RandoEFC

See I think stuff like this is equally unhelpful though. The prevalence of the anti-science Covid deniers is only encouraged by this sort of thing even if most sensible people see it and understand that it's tongue in cheek and a fair dig like we've been saying.

I've seen some scepticism towards this from some scousers, accusing the government of using Liverpool as a guinea pig. I get why they think that, and I think the government need to be more clear on what they're actually trying to achieve, what model they are trying to test in Liverpool to roll out across the country, but the bottom line is, it would be better if as many people as possible got tested.

Bottom line, why does Trump want to involve the Supreme Court if he thinks he's won after all votes have been counted? I don't need an answer to that. Georgia is the one that has potential to be dynamite to Trump. It's slowly ticking towards Biden. I don't have much hope that there are enough ballots left to make up the 100k difference but if it flips before too much more time has elapsed then that hurts him a lot.

And Georgia is still in play!

A few things. 1) Most commentators have said it would take the biggest polling error in modern electoral history for Biden not to win this. It was one thing when it happened in 2016, but pollsters adapted their models in response to this and still Trump has got a vote share as much as 10% better as the polls suggested in some states. That's simply unprecedented and maybe it'll get diluted when they finish counting the postal votes in the states that have already declared but in the absence of an explanation for why that many people changed their minds in the blink of an eye, I'm just putting it out there that the best mathematicians and statistical modellers in the world, people who have been doing this their whole lives, don't get things this wrong, not after how wrong they got it in 2016. We know there's been voter suppression but it looks to me that either a lot more of that has gone on than anyone predicted or something even sinister has happened because these results completely defy any logic compared to the polling that has consistently told a very different story, literal thousands of polls with different samples over the course of several months. 2) We shouldn't need to have this conversation. I know Biden isn't an overwhelmingly good candidate in his own right and he might still win but America should be ashamed of itself right now. It's one thing voting Trump in once when he was making reasonable-sounding promises and offering something alternative but the phrase "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" comes to mind. This guy's been in the White House for 4 years now. You know what he's about. It's absolutely staggering that close enough to half of the population has voted for him again and given him the opportunity to skirt around actual democracy by getting the Supreme Court involved. I mean the man's a walking parody, a cartoon character gone wrong. What's wrong with you? 3) The only thing worse than Trump getting back in is all of the nonces on social media or at work who don't actually know anything about politics but have belligerently insisted "Trump will win again" in the face of any credible evidence, aside from "it happened last time". You know the types. The morons who spew any old bollocks on any topic they know nothing about because they get it right 1 in 50 times, think they're a Nostradamus because one of their stupid guesses came true and just pretend the other 49 never happened. Hopefully enough of the uncounted votes in Michigan and Wisconsin will be enough to stop America from having completely shat the bed here but with Trump's comments about an hour ago it doesn't look like that'll matter.

Early numbers in Florida are positive for Biden. Early though...

IS RIGHT LADS LETS GO

Trump's first big defeat in his attempts to rig the election as the GOP fail to throw out 120,000 drive-through votes in Texas. The fully Republican court in Texas ruled that the votes will be counted as did a Federal judge. What's more concerning is them fencing off the White House like they did when he had to hide in the basement from the Black Lives Matter protestors. A clear signal that Trump is expecting to incite violence as a result of his actions. Biden is going to win this election with relative comfort, the gap is too wide for the Republicans to flip it back in their favour with carefully targeted voter suppression. Trump is going to refuse the result, it's going to be both horrifying and interesting to see how that conflict is resolved. The bottom line is, there's simply no path to Trump holding onto the White House for 4 more years without tearing the country apart. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, and hopefully he, his party and the people with the power to enforce a peaceful transfer of power if he tries to refuse it, see that they can only prolong the inevitable.

This is the exact problem though. Fear sells. Which leads me to believe that there's some weird mental gymnastics going on with a fairly sizeable group of people who are weirdly addicted to that fear. And if you try and play down the extent of the crisis, this demographic of people will criticise you for being a conspiracy theorist, which you can't really entirely blame them for, because of the anti-vax, anti-science, anti-fact Covid deniers that genuinely do exist. Still, what this pandemic has done is create an absolutely fascinating case study in modern human behaviour and attitudes. Living through it isn't my idea of fun but it is objectively incredibly interesting seeing how different people, cultures, countries and government types have responded to this attack from nature.

