left that are encouraging them.

    I see they beheaded Christopher Columbus' statue the other day.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919
    It seems to me that SAGE is just too damn big. You can’t have good decision making when you have a cttee with that many members.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Scott_xP said:
    That's mammoth if Florida switches.

    If Texas ever does too then it would be incredible.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153

    'The venue looks odd given that the state is one of the most rock solid Republican you can find and it is hard to see any political gain in going there.'

    Donald doing a Hillary?

    As far as Tulsa as an odd venue there's potentially a dark and sinister reason why Tulsa. He could be showing off his white supremacist side.

    The date he has chosen - "Juneteenth" - is the date the final slaves got emancipated.

    While Tulsa is the site of the worst modern violent incident against African Americans where 99 years ago at the start of June was the location of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

    Picking that combination for his rally during these charged times could be a coincidence, or it might not be.
    One of the reasons why I read PB is informed and intelligent suggestions like this.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    I was going through the news to see if the recent elections in Georgia and elsewhere backed up these polls.

    Looks like the COVID has plunged the thing into complete chaos, the results in many cases are not known.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    Carnyx said:

    FPT for politeness for "BluestBlue"

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:


    Let's not tussle over irrelevances like Cummings.

    Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
    I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.

    p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
    Haggis-themed.

    Good one, positively Juvenal-esque.
    Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
    Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
    Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
    Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
    not if you understandthe Scots language though
    I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke :smile:
    What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
    Hold on, let me give you a sample:

    Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa,
    Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa,
    Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa,
    Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.

    The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another' :wink:


    On the contrary, it's perfectly comprehensible Lowlands Scots - no worse than, say, Barnes's Dorset poems.

    Perhaps beyond the Wall of Caucasus
    I'll hide from your secret Pashas,
    from those quick/bright eyes that always see all,
    the ears that miss nothing at all.

    The one thing that niggles is 'derne' which I don't recognise - it may just be my memory but a quick check of the DSL Dictionar o the Scots Leid/Dictionary of the Scots Language suggests it is an archaic word indeed.

    And it may be my imagination but there's something slightly off to my ear. If my fellowScots on PB confirm this then I wonder if it was written partly from a dictionary by a Russian?

    https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/derne_vforward Lowlands Scots
    http://www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk/
    Thanks for that. It's mostly a question of vocabulary, and I've never had reason to pick up very much of it before.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Tulsa of course pretty infamous for this in 1921

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

    "mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."

    Jinx, you owe me a Coke Zero. ;)
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,753
    Since there have been glancing references to Burns, the black experience in the USA and In Our Time this am was on Frederick Douglass, serendipitously..

    https://twitter.com/P14Murray/status/1271052242637017088?s=20

  • Tulsa of course pretty infamous for this in 1921

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

    "mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."

    Jinx, you owe me a Coke Zero. ;)
    May take a while to get to you from Sydney!

    I'd actually never heard of the massacre before, but thought it was worth googling Tulsa then that info came up.

    Seems like trump (or the people behind him) are throwing grenades into the bonfire at this point. I wouldn't want to be in America for the next six months that's for sure.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    NHS England data graphs -

    image
    image
    image
    image
    image
  • QuincelQuincel Posts: 3,949

    I still think Trump might win, these protests will make a lot of Americans wary of the left that are encouraging them.

    I see they beheaded Christopher Columbus' statue the other day.

    He might win, but we should be clear that polling in the states shows a comfortable majority of the public support the protests and the Black Lives Matter movement - a majority which has recently grown under the burst of media.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922

    kingbongo said:

    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    well at least they show consistency - like Churchill he was a moral giant who had deep personal flaws - the statue thing seems to be like people suddenly discovering people are human and the geopolitical context they operated in was complex and it's making their heads explode.
    Perhaps the medics will define a new mental illness - statuephobia?
    Woke me up before you go-go
    Dodgy statues surely are a no-no
    :lol:

  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Tulsa of course pretty infamous for this in 1921

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

    "mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."

    Jinx, you owe me a Coke Zero. ;)
    May take a while to get to you from Sydney!

    I'd actually never heard of the massacre before, but thought it was worth googling Tulsa then that info came up.

    Seems like trump (or the people behind him) are throwing grenades into the bonfire at this point. I wouldn't want to be in America for the next six months that's for sure.
    Yes I said when this started I was worried Trump sinisterly wants a race war and thinks its good for him since whites outnumber blacks.

    I really hope people are better than that and don't vote on such racial lines come November.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    Gandhi a racist? I thought he successfully led 500 million BAME people to independence from the Evil Colonial Jackboot??
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    No, but it's probably obvious what he's referring to. :D
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153

    Carnyx said:

    FPT for politeness for "BluestBlue"

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:


    Let's not tussle over irrelevances like Cummings.

    Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
    I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.

    p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
    Haggis-themed.

    Good one, positively Juvenal-esque.
    Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
    Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
    Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
    Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
    not if you understandthe Scots language though
    I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke :smile:
    What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
    Hold on, let me give you a sample:

    Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa,
    Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa,
    Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa,
    Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.

    The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another' :wink:


    On the contrary, it's perfectly comprehensible Lowlands Scots - no worse than, say, Barnes's Dorset poems.

