RoverAndOut

It's going to be really interesting to see the directions people have gone in. I tried to go for a couple of decent bankers who still qualified within the rules, then a couple of older individuals whose death wouldn't be entirely unexpected but don't have any real health problems to back that up then my final person is a flyer which came from trying to think of someone who's death would be both completely surprising but then not at all surprising at the same time. That one's probably going to be the make-or-break, but, you know, if you give me the better part of a decade then I might fancy my chances...

Sent my team in earlier today - passed with flying colours, which was nice. Also means none of them will likely die in the next 5 years but you can't win 'em all! Out of interest, how long are people anticipating this will run? Since we're going with more run of the mill names, not necessarily the sickest of the sick, are we anticipating a swift conclusion? Longer the better for me in some cases...

Been trying to prove you wrong that Mike Redway is the last one left, without success. However, I can confirm Michael Reddyhoff was born in March q. 1940 in Leeds - confirmed by checking his parent's wedding (in the article he says Leonard and Margery). By a similar method I'm pretty sure Marion Gay was born in December q. 1933 in Pontypridd (it's the only year remotely like the one you mention that fits her birth and just happens to match exactly). They're really tricky to track down because they're not obviously from one place, they just all ended up in London together. I'm suspecting given the name that Ross Gilmour is Scottish? The smallest clue I've found on Valerie Bain is this lineup for the Coronets which mentions a Valerie Taylor - I'm wondering if that's either her married name or her maiden name? I've not found anything to corroborate either though (a Valerie Bain marries a Taylor but it's in the 80s, which seems unlikely for something like that to have been updated on the page). Nothing for Irene King either.

Superb effort @Ulitzer95, it's been a pleasure to help out in the latter stages a little, although my input has been fairly minimal in all honesty. Very interesting read, it's amazing the terrible stuff that can be found without leaving the Top 10, let alone in the lower reaches of the 50s or 60s...

Stalin caused chaos even in death. I'd be surprised if Putin doesn't do the same. And several years from now to boot.

How dare you. As if calling the next Vice President of the United States 'the Indian' is racist when you don't know her name! Surely you realise it's easier to just be racist than find out her name before you send your inane tweet? They never learn do they? Note, he apologised for offence caused but not for his original comment.

Some decent contenders on your Eurovision list. Olivia is known to be unwell, Nora Nova is ancient and Simone de Olivieira has survived cancer twice! That could get you to 4, I think the astronauts is the wildcard category here.

That's 6 people in the White House circle to have tested positive since Election Day. Almost like holding loads of maskless rallies and a (very premature) victory party with 400 residents on Election Night was a bad idea... If only there was evidence to back that up.

A lot will come down to how she handles his death. 73 years together is an extraordinarily long time. It wouldn't be uncommon for her to go downhill considerably after he dies. Equally, she's always been quite a stoic figure, handled her parents' and sister's deaths with remarkable composure (at least in public), and his death won't be a huge shock given his advanced years. She may just continue just as before (ish). I guess the other question is whether after he dies she retires from public life and abdicates. Anyway, here and now, I'd expect her to reach an older age than Philiip, assuming he dies in the next couple of years.

That's a pretty horrid story and a big own goal from Wimbledon, I agree. They lucked out with Kate though, absolutely loves her tennis, I imagine she'll continue doing it even after she's Queen. Once the Duke stands down of course. You're probably right on what she turns up for, I'd have to have a look at some photos and see which events she's been at. Tim Laurence! D'oh! Of course he was the other one. Completely forgot about Anne. Thanks for that.

I've been fortunate enough to graduate 3 times in various forms and on none of these occasions did I actually receive the award off the university's Chancellor. The first two were at Lancaster, and it should have been Chris Bonnington, the mountaineer. To keep it on topic, he took over from Princess Alexandra, whom the main square on campus is named after. These days it's Alan Milburn, the former Labour MP and an alumnus. A poor choice IMO given James May is also an alumnus.

538 suggest that while it's not impossible for Gross to win Alaska, it's highly unlikely, particularly based on some of the easy victories for embattled Republicans elsewhere. It will all come down to Georgia and in previous run-off elections, there's been a significant drop-off in enthusiasm from Democrats to actually win the seat having got to the run-off. That said, there is much more on the line this year, but that could work in both directions. Republicans may be smarting from losing the presidency but they sure as hell don't want the Democrats controlling House, Senate and Presidency. Loeffler is a Trumpian I believe and Perdue more moderate? Maybe some Republicans will split their vote, get rid of Loeffler for the Reverend and re-elect Perdue. That way, Republicans hold on to the Senate 51-49 but they can maybe send a message to Republican HQ. All that said, it seems they're going to just win the presidential election there, so maybe Stacy Abrahams and her voter registration and turnout machine can roar into action again and pull of an incredible achievement. It would be a huge boost for Biden just ahead of taking office if they could.

