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Month: March 2020

The exit door. The state of Labour as Jeremy Corbyn departs

The exit door. The state of Labour as Jeremy Corbyn departs

What of Labour?  This is a question that almost no one is thinking about as, almost unnoticed, Jeremy Corbyn slips out of the limelight.  Like the Magnificent Ambersons, Labour have got their comeuppance. They’d got it three times filled and running over. But those who had longed for it were not there to see it. And they never knew it, those who were still living had forgotten all about it, and all about them. That irrelevance bodes ill for Labour. …

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Joe Biden: tough seasoned candidate or bumbling geriatric?

Joe Biden: tough seasoned candidate or bumbling geriatric?

How to reconcile his stumbles with his success I have not covered myself with glory during the 2020 US presidential election so far. To date, I have tipped, successively, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden for victory – and I’m not exactly convinced at the moment that it’ll be any of them. To be fair, I don’t think my reasoning has been a million miles out. At the start of the year, I assumed that impeachment would leave Trump…

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The Past is Not Another Country

The Past is Not Another Country

When I was a child in Naples, the trams had signs on them telling people not to spit and also to offer up seats to the “mutilati di guerra” (the war wounded). The first sign always puzzled me. Spitting was terribly bad-mannered, of course, but why was this instruction so much more necessary than any other? It took one of my many elderly relatives to tell me that spitting and coughing into the space where others were could spread disease. And diseases could kill….

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9% of members of the UK cabinet have now tested positive

9% of members of the UK cabinet have now tested positive

Let’s hope the same proportion doesn’t apply to the country as a whole On a morning of dramatic developments in the UK it has been announced that both PM Johnson and Healthsec Hancock have tested positive for the coronavirus. Given that there are just 23 members of the cabinet that means that just under 9% of its members have been afflicted. Maybe that is not surprising because the two have obviously spent a lot of time in each other’s company…

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The football season should be completed even if matches are behind closed doors

The football season should be completed even if matches are behind closed doors

At least we’d be talking about something other than the virus The thing that I find most weird about the current lockdown situation is that there is no football or other our professional sport. At this point we would be having the build up to the Grand National, the Boat Race and the final stages the football season. The lack of things to bet on has huge implications for the betting industry because so much of their turnover is driven…

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WH2020: New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, moves to 3rd favourite in the Dem nomination betting

WH2020: New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, moves to 3rd favourite in the Dem nomination betting

With the coronavirus epidemic dominating the headlines almost right across the world a new name has appeared in the top three on the Betfair WH2020 Dem nomination market. He’s Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York which has the worst figures of any state in the US . Everyday in the US, usually at 1115 EST, Cuomo gives his daily report and observations on the continuing crisis which threatens the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. Even though he is…

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