    Perhaps beyond the Wall of Caucasus
    I'll hide from your secret Pashas,
    from those quick/bright eyes that always see all,
    the ears that miss nothing at all.

    The one thing that niggles is 'derne' which I don't recognise - it may just be my memory but a quick check of the DSL Dictionar o the Scots Leid/Dictionary of the Scots Language suggests it is an archaic word indeed.

    And it may be my imagination but there's something slightly off to my ear. If my fellowScots on PB confirm this then I wonder if it was written partly from a dictionary by a Russian?

    https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/derne_vforward Lowlands Scots
    http://www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk/
    Thanks for that. It's mostly a question of vocabulary, and I've never had reason to pick up very much of it before.
    The other interesting point is it doesn't use the intrusive and unnecessary 'apologetic apostrophe' except where there is a genuine contraction - unusual for printed Scots of a certain period.
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820

    The problem with SAGE is that it is full of scientists. Wanting to analyse everything to the nth degree to come up with a perfect solution.

    What they need is a few engineers. Apply some rules of thumb, order of magnitude estimates and 'sniff test' reviews.

    We would have locked down in 5 minutes.

    Yeah and the PPE problem would have been sorted in minutes with a bit of duck tape and a squirt of WD-40.
  • DAlexanderDAlexander Posts: 815

    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    Gandhi a racist? I thought he successfully led 500 million BAME people to independence from the Evil Colonial Jackboot??
    He's Indian.

    Why would Black Lives Matter care about them?
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    Gandhi a racist? I thought he successfully led 500 million BAME people to independence from the Evil Colonial Jackboot??
    More than one thing can be true and more than just whites can be racist.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.

    Hmm, you say this but your views seem quite a bit to the right of some Americans I have met who vote for him. I think you have quite a lot in common based on a lot of your posts, or are you swinging back to the left? lol.
  • MikeSmithsonMikeSmithson Posts: 7,382
    I wonder whether Trump could pull out rather than face what appears to be a big defeat.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    Gandhi a racist? I thought he successfully led 500 million BAME people to independence from the Evil Colonial Jackboot??
    He said/wrote some things that would have got him cancelled is seconds, today. Chiefly with respect to Africans.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-34265882
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.

    Hmm, you say this but your views seem quite a bit to the right of some Americans I have met who vote for him. I think you have quite a lot in common based on a lot of your posts, or are you swinging back to the left? lol.
    I'm liberal, he's authoritarian. He's the polar opposite of what I support.

    What exactly do you think aligns me with him? Or are you so obsessed with Brexit you can't see past that and think all Brexiteers are the same?
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    I wonder whether Trump could pull out rather than face what appears to be a big defeat.

    I was wondering the same. Perhaps Johnson will do the same in a few years time. Needs to spend more time with family and others...
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    The problem with SAGE is that it is full of scientists. Wanting to analyse everything to the nth degree to come up with a perfect solution.

    What they need is a few engineers. Apply some rules of thumb, order of magnitude estimates and 'sniff test' reviews.

    We would have locked down in 5 minutes.

    Yeah and the PPE problem would have been sorted in minutes with a bit of duck tape and a squirt of WD-40.
    It's a good point though, scientific people quite often miss the forest for the trees. Instead of looking at the big picture of this virus unfolding across Europe they seem to have buried themselves in technical stuff and it resulted in them saying that introducing quarantine measures for arriving people would make no difference and that instead of looking at the Chinese data with a healthy amount of scepticism given the source they accepted it and made a while series of incorrect policy recommendations based on them.

    Should scientific advisors be more worldly wise? I don't know, but the fact that ours weren't has resulted in a disaster.
  • NormNorm Posts: 1,251
    Congratulations to the wilder appendages of BLM , Lib Dem unitary councils and tin pot Labour mayors for setting back the cause of race relation in the UK by decades.
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,669

    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    Gandhi a racist? I thought he successfully led 500 million BAME people to independence from the Evil Colonial Jackboot??
    The 'M' stands for Minority.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766

    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.

    Hmm, you say this but your views seem quite a bit to the right of some Americans I have met who vote for him. I think you have quite a lot in common based on a lot of your posts, or are you swinging back to the left? lol.
    I'm liberal, he's authoritarian. He's the polar opposite of what I support.

    What exactly do you think aligns me with him? Or are you so obsessed with Brexit you can't see past that and think all Brexiteers are the same?
    Many of your views are "libertarian". That is very different to "liberal", even with a small L. I am a liberal conservative and am a long way from your views. Give us a summary of your "liberal" views. I'd love to hear.
  • BannedinnParisBannedinnParis Posts: 1,884
    There's probably a 'what about' we've not considered yet
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    Gandhi a racist? I thought he successfully led 500 million BAME people to independence from the Evil Colonial Jackboot??
    Ealing Southall

    Con gain
  • Scott_xP said:
    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    The numbers are definitely lower - another step down.

    image
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776
    Scott_xP said:
    Its just numbing that this is happening now. As opposed to 50 years ago. Deeply, deeply weird country. It makes me very cautious about what should be a no brainer if they were even half rational.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.

    https://twitter.com/Banxcartoons/status/1271070909101756418
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    If Biden is on 46% in the last 2 polls that is the same as Trump got in 2016 and less than the 48% Hillary got.