What you're describing is a completely different thing though. I'm talking about people who want to lock all their doors, bar all their windows and shout "LOOK TOLD YOU WE'RE ALL STILL GONNA DIE" when the daily death toll goes up from 1 to 3. I think the psychology of it is something to do with people wanting the certainty of a full lockdown over the grey areas of second guessing all the minor changes in rules and restrictions. Hiding at home is guaranteed safety whereas leaving the house involves risk mitigation based on uncertain and ever-changing science. Maybe it's different in Australia but it even exists on the Isle of Man where we've been Covid-free (no local transmission) for almost six months. You have a vocal minority on one side who bang on about hoaxes and it's just the flu, I think we've all been exposed to them, but you have an equally bonkers and vocal minority at the other end of the spectrum who, whenever one person self-isolating after a trip to England tests positive for the virus, scream about "this is why we should close the borders and let nobody in until there's a vaccine". The latter group also seem to feel more vindicated about being right when something bad happens than they seem upset about what it means for the individuals and families involved. Thankfully in most places, including here, the majority in the middle understand that there has to be a trade-off between fighting the virus and sustaining some sense of normality for the sake of people's livelihoods and other health issues, and that the balance might shift on a regular basis as the science and infection rate changes. This is where the phenomenon of the silent majority comes in. In England, you'd think that there was a massive debate about whether stricter measures are wanted or not. Most polling consistently shows that about 70% of the population agree with stricter restrictions and about 15% oppose them. But the 15% make the most noise and so it creates the false impression of a split country when actually a 70% consensus on something in England in the current political climate is astonishingly high.

There is a sizeable demographic of Brits who I simply don't understand. The ones who seem to actually want to be living in fear and living in lockdown. They think the virus is everything and nothing else is a factor. They are so utterly convinced, for example, on this occasion that the lockdown is going to go on much longer than 4 weeks, Christmas will be cancelled and thousands more people are going to die. They talk themselves into such a casual hysteria that they almost come across as if they want things to be as bad as possible. It's a really odd mentality.

I don't think that's too controversial. Corbyn had nothing to gain by sticking his head back above the parapet. All he did was cause drama for the party and force Starmer into a position where he either had to aggravate the left of the party or aggravate the Jewish community and the voters Labour are trying to win back. It doesn't mean the scale of the problem wasn't exaggerated, we all know it was, the right wing media in our country are shameless when it comes to weaponising racism against their political rivals when it suits them whilst promoting other types of bigotry in the next breath, but there's a time to keep your mouth shut and just after presiding over one of the most crushing defeats in one of the most important elections in modern day British politics is one of those times. Anyway, if anyone still thought Farage genuinely cared about Brexit instead of just using it as a way to try and stay relevant, think again.

Standings after Round 1 of Last Man Standing 2020-21

They did the same thing with face masks on public transport after Sadiq Khan came out and called for them to make it compulsory. It went from being a probable policy to "the science shows that masks make negligible difference" before the u-turn 2 months later. That's the problem with this lot though. They can't admit they made a bad call. If anyone asks them why they made a different decision 2-3 weeks ago they were apparently "following the science" even though Chris Whitty literally said at the press conference when they announced the tiered system that Tier 3 restrictions wouldn't be enough and SAGE recommended they do this back then. It always comes back to Brexit. They're a cabinet that governs on sheer front because if they allow you to pull at one thread, then the rest of it all comes tumbling down too.

Second lockdown confirmed in England. Very depressing. Tory ministers and back benchers very cross, some because they're "libertarians" who oppose any lockdown, some because their constituencies don't really need to be locked down, and some who agree with the lockdown but are appalled at the communications from the government. I can see Johnson no longer being Prime Minister one way or another this time next year.

The thing with Tory Tory England is though that a Corbynite Labour will simply never get elected. Labour have a huge job on their hands remaining electable already with SNP's stranglehold on Scotland. A Blairite Labour isn't ideal, I don't think Starmer is going that far to the centre, but if it's a choice between that and a lifetime of Conservative role there's only one choice. For the time being, I still believe that Starmer's purge of "the left" of the party is more about detoxifying the party's public image than it is about actually eradicating left wing views. The party has a long way to go though. I watched the debate about school meals last week and even though I agreed with basically everything they were saying, far too many of the "Corbyn" intake of MPs are very good at passion and representing the interests of their constituents, but they can come across as a bit screechy. Everything is "disgraceful". Labour needs more statesmanship. Activism is an essential part of the Labour party but you need to actually convince enough of the electorate to give you the power to actually put it into action. Angela Rayner (even though she too got in trouble for her scum comment that night) is an example of a leftie in the party who is actually capable of speaking to people with opposing views. Labour needs more like her, and to put them front and centre more often when the election gets closer.