Christ, Merry Christmas Yanks! Is that really what people need on Christmas Day 2020?

I think you're both right to a point. I was aware of her stepping back and doing her own thing - she's worked as a music teacher I seem to remember? And goes by the name Katherine Worsley rather than the Duchess of Kent. She also stopped presenting the trophies at Wimbledon (the famous scenes with Jana Novotna in the 90s for instance), it's always the Duke now and Kate's being groomed to replace him. However, I do feel I've seen her at a few of the big family events in the past decade, couldn't tell you exactly what but she seems satisfied to at least go through the motions. Anyway, no appearance at the Cenotaph yesterday - coronavirus provided quite a useful smokescreen for the absences: no Harry or Megan, no Andrew, no Phillip (though he's obviously been missing a few years now).

Don't think so - she usually steers clear of a lot of official engagements I believe? The ladies were in overlooking balconies (social distancing): from memory the first had the Queen and a lady-in-waiting, the second had Camilla and Kate and the third had Sophie and...someone else. But not the Duchess of Kent.

Always been the case. It's all to do with things like the Electoral College (that again). The USA is exactly what it says a group of United States, each one operating independently of the others (with a Governor, State Legislature, etc.) The Electoral College is designed to ensure all states matter equally and get their own say, so they don't get swallowed up in one big mass (which was a big concern back in the founding of the Republic). So basically, there's an election, then they need to actually count all the votes (including absentee, provisional [things like people who asked for a mail in but may have voted in person too], many states have something called 'cured' ballots, which is where you may have made a mistake on your ballot [e.g. missed a signature on a mail in or the voting machine has punched a hole between candidates rather than for a specific person] and you get the opportunity to correct it so it counts) according to each state's rules (every US state has it's own version of our Electoral Commission to decide how the election is held - for instance all the states give their whole Electoral Votes to the winner of the state, apart from Maine and Nebraska which award 2 to the state winner and the rest to the winner in each Congressional district). Once that's all done, the state has to officially ratify the vote (presumably through the state legislature but I don't honestly know), then they have to appoint their 'Electors' who will attend the Electoral College and officially cast the state's votes, then the Electoral College cast their votes in early December (on a specific day about a month after the election). These are then ratified by the Congress (House and Senate) but only after the new session begins in early January. Once that's happened, there's about a fortnight before Inauguration Day on January 20th. So, in answer to your question, basically: paperwork. It used to make more sense because states obviously cover a big area. If you held a Presidential election in California in the 1880s, they'd be so far from Washington that they'd operate completely independently, hold their election and then send their representatives to formally announce the vote in Washington which would take time to get there. Now it still takes time, but possibly not as much. Inauguration Day did get moved - it used to be in early March but Franklin Roosevelt moved it back to January 20th and it's stayed there ever since. Another reason for waiting is Transition. The President-elect uses the 10 weeks or so to decide on his team: Department Secretaries, key White House staff, they'd usually like to make a start on Department Staff too (Trump didn't, he left loads of roles empty for most, if not all, of his presidency). There's no Civil Service in the US, although many people may survive from administration to administration depending on their role. I guess that's the biggest difference to the UK - the reason a new government can waltz in the day after an election is because the Civil Service are still keeping the ship afloat anyway. Hope that helps.

Only just heard the news and immediately thought of this coincidence myself. Was going to post but thought I'd just check before I did and lo and behold someone got there first. (That's what your mother said last night...) RIP Alex, though I've never seen Jeopardy! it is clearly well loved in the USA and you were a major part of the reason why.

Which one? Donny or Sleepy Joe?

Only using illegal votes though, remember?

Slightly surprised at a few of those failing on fame grounds too. Ted Turner is historically one of the most powerful figures in American broadcasting and was also satirised more than once in the first few seasons of Family Guy (although I confess he's one of those people I always forget exists). While he failed on health grounds ultimately, I've also heard of Willie Mays (sportsman, no?) but am flabbergasted at the Alice Munro DQ. She's definitely got articles written about her and her Wikipedia is long enough, I'm assuming she fails on the ground of not having published anything new recently, but hell, the woman won the Nobel Literature Prize, why does she need to write anything else?! I don't claim to know anything about anything she's written, but I'm surprised she failed the fame test.