    Some of Trump's vote has gone to undecided therefore rather than Biden.

    Trump is going to Oklahoma apparently as it has a very low number of Covid cases and is solid Trump so he wants to start by firing up and shoring up his base

  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    Scott_xP said:
    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.
    More like RAF Nicola Sturgeon
  • dr_spyndr_spyn Posts: 11,279

    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.

    Warren Harding says hello.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.

    Hmm, you say this but your views seem quite a bit to the right of some Americans I have met who vote for him. I think you have quite a lot in common based on a lot of your posts, or are you swinging back to the left? lol.
    I'm liberal, he's authoritarian. He's the polar opposite of what I support.

    What exactly do you think aligns me with him? Or are you so obsessed with Brexit you can't see past that and think all Brexiteers are the same?
    Many of your views are "libertarian". That is very different to "liberal", even with a small L. I am a liberal conservative and am a long way from your views. Give us a summary of your "liberal" views. I'd love to hear.
    Classic liberal/libertarian. But since you asked:

    I believe in a small state doing as little as possible and as close to the people as possible.

    I believe people are better than bureaucrats in deciding how to run the lives or businesses and believe the public should make their own decisions on how to run their lives.

    I believe in low taxes, low expenditure, and the Laffer Curve.

    I believe all people should have the same opportunities, not the same outcomes.

    I believe that race, religion, gender, sexual orientation etc should not mark the individual and that people should not be judged by these but what they choose to do as individuals.

    I believe in consistency in the rule of law and with taxation etc

    I believe that people should not cause harm to others.

    Trump is a race-baiting, big spending authoritarian who sides with white supremacists. He is everything I oppose. What exactly do you think I have in common with him?
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,093
    It's good news that it's continuing, but I'm not sure about acceleration. 5 % a day is 30 % a week and 50 % a fortnight, which is roughly what the decline has been since mid April. Now we just have to be patient.
    MaxPB said:

    The problem with SAGE is that it is full of scientists. Wanting to analyse everything to the nth degree to come up with a perfect solution.

    What they need is a few engineers. Apply some rules of thumb, order of magnitude estimates and 'sniff test' reviews.

    We would have locked down in 5 minutes.

    Yeah and the PPE problem would have been sorted in minutes with a bit of duck tape and a squirt of WD-40.
    It's a good point though, scientific people quite often miss the forest for the trees. Instead of looking at the big picture of this virus unfolding across Europe they seem to have buried themselves in technical stuff and it resulted in them saying that introducing quarantine measures for arriving people would make no difference and that instead of looking at the Chinese data with a healthy amount of scepticism given the source they accepted it and made a while series of incorrect policy recommendations based on them.

    Should scientific advisors be more worldly wise? I don't know, but the fact that ours weren't has resulted in a disaster.
    One of the things we don't know is what questions SAGE were being asked. If they were asked for an optimal strategy, what were they asked to optimise? That will have constrained the answers they gave.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    I wonder whether Trump could pull out rather than face what appears to be a big defeat.

    I was wondering the same. Perhaps Johnson will do the same in a few years time. Needs to spend more time with family and others...
    The Tories are still 6% ahead under Boris and also the first swing to him on approval today too

    https://twitter.com/Shobbs2/status/1271059060444585989?s=19
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Scott_xP said:

    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.

    https://twitter.com/Banxcartoons/status/1271070909101756418
    There is a joke that goes the rounds, every so often, that the the last confederate flag (they changed several times - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America) is the acceptable one.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flag
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    edited June 2020

    MaxPB said:

    The problem with SAGE is that it is full of scientists. Wanting to analyse everything to the nth degree to come up with a perfect solution.

    What they need is a few engineers. Apply some rules of thumb, order of magnitude estimates and 'sniff test' reviews.

    We would have locked down in 5 minutes.

    Yeah and the PPE problem would have been sorted in minutes with a bit of duck tape and a squirt of WD-40.
    It's a good point though, scientific people quite often miss the forest for the trees. Instead of looking at the big picture of this virus unfolding across Europe they seem to have buried themselves in technical stuff and it resulted in them saying that introducing quarantine measures for arriving people would make no difference and that instead of looking at the Chinese data with a healthy amount of scepticism given the source they accepted it and made a while series of incorrect policy recommendations based on them.

    Should scientific advisors be more worldly wise? I don't know, but the fact that ours weren't has resulted in a disaster.
    I think it's more a case that the politicians and civil servants should have been more probing in their questions and more careful to understand what the scientists were unsure about, as Rory Stewart, and to an extent Jeremy Hunt, said at the time.
    The dangerous things aren't what you are unsure about - you can add safety factors for that. The dangerous things are those that you think you know for certain, but are in fact wrong.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776
    Carnyx said:

    FPT for politeness for "BluestBlue"

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:


    Let's not tussle over irrelevances like Cummings.

    Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
    I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.

    p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
    Haggis-themed.

    Good one, positively Juvenal-esque.
    Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
    Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
    Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
    Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
    not if you understandthe Scots language though
    I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke :smile:
    What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
    Hold on, let me give you a sample:

    Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa,
    Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa,
    Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa,
    Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.