Two polls that came out today had Labour in the lead, one of them by 5 points. That's come off the back of the school meals row. Will be interesting to see next week's polling after the Corbyn incident. YouGov snap polls suggested that a pretty strong majority supported the decision and that most people think Labour are better off without Corbyn, including when it was isolated to Labour voters. On the other hand there was a poll saying that his and Labour's favourability has dropped over the last few days so not sure now to square those results with one another.

Corbyn wasn't accused of being a racist bigot by anyone in the party or the report. What he was accused of was being ineffective in dealing with it. He couldn't just admit it, he tried to play it down by saying it was exaggerated for political reasons. What did he have to gain by saying that? Nobody said he himself was racist. I don't think Starmer wanted to be drawn into this. This morning in his press conference he was asked repeatedly about Jeremy Corbyn and he said that he wasn't named individually and it's more about improving the complaints process. Suspending Corbyn is going to do more damage to him in his efforts to shore up support from across the spectrum of the party than it's going to gain him from centrists on election day in four years time.

Corbyn has forced his hand here though. The party need to make a clean break from this whole issue. This EHRC report is carried out by an independent body and Corbyn still takes to Twitter to say the issue was overblown by his enemies inside the party and the media. Labour's line now, regardless of the leadership, needs to be one of zero tolerance towards anti-semitism. Corbyn may well be right that it was exaggerated for political reasons, but if he's right then that's even more reason to take a zero tolerance approach to it. The Labour statement also says he failed to retract his comments which suggests he was given the opportunity to amend the wording. All he had to say is sorry for anyone this offended, I remain committed to fighting racism and discrimination in all forms as a member of the Labour Party. He already lost the election, the only reason he has to defend himself now is egotistical. This isn't good for Starmer either. For all of the approval this gets him from those centrist potential Labour voters and the Jewish community that were alienated by Corbyn, it causes as much if not greater divisions in his own party. I'm sure he would have preferred not to do this as it's going to be a polarising move, but he had no choice. You can't claim to take a zero tolerance approach then ignore it when a prominent Labour MP is still tweeting in a way that could be interpreted as playing down the existence of the issue. I find it very hard to believe that Corbyn is an anti-semite himself, or even tolerant of it, but in this case he has chosen to make himself a martyr for the sake of saving face or denying his failure of leadership on this issue, when he had the opportunity to either apologise or keep his mouth shut to allow the party to heal the problems it caused under his leadership.

Jeremy Corbyn has now had the whip suspended. Well then.

The thing is with the measures is that t takes two weeks at least to see the impact. Test and trace isn't the silver bullet either. The UKs one needs to be better and that will help but Germany's has been held up as this great example but they're also back into lockdown now because the spread has gone up again.

The waffle is moving towards a national lockdown after all now. France and Germany have just taken the plunge but have this time kept schools open. I think England will eventually follow suit, it is absolutely essential though that they keep schools open both for the sake of the kids and their parents.

It's the "I know you are but what am I" approach that Trump got away with for so long. If someone accuses you of something then just accuse your opposition of the same thing and let the little people battle it out depending on which side they think they're on. Get enough cronies and client journalists to become prominent enough in the media to neutralise the discourse there, and if things ever top too far against you just cry about the fake news "MSM" or impartiality if it's the UK. Finally, label any ordinary people who get too far above their station because they called you out on being wrong on something that's actually their area of expertise lefty activists or do-gooders. Reference Antifa or defunding the police if you really need to scare the people who aren't really paying attention into recoiling from your enemy too. It will pass though, hopefully starting with the US election next week.

I bought the second one but I didn't really get into it, I quite like to watch the matches but simply don't have the time for it now, and the mechanics of the actual matches are terrible, defenders and counter punches win easily all the time, like Federer will literally lose 6-2 6-0 to Nadal on a hard court. I would absolutely love it if they made an F1 game with this format though where you could start out as a driver or team manager in any year back to 1980 and just do a 15 year career from there.

Just finishing the full download because it's half term and I'm bored. Probably going to play a bit of Ultimate Team but mostly just squad battles and not much online because I enjoy the collecting players aspect of the game mode but I have an awful combination of being too competitive to accept defeat whilst also not wanting to become the sweaty bastard you need to be to prevent that failure. Needless to say the RNG and bullshit game mechanics of FIFA bring out the worst in me as a gamer. I played a couple of the friendly games against the AI earlier while the rest of the content finishes downloading, I didn't mind the gameplay to be honest.