Browsed by
Month: September 2020

Fisking the PM – examining the background to his controversial EU move

Fisking the PM – examining the background to his controversial EU move

Comments 762 Comments

There used to be (may well still be) an enjoyable pastime for readers of Robert Fisk’s articles: a point by point rebuttal of the factual errors and other idiocies contained in them. Other journalists can be fisked with equal pleasure. At one point there was a veritable cottage industry dependant on Polly Toynbee’s output. So on a rainy day starting a new week of political fun and games, it is time to revive this practice and apply it to another…

Read More Read More

Biden moving back up on the Betfair WH2020 “next president” market

Biden moving back up on the Betfair WH2020 “next president” market

Comments 345 Comments

The early absentee ballot data looks positive for the challenger The recent spate of good national and state polls for Joe Biden has led to something of a turnaround in the betting. After a long period when the Trump position got a better and better things seemed to have changed with punters now more ready to risk their cash on a Biden victory. In some states the absentee ballot process has begun and what we are seeing is many more…

Read More Read More

Johnson’s reported admiration for Trump won’t look smart if Biden wins

Johnson’s reported admiration for Trump won’t look smart if Biden wins

Comments 502 Comments

The PM’s view is totally out of line with UK public opinion This from the Sunday Telegraph “Boris Johnson privately told US diplomats that Donald Trump was “making America great again”, according to a cache of official notes taken during high-level UK-US meetings whose details have leaked to The Telegraph. The Prime Minister is quoted telling the US ambassador to Britain in August 2017, when he was foreign secretary, that Mr Trump was doing “fantastic stuff” on foreign policy issues…

Read More Read More

Who will win the first Presidential debate?

Who will win the first Presidential debate?

Comments 758 Comments

Ladbrokes have a market up on the first scheduled Presidential debate for the end of September and my first instinct is to back Biden. Success equals performance minus anticipation and thanks to the Trump and his campaign they’ve lowered the bar for ‘Sleepy Joe’ so low that not even a baby Hobbit could walk under that bar. Then there’s what the Trump campaign have been up to President Donald Trump’s campaign launched a series of Facebook ads on Thursday featuring…

Read More Read More

Disruption on the line

Disruption on the line

Comments 442 Comments

Let me take you back to a different time, a time when we worried about how the transport system was going to cope with the weight of numbers placed on it. Just six years ago, the tube drivers were confident enough of their clout that they could strike to try to get their demands. The strike was not total, but the effect was nevertheless crippling for London. Yet, as an LSE study found, a funny thing happened. Improvise, adapt, overcome….

Read More Read More

The polling continues to look solid for Biden

The polling continues to look solid for Biden

Comments 294 Comments

And we’ve yet to see the impact of his comments about the military The latest WH2020 average from RealClearPolitics is above and shows it getting back to what it was before the Republican convention. According to the latest RCP calculation Trump is 7% behind nationally. This latest figure does not include any polls issued three polls have been published in the past hour that show margins for Biden of 10%, 11% and 13%. So it could be moving even further…

Read More Read More

The betting markets continue to rate Trump’s re-election chances far too highly

The betting markets continue to rate Trump’s re-election chances far too highly

Comments 699 Comments

The president’s polling retains a rock-hard ceiling, too low At the start of February, Donald Trump looked well set for re-election. True, his personal ratings weren’t great and nor were his head-to-heads against both Biden and Sanders, the two Democrats who’d shared the lead in the race for their party’s nomination for the previous three months. Even so, the economy was roaring ahead with record job numbers, America was near-enough out of foreign wars, and the attempt to impeach him…

Read More Read More

Time to be betting on Biden in Texas where new poll has him 3% ahead

Time to be betting on Biden in Texas where new poll has him 3% ahead

Comments 369 Comments

A Data for Progress poll on the White House race in Texas, the second biggest state, has Biden leading Trump by 48% to 45%. This follows a Public Policy Polling survey yesterday that had Biden 1% ahead. In other recent polls over the past few days the Trump lead has been down to just 1%. This has prompted me to make my biggest bet so far of WH2020 – backing Biden on Betfair at 4.5 Of the states that might just…

Read More Read More