    The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another' :wink:


    On the contrary, it's perfectly comprehensible Lowlands Scots - no worse than, say, Barnes's Dorset poems.

    Perhaps beyond the Wall of Caucasus
    I'll hide from your secret Pashas,
    from those quick/bright eyes that always see all,
    the ears that miss nothing at all.

    The one thing that niggles is 'derne' which I don't recognise - it may just be my memory but a quick check of the DSL Dictionar o the Scots Leid/Dictionary of the Scots Language suggests it is an archaic word indeed.

    And it may be my imagination but there's something slightly off to my ear. If my fellowScots on PB confirm this then I wonder if it was written partly from a dictionary by a Russian?

    https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/derne_vforward Lowlands Scots
    http://www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk/
    You could be right. In about 1980 I went on a study tour to the Soviet Union which included trips to various schools who were studying Burns and the kids were having a go at writing Burns style poetry with a version of old Scots. It seemed quite the thing there at the time.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    dr_spyn said:

    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.

    Warren Harding says hello.
    Trump's worse than Harding.

    What did Harding do that Trump hasn't?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,852
    WFT is that "Zogby" at the bottom? Does Trump own that one?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153
    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    FPT for politeness for "BluestBlue"

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:


    Let's not tussle over irrelevances like Cummings.

    Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
    I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.

    p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
    Haggis-themed.

    Good one, positively Juvenal-esque.
    Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
    Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
    Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
    Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
    not if you understandthe Scots language though
    I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke :smile:
    What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
    Hold on, let me give you a sample:

    Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa,
    Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa,
    Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa,
    Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.

    The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another' :wink:


    On the contrary, it's perfectly comprehensible Lowlands Scots - no worse than, say, Barnes's Dorset poems.

    Perhaps beyond the Wall of Caucasus
    I'll hide from your secret Pashas,
    from those quick/bright eyes that always see all,
    the ears that miss nothing at all.

    The one thing that niggles is 'derne' which I don't recognise - it may just be my memory but a quick check of the DSL Dictionar o the Scots Leid/Dictionary of the Scots Language suggests it is an archaic word indeed.

    And it may be my imagination but there's something slightly off to my ear. If my fellowScots on PB confirm this then I wonder if it was written partly from a dictionary by a Russian?

    https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/derne_vforward Lowlands Scots
    http://www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk/
    You could be right. In about 1980 I went on a study tour to the Soviet Union which included trips to various schools who were studying Burns and the kids were having a go at writing Burns style poetry with a version of old Scots. It seemed quite the thing there at the time.
    Poor Rabbie, slavedriver, Unionist, MCP, now commie! All he had to do was to join the Boy Scouts to get the full slate.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    Scott_xP said:
    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.
    More like RAF Nicola Sturgeon
    Surely more like RAF Roundhead?
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    edited June 2020
    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Its just numbing that this is happening now. As opposed to 50 years ago. Deeply, deeply weird country. It makes me very cautious about what should be a no brainer if they were even half rational.
    Many of the South's soldiers had no slaves or no stake in slavery. They were fighting because ''y'all are down here.''

    Many slave owners did not participate in the war.

    I think some think they can sympathise with the bravery of the ordinary soldier of the South whilst still disagreeing with the cause??
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776

    MaxPB said:

    The problem with SAGE is that it is full of scientists. Wanting to analyse everything to the nth degree to come up with a perfect solution.

    What they need is a few engineers. Apply some rules of thumb, order of magnitude estimates and 'sniff test' reviews.

    We would have locked down in 5 minutes.

    Yeah and the PPE problem would have been sorted in minutes with a bit of duck tape and a squirt of WD-40.
    It's a good point though, scientific people quite often miss the forest for the trees. Instead of looking at the big picture of this virus unfolding across Europe they seem to have buried themselves in technical stuff and it resulted in them saying that introducing quarantine measures for arriving people would make no difference and that instead of looking at the Chinese data with a healthy amount of scepticism given the source they accepted it and made a while series of incorrect policy recommendations based on them.

    Should scientific advisors be more worldly wise? I don't know, but the fact that ours weren't has resulted in a disaster.
    I think it's more a case that the politicians and civil servants should have been more probing in their questions and more careful to understand what the scientists were unsure about, as Rory Stewart, and to an extent Jeremy Hunt, said at the time.
    Rory was spot on as I think I recall saying at the time. He will get zero thanks for it of course.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Its just numbing that this is happening now. As opposed to 50 years ago. Deeply, deeply weird country. It makes me very cautious about what should be a no brainer if they were even half rational.
    Many of the South's soldiers had no slaves or no stake in slavery. They were fighting because ''y'all are down here.''

    Many slave owners did not participate in the war.

    I think some think they can sympathise with the bravery of the ordinary soldier of the South whilst still disagreeing with the cause.
    Alot of people flying Confederate flags are from states that fought for the union.

    Consider someone from West Virginia flying it....
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153
    TOPPING said:

    Scott_xP said:
    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.
    More like RAF Nicola Sturgeon
    Surely more like RAF Roundhead?
    Not a traitor. Cromwell won!

