Battle Royal

[Suff]

I woke just before 11, it's been a rough week with illness and tiredness and I was in work at 7am yesterday to get stuff finished before a key meeting in the afternoon.

So I've been watching the American Election results come in. It's way too close to call but Trump seems to be outperforming Clinton in some very key swing states. It's going to be a rollercoaster but Trump may just swing it.

Queue pictures of Cats in the dovecote....

Heading back to bed shortly but I'll be up early and looking.

[Rodo]

Yes, I think Clinton needs something in the nature of a major miracle now.

[Suff]

Looks like she's taken California but Wisconsin and Michigan are wobbling and Trump has taken Florida and North Carolina. CNN has Clinton ahead now on 190 but there is a long way to go.

[cromwell]

Trump wins. He has won the popular vote as well as the electoral college.

[Suff]

And so he has won. Now the markets have something else to worry about besides Brexit and May's stance of "wait till after Feb" starts to make a lot of sense.

Well the UK has a friend in the White House who actually has a passport and knows how to do business outside the borders of the US.

It's not really that surprising. If they can have an ex B movie Actor as a president, they can also have a self made Millionaire. I'm guessing that the establishment didn't really work out how that would play with the working class voter. After all Bill Clinton was a poor boy made good but Hilary is of the rich.

It's going to be fun anyway.

[Rodo]

Tusk and Juncker have already invited him over for tea.

Tusk, Juncker and Trump.........a real nest of vipers.

[Kaz]

I'll say Rodo

[Suff]

Well he did say he wasn't so interested in globalisation of trade which took away jobs from US citizens. He also said he'd can TTIP which should please a LOT of people.

Tusk and Juncker must be in total panic mode because TTIP was already in serious trouble and now they have Trump who is hostile to it. Not only is he hostile to it, he's more interested in a bilateral free trade agreement with a UK, outside of the EU, than he is with a restricted trade deal with the EU. This is something that the EU absolutely do not want. They had agreements with Obama and Clinton that the UK would get a raw deal and the EU would bulldoze through TTIP. That's now flying in the wind.

He may be a mildly racist, misogynistic, loud mouthed, bully. But he's also WYSIWYG. There is not a lot of hidden depth to the man which means that he's more likely to do what he says than to try and politick his way out of his commitments. I haven't checked but I believe he also still controls the House and the Senate. Which means whatever he doesn't like of Obama's changes may go right out of the window on the end of the republican foot.

I have my own issues with him as a climate change denier, which, in my opinion, makes him in touch with about 45% of Americans and about as dogmatic and stupid as them too. However 4 years in the reality of the White House with all that information at his fingertips may just give him a slightly different view.

It's been a long, nasty and bitterly fought battle. But, in the end, as the results show, Trump knew the electoral system better than the analysts and also the people he was talking to on the ground. Much as we feel that the political classes have been taking over our lives and doing whatever they want, the people who make up the bulk of the US also feel that they have been taken over by the political classes. They may not be able to do much ab out the House and the Senate, but they sure as hell can do something about the President.

In this one way alone, the people of the US have an advantage over the UK in their political system. Our Queen will not use her power and so a huge chunk of power in the UK system sits in limbo. In the US, the people have a say over this power. Granted I'm happy for it to be invested in the Queen as I trust her, but I would like voters to be more savvy about how they vote for Parliament. I've voted Tory, SNP and Lib Dem on a tactical basis driven by what I wanted at each election. I would prefer that everyone in the UK looks at what they want and votes for the result that gives them that. But. Sadly. The voter in the UK won't do that any more than the voters in the US will. It seems they want someone to tell them who to vote for rather than working it out for themselves...

Like Trump or Loathe him, this is exactly what I want. The political tree is shaking in the wind and some of the less trustworthy snakes are falling out of it and are being dispatched on the ground.

[cromwell]

Tusk and Juncker must be in total panic mode

Ab-so-lutely.

Their world, the world of neo-liberal globalisation, of exporting jobs to low wage economies and importing cheap labour into higher waged economies, is falling apart.

Brexit was one sign of that. Trump is another.

Hilary was the big money candidate, the Goldman Sachs candidate, the candidate who wanted no borders, just like her backers want.

Looks like the American people didn't.

The most interesting fact of all; on broadcast media, mostin the UK (Sky, BBC) held strong pro-EU views. In the USA most broadcast media was for Hilary. It didn't work. It is harder to control information in the age of the internet, harder to control how people think.

[Suff]

Tusk and Juncker must be in total panic mode

Ab-so-lutely.

There they were, sailing along blithely in calm waters to the USE. Everyone down below, bound and gagged, only freeing the right hand from time to time to rubber stamp another step of the journey.

They even navigated the rough waters and rebellion of the French and Dutch breaking free from the shackles and throwing the Constitution overboard. They just locked them up with bigger shackles and "passed" the Lisbon Treaty instead.

Then, in very short order, the ship is overrun with "immigrants", then, hull down, they sailed into the minefield of Brexit, unaware and seemingly uncaring, of the damage it could do. Finally sailing so close that they were holed below the water line.

So there they are, in rough waters, overloaded, holed below the water line, pumps going like mad. Then MV USA comes over the horizon and.

Dumps a hundred tons of concrete on them.....

Tragic!!! I could almost feel sorry for them. If it were not for their attitudes, scheming and damage they're trying to do to the UK...