Agreed. Well, the full breakdown will come once all the results are in, but the evidence was that suburban white women had turned against him, that's why I said "at least 8 million" because it's clearly far higher than that. There's evidence that a section of black and Hispanic voters (men in particular) admired Trump's macho image and character plus plenty of evidence that Hispanics in particular (most notably those in Florida) were open to a more conservative President due to their experiences of socialism in Central America and (for Floridians) Cuba. Wrongly characterising Biden as a raving socialist worked for Trump in holding onto Florida and probably gained him a few votes elsewhere too. There were around 129 million votes cast in 2016 and over 146 million so far in 2020 (likely to go above 150 in the end) - that's 17-21 million extra votes this time around and while some of those are Democrats who failed to back Hillary turning out to get rid of Trump, a decent number will be among the lunatic fringes who voted for Trump this time for the first time. The fact that so many Republicans blindly voted for him is hugely concerning, but there is a decent amount of evidence of Trump running a couple of points behind the Senate races in some of these states, even in reliably red states, so there were at least some who switched their votes (as anecdotal evidence has suggested). The Republicans gained seats in the House and held on in the Senate whilst losing the Presidency, On the flip side to that, however, I saw on 538.com in the past couple of days that a recent poll they conducted in Pennsylvania over whether voters would like the next Republican candidate in 2024 to be "more like a conventional politician" or "more like Trump" came down 81% in favour of someone like Trump. There is a lot of belief he will run again in 2024, citing the evidence of getting more votes this time around and the unfinished business of losing to Biden. That in itself is a terrifying thought, but there's no getting away from the fact that the Republicans are still the party of Trump, and the orange monster is still going to be spewing bile to hundreds of thousands on Twitter for the next 4 years, whether he runs or not.

I'm intending to submit a team, just ruminating on some options - it's trickier than you think and I can guarantee I'll end up picking someone who's had a health scare I wasn't aware of.

What insight has he got? Well, Iran's got lots of oil....Saudi Arabia's got lots of oil....Yemen's got lots of oil...ooh Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar too....oh and has anyone ever told you about Iraq...? I read today his Secretary of State is tipped to be Chris Coons, his Senate replacement in Delaware. From my limited knowledge of him I don't understand him to be particularly hawkish, although he is a very strong supporter of Israel. Anyway, if this news of Cheney is true, I can only assume it's along a specific limited policy area or objective. How much outside foreign policy advice does a long-time member and 3-time Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee really need?

Apologies, I was referring more to the electoral college, where he is likely to get just over 300 (Obama got 360-odd) and the margin in the key states (like Trump in 2016 only beat Hillary by around 17,000 votes across 3 or 4 key states - although on reflection, to get to 270 he only needs Pennsylvania which he may win fairly comfortably: Nevada, Arizona and Georgia are just racking up the score). The 'record votes' argument is a dubious one IMO. Turnout was historically high (highest since 1900) which of course is good (although still only looking at 62% - really? 38% of Americans couldn't be bothered to get involved one way or the other?) but by suggesting Biden got most votes ever (an undeniable fact), you could equally say Trump got more votes than Obama - he currently stands at 70.8 million compared to Obama's 69.4. This is 5 million more than Hillary's popular vote count from 2016 and nearly 8 million more than he got himself in 2016. In other words, (at least) 8 million people who didn't vote for Trump in 2016 voted for him in 2020. And I'm not sure that stat sits too well with me.

@Lord Fellatio Nelson (to save me quoting that massive post) @msc put it far better than I could as to why I'd disagree with a pretty big chunk of what you said. Regarding Biden hobbling across the line, that's just perception due to the way states have counted mail-in ballots. In an ordinary election, Biden would have been declared winner on the night having won Pennsylvania. They'd probably be waiting on Nevada, Arizona and Georgia because they're very close, but the narrative would have been the Democrats flipping back Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, while also potentially flipping Georgia and Arizona, which haven't voted Democrat since the 90s and even then didn't get close to 50% due to third party candidates (Ross Perot). He hasn't blown Trump away, but I don't even think that's possible anymore with the polarisation of politics. Biden is currently sitting on 50.6% of the popular vote, which will probably go up when all ballots are counted. Reagan got 50.7% in 1980 and earned 489 out of 538 votes in the Electoral College. Those days are long past. A third of the country votes Democrat, a third of the country votes Republican and it all comes down to a handful of states: win them all and you end up close to 400, only win a few and you may scrape 280. The polls have consistently said Biden would win and he has, it sounded like a certainty because there were lots of possible paths. In the end, all the narrow wins aside, he's done exactly what he said he would do: win back the Rust Belt. Those three states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were all he needed to turn a 306-232 defeat into a 273-265 victory (and it will be considerably higher than that in the end).