    There was a tank named Cromwell in WW2, and Churchill wanted to name a warship after the Lord Protector - IIRC the King expressed his dissatisfaction.

    Mind the British did name US-produced tank after Lee and Stuart - but made up for it with the Grant and Sherman.
  • Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,225
    edited June 2020

    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.

    There's quite a cottage industry built around the assessment of all the Presidents to date. Wikipedia is your friend here with an extensive summary:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States

    There is a surprising amount of agreement amongst the experts and the pollsters. Not surprisingly, Washington and Lincoln score consistently well: Harding, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson do badly.

    Trump hasn't got enough form to go on but early indications are that he will be jostling Harding et al for a place at the bottom.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,840

    It w
    HYUFD said:

    If Biden is on 46% in the last 2 polls that is the same as Trump got in 2016 and less than the 48% Hillary got.

    Some of Trump's vote has gone to undecided therefore rather than Biden.

    Trump is going to Oklahoma apparently as it has a very low number of Covid cases and is solid Trump so he wants to start by firing up and shoring up his base

    And bringing the infection rate up to the national average?
    Levelling up.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    HYUFD said:

    I wonder whether Trump could pull out rather than face what appears to be a big defeat.

    I was wondering the same. Perhaps Johnson will do the same in a few years time. Needs to spend more time with family and others...
    The Tories are still 6% ahead under Boris and also the first swing to him on approval today too

    https://twitter.com/Shobbs2/status/1271059060444585989?s=19
    I didn't think the BLM protests would help the Labour poll rating.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    HYUFD said:

    I wonder whether Trump could pull out rather than face what appears to be a big defeat.

    I was wondering the same. Perhaps Johnson will do the same in a few years time. Needs to spend more time with family and others...
    The Tories are still 6% ahead under Boris and also the first swing to him on approval today too

    https://twitter.com/Shobbs2/status/1271059060444585989?s=19
    I didn't think the BLM protests would help the Labour poll rating.
    https://twitter.com/Marshal_P_Knutt/status/1271068204593491972

    :smile:
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Its just numbing that this is happening now. As opposed to 50 years ago. Deeply, deeply weird country. It makes me very cautious about what should be a no brainer if they were even half rational.
    Many of the South's soldiers had no slaves or no stake in slavery. They were fighting because ''y'all are down here.''

    Many slave owners did not participate in the war.

    I think some think they can sympathise with the bravery of the ordinary soldier of the South whilst still disagreeing with the cause??
    Oh sure. And the way the US was able to reconcile after the war was remarkable in many ways despite the moaning about the reconstruction. But the Confederate flag is a racist symbol of a slave supporting state and deeply offensive to people of colour. It is appalling that it has had this prominence for so long.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776
    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    FPT for politeness for "BluestBlue"

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:


    Let's not tussle over irrelevances like Cummings.

    Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
    I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.

    p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
    Haggis-themed.

    Good one, positively Juvenal-esque.
    Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
    Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
    Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
    Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
    not if you understandthe Scots language though
    I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke :smile:
    What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
    Hold on, let me give you a sample:

    Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa,
    Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa,
    Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa,
    Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.

    The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another' :wink:


    On the contrary, it's perfectly comprehensible Lowlands Scots - no worse than, say, Barnes's Dorset poems.

    Perhaps beyond the Wall of Caucasus
    I'll hide from your secret Pashas,
    from those quick/bright eyes that always see all,
    the ears that miss nothing at all.

    The one thing that niggles is 'derne' which I don't recognise - it may just be my memory but a quick check of the DSL Dictionar o the Scots Leid/Dictionary of the Scots Language suggests it is an archaic word indeed.

    And it may be my imagination but there's something slightly off to my ear. If my fellowScots on PB confirm this then I wonder if it was written partly from a dictionary by a Russian?

    https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/derne_vforward Lowlands Scots
    http://www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk/
    You could be right. In about 1980 I went on a study tour to the Soviet Union which included trips to various schools who were studying Burns and the kids were having a go at writing Burns style poetry with a version of old Scots. It seemed quite the thing there at the time.
    Poor Rabbie, slavedriver, Unionist, MCP, now commie! All he had to do was to join the Boy Scouts to get the full slate.
    Sigh, you say Unionist like it was a bad thing :-)
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    MaxPB said:

    The problem with SAGE is that it is full of scientists. Wanting to analyse everything to the nth degree to come up with a perfect solution.

    What they need is a few engineers. Apply some rules of thumb, order of magnitude estimates and 'sniff test' reviews.

    We would have locked down in 5 minutes.

    Yeah and the PPE problem would have been sorted in minutes with a bit of duck tape and a squirt of WD-40.
    It's a good point though, scientific people quite often miss the forest for the trees. Instead of looking at the big picture of this virus unfolding across Europe they seem to have buried themselves in technical stuff and it resulted in them saying that introducing quarantine measures for arriving people would make no difference and that instead of looking at the Chinese data with a healthy amount of scepticism given the source they accepted it and made a while series of incorrect policy recommendations based on them.

    Should scientific advisors be more worldly wise? I don't know, but the fact that ours weren't has resulted in a disaster.
    I think it's more a case that the politicians and civil servants should have been more probing in their questions and more careful to understand what the scientists were unsure about, as Rory Stewart, and to an extent Jeremy Hunt, said at the time.
    Yes they should have been, you'll get no disagreement from me on that and I've written extensively that the government's simple acceptance of the scientific advice would probably end badly. However, it does go back to the original dilemma I posed when this started and it looked to me as a someone with quite a lot more than a passing amount of knowledge in viral replication that the government was getting bad advice, if they follow the bad advice they are damned (and that's happening now) and if they ignore the advice they are also damned (see the moves to reduce the social distancing to 1 metre where the advice is to maintain it at 2 metres despite little to no evidence it makes a huge deal of difference).

    The issue here is with the bad advice, our experts have been found out. They are nowhere near as good as they claim, their European counterparts have performed better on every occasion. We need to find out why that is because the UK is one of the most scientifically advanced nations globally in terms of research and development, we produce more science graduates and have more funded places for PhDs than any other European country. Why is that translating to such poor advice to the government? Why are we not attracting the right voices to the advisory bodies as they have done in Germany?

    This is the root cause of the issue and there's no doubt that a more scientifically literate civil service or politicians would have been a big help, I don't think the advice would have been very different.

    In my area of expertise (data) the government data analysis is so very far behind the tech and banking industry it's become a joke. Some of the internal data modelling we're doing at work on this exceeds the government's own main data analysis by a huge factor, it seems as though the government is scared of making the line by line dataset publicly available as their analysis will be shown up in about three days by tech companies as being severely lacking.

    Another area where we have experts on PB (app building) the government have again shown themselves to be hugely lacking and now we're well behind schedule for test, track and trace, so much so that the strategy has become test and trace because we have a complete inability to track.

    Our experts are pants, the UK establishemebt has been proved to be as useless as so many of us realised during the first round of brexit negotiations.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Scott_xP said:
    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.
    More like RAF Nicola Sturgeon
    Surely more like RAF Roundhead?
    Not a traitor. Cromwell won!

    There was a tank named Cromwell in WW2, and Churchill wanted to name a warship after the Lord Protector - IIRC the King expressed his dissatisfaction.

    Mind the British did name US-produced tank after Lee and Stuart - but made up for it with the Grant and Sherman.
    Well that's a thread right there. It's not particularly "my" period, but are there not parallels with the Confederacy in that he was pretty brutal to one set of Brits, while now in the UK we are all Brits rather than Roundhead or Cavalier?

    What he did of course for parliamentary democracy meanwhile is not in doubt.
  • HYUFD said:

    If Biden is on 46% in the last 2 polls that is the same as Trump got in 2016 and less than the 48% Hillary got.

    Some of Trump's vote has gone to undecided therefore rather than Biden.

    Trump is going to Oklahoma apparently as it has a very low number of Covid cases and is solid Trump so he wants to start by firing up and shoring up his base

    The RCP average currently have Biden at 49.8 and Trump at 41.7.

    At this point in the race you have to go back as far as Jimmy Carter in 1976 to find someone in a strong a position challenging an incumbent president.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Scott_xP said:
    I am amazed there aren;t lawsuits.

    Actually there probably are.
  • StereotomyStereotomy Posts: 4,092

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Its just numbing that this is happening now. As opposed to 50 years ago. Deeply, deeply weird country. It makes me very cautious about what should be a no brainer if they were even half rational.
    Many of the South's soldiers had no slaves or no stake in slavery. They were fighting because ''y'all are down here.''

    Many slave owners did not participate in the war.

    I think some think they can sympathise with the bravery of the ordinary soldier of the South whilst still disagreeing with the cause??
    Just like how we in the UK like to wave Nazi flags at sporting events to commemorate the bravery of the ordinary soldier of Nazi Germany, whilst still disagreeing with the cause.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    I still think Trump might win, these protests will make a lot of Americans wary of the left that are encouraging them.

    I see they beheaded Christopher Columbus' statue the other day.

    Yes, the protest delivering a devastating blow for the BLM movement by shifting opinion *Checks notes* a net 15 points in their favour.

    https://twitter.com/sangerkatz/status/1270703905144537092
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,669
    dixiedean said:


    It w

    HYUFD said:

    If Biden is on 46% in the last 2 polls that is the same as Trump got in 2016 and less than the 48% Hillary got.

    Some of Trump's vote has gone to undecided therefore rather than Biden.

    Trump is going to Oklahoma apparently as it has a very low number of Covid cases and is solid Trump so he wants to start by firing up and shoring up his base

    And bringing the infection rate up to the national average?
    Levelling up.
    Large gatherings are great for the virus, especially with lots of shouting.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,774

    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    Gandhi a racist? I thought he successfully led 500 million BAME people to independence from the Evil Colonial Jackboot??
    I think the worst thing Gandhi said was that the way for Jews to demonstrate their moral superiority over the Nazis was for them to enter the gas chambers willingly.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153
    edited June 2020
    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    FPT for politeness for "BluestBlue"

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    malcolmg said:


    Let's not tussle over irrelevances like Cummings.

    Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
    I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.

    p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
    Haggis-themed.

    Good one, positively Juvenal-esque.
    Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
    Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
    Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
    Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
    not if you understandthe Scots language though
    I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke :smile:
    What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
    Hold on, let me give you a sample:

    Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa,
    Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa,
    Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa,
    Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.

    The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another' :wink:


    On the contrary, it's perfectly comprehensible Lowlands Scots - no worse than, say, Barnes's Dorset poems.

    Perhaps beyond the Wall of Caucasus
    I'll hide from your secret Pashas,
    from those quick/bright eyes that always see all,
    the ears that miss nothing at all.

    The one thing that niggles is 'derne' which I don't recognise - it may just be my memory but a quick check of the DSL Dictionar o the Scots Leid/Dictionary of the Scots Language suggests it is an archaic word indeed.

    And it may be my imagination but there's something slightly off to my ear. If my fellowScots on PB confirm this then I wonder if it was written partly from a dictionary by a Russian?

    https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/derne_vforward Lowlands Scots
    http://www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk/
    You could be right. In about 1980 I went on a study tour to the Soviet Union which included trips to various schools who were studying Burns and the kids were having a go at writing Burns style poetry with a version of old Scots. It seemed quite the thing there at the time.
    Poor Rabbie, slavedriver, Unionist, MCP, now commie! All he had to do was to join the Boy Scouts to get the full slate.
    Sigh, you say Unionist like it was a bad thing :-)
    We can add pro-indy democrat to keep you happy, one must be inclusive! [edit: not that you aren't a democrat, just that it was prtetty dodgy in his time ...]
  • AndrewAndrew Posts: 2,900
    edited June 2020
    As far as I can see the rate of decline has been super consistent since the peak. Here's UK figures, all settings, by actual date of death, from the "2nd peak" (ie the care home peak) on 17/april, until latest available figures 29/may:




  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Alistair said:

    I still think Trump might win, these protests will make a lot of Americans wary of the left that are encouraging them.

    I see they beheaded Christopher Columbus' statue the other day.

    Yes, the protest delivering a devastating blow for the BLM movement by shifting opinion *Checks notes* a net 15 points in their favour.

    https://twitter.com/sangerkatz/status/1270703905144537092
    Happened to Bush in 2001 too. ;)
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,232

    HYUFD said:

    I wonder whether Trump could pull out rather than face what appears to be a big defeat.

    I was wondering the same. Perhaps Johnson will do the same in a few years time. Needs to spend more time with family and others...
    The Tories are still 6% ahead under Boris and also the first swing to him on approval today too

    https://twitter.com/Shobbs2/status/1271059060444585989?s=19
    I didn't think the BLM protests would help the Labour poll rating.
    https://twitter.com/Marshal_P_Knutt/status/1271068204593491972

    :smile:
    What's this thing of calling Keir Starmer 'Keith'? It's not as if he's hiding his real first name for whatever purpose (Gideon Osborne, Alexander Johnson etc.). I'm trying to understand the satire here.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,753
    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Scott_xP said:
    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.
    More like RAF Nicola Sturgeon
    Surely more like RAF Roundhead?
    Not a traitor. Cromwell won!

    There was a tank named Cromwell in WW2, and Churchill wanted to name a warship after the Lord Protector - IIRC the King expressed his dissatisfaction.

    Mind the British did name US-produced tank after Lee and Stuart - but made up for it with the Grant and Sherman.
    There was also a Churchill tank of course, a rare example of contemporaneous naming. Not quite the triumph of armour design with which one would want to be associated.
  • Peter_the_PunterPeter_the_Punter Posts: 13,225
    edited June 2020
    kinabalu said:

    WFT is that "Zogby" at the bottom? Does Trump own that one?

    Zogby and Rasmussen were so far out during the Obama/Romney contest that they actually predicted the wrong President. Zogby disappeared from view after that. Rasmussen staggered on but industry experts always mark down their findings for built in Republican bias. (Nate Silver generally knocks five points off, for example.)

    I'm actually surprised to find Zog is back in business. Who pays them? Don't think anybody takes them too seriously.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153
    TOPPING said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Scott_xP said:
    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.
    More like RAF Nicola Sturgeon
    Surely more like RAF Roundhead?
    Not a traitor. Cromwell won!

    There was a tank named Cromwell in WW2, and Churchill wanted to name a warship after the Lord Protector - IIRC the King expressed his dissatisfaction.

    Mind the British did name US-produced tank after Lee and Stuart - but made up for it with the Grant and Sherman.
    Well that's a thread right there. It's not particularly "my" period, but are there not parallels with the Confederacy in that he was pretty brutal to one set of Brits, while now in the UK we are all Brits rather than Roundhead or Cavalier?

    What he did of course for parliamentary democracy meanwhile is not in doubt.
    I think it was the Scots who started the Wars of the Covenant, actually, and the Stuarts who started the 'Civil War' brutality (south of Newcastle, anyway)!
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Trump is the second-worst President of all time, only Andrew Jackson is worse.

    Even if Biden had a 30 point lead in the polls I wouldn't want to take anything for granted. Like a proverbial monster in a horror movie, we can't take it on faith that Trump won't rise and strike again.

    Not taking anything for granted until the results are in.

    There's quite a cottage industry built around the assessment of all the Presidents to date. Wikipedia is your friend here with an extensive summary:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States

    There is a surprising amount of agreement amongst the experts and the pollsters. Not surprisingly, Washington and Lincoln score consistently well: Harding, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson do badly.

    Trump hasn't got enough form to go on but early indications are that he will be jostling Harding et al for a place at the bottom.
    Indeed. I think Buchanan is unfairly pilloried - the country was irreconcilable and Civil War was building up with or without him. Similar to WWI both sides just didn't want to compromise enough.

    Harding I think is unfortunate to be judged for his affair (which I couldn't care less about), his premature death and what was revealed about the corruption of others following his death in what was a very corrupt era following the Volstadt Act. As far as I know Harding wasn't himself corrupt was he?

    Andrew Jackson wholeheartedly deserves his reputation for the Trail of Tears - one of America's darkest moments.

    Trump to me is worse than Harding and Buchanan but not yet at Jackson levels.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Its just numbing that this is happening now. As opposed to 50 years ago. Deeply, deeply weird country. It makes me very cautious about what should be a no brainer if they were even half rational.
    Many of the South's soldiers had no slaves or no stake in slavery. They were fighting because ''y'all are down here.''

    Many slave owners did not participate in the war.

    I think some think they can sympathise with the bravery of the ordinary soldier of the South whilst still disagreeing with the cause??
    Oh sure. And the way the US was able to reconcile after the war was remarkable in many ways despite the moaning about the reconstruction.
    The US 'reconciled' by the North giving in to Southern terrorism. From the moment Lincoln was shot and Andrew Johnson took over the whole process was compromised. Reconstruction was abandoned due to the North giving in to Southern criminal terrorism and political obstructionism.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    edited June 2020

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Its just numbing that this is happening now. As opposed to 50 years ago. Deeply, deeply weird country. It makes me very cautious about what should be a no brainer if they were even half rational.
    Many of the South's soldiers had no slaves or no stake in slavery. They were fighting because ''y'all are down here.''

    Many slave owners did not participate in the war.

    I think some think they can sympathise with the bravery of the ordinary soldier of the South whilst still disagreeing with the cause??
    Just like how we in the UK like to wave Nazi flags at sporting events to commemorate the bravery of the ordinary soldier of Nazi Germany, whilst still disagreeing with the cause.
    That's a poor parallel firstly because we aren't German.

    Its also a poor parallel because the southern soldiers were mostly simply that. Soldiers. There was a striking lack of einsatzgruppen and SS divisions in their midst. A striking lack of NKVD too, for that matter.

    I'm not for flying the flag of the south. I'm just wondering why so many ordinary Americans didn't have a problem with it.

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Scott_xP said:
    There's something beyond parody about the 'patriotic' use of the Confederate flag in parts of American public life - or naming American military bases after secessionist military leaders. It'd be like having an RAF Hermann Goring.
    More like RAF Nicola Sturgeon
    Surely more like RAF Roundhead?
    Not a traitor. Cromwell won!

    There was a tank named Cromwell in WW2, and Churchill wanted to name a warship after the Lord Protector - IIRC the King expressed his dissatisfaction.

    Mind the British did name US-produced tank after Lee and Stuart - but made up for it with the Grant and Sherman.
    There was also a Churchill tank of course, a rare example of contemporaneous naming. Not quite the triumph of armour design with which one would want to be associated.
    And to balance the previous Cromwell, I had forgotten, there were Covenanter and Cavalier - the former in particular only fit for training ...
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,037
    Sean_F said:

    MattW said:

    Hmmm.

    Gandhi has made the statue-haters target list.

    image

    Gandhi a racist? I thought he successfully led 500 million BAME people to independence from the Evil Colonial Jackboot??
    I think the worst thing Gandhi said was that the way for Jews to demonstrate their moral superiority over the Nazis was for them to enter the gas chambers willingly.
    Gandhi assumed that all empires were susceptible to the same sort of moral pressure of peaceful non-violent resistance that the British were.

    If he’d done that virtually anywhere else at the time he’d have been tortured and killed.

    It’s a remark on the morality of the British (who were still very far from perfect) at the time that he was able to end its empire in India in the 1930s and 1940s in the way he did.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153
    edited June 2020

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Its just numbing that this is happening now. As opposed to 50 years ago. Deeply, deeply weird country. It makes me very cautious about what should be a no brainer if they were even half rational.
    Many of the South's soldiers had no slaves or no stake in slavery. They were fighting because ''y'all are down here.''

    Many slave owners did not participate in the war.

    I think some think they can sympathise with the bravery of the ordinary soldier of the South whilst still disagreeing with the cause??
    Just like how we in the UK like to wave Nazi flags at sporting events to commemorate the bravery of the ordinary soldier of Nazi Germany, whilst still disagreeing with the cause.
    That's a poor parallel firstly because we aren't German.

    Its also a poor parallel because the southern soldiers were mostly simply that. Soldiers. There was a striking lack of einsatzgruppen and SS divisions in their midst. A striking lack of NKVD too, for that matter.


    I don't know about that. I've just been reading about what some of them did to units of freed slaves and other African-Americans when they encountered and still worse captured them.


    [Edit: but I take your point you're not waving the Confederate flag for them, so to speak.]
This discussion has been closed.