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Bercow should have been given a peerage by default for services to the House. That the government chose not to bother demonstrates their continuing contempt for the House and basic due process.

Speakers pop up in the other place and intone their experience of parliament and due democratic process. That Bercow is not going to be able to do so demonstrates shame on Johnson's government which literally nobody cares about.

So of course serkeir isn't nominating him. It's not for him to do so. Perhaps PM Sunak will do so as part of his efforts to rehabilitate the Conservative Party.

Well it’s a view.

I would have given Bercow a peerage, despite the fact that he's pond scum. And worse, pond scum who tried to suppress investigations into bullying in his office.

There is nothing admirable about Bercow.

But the Speaker of the House should not be pirouetting to ensure approval of the Government of the day to secure a peerage. A tradition, once broken, is hard to reinvent. From now on, the danger is that this is another power grabbed by the Executive, and the role of Speaker ends up politicised.

It was already politicised when Labour voted to appoint Martin after Boothriyd & then whipped to appoint Bercow.

The last 4 speakers (since Wetherill? I was just a kid!) have been members of the Labour Party.

Weatherill - '83-'92 - Con
Boothroyd - '92-'00 - Lab
Martin - '00-'09 - Lab
Bercow - '09-'19 - Con (ish)
Hoyle - '19- - Lab

The Speakership election is written up by Wikipedia here, and while it is hardly an unimpeachable source, it doesn't mention whipping.

It’s a bit difficult to find an article that long ago but this gives a flavour for the dynamic. This was not a “Con” candidate.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2009/jun/23/john-bercow-tories-alan-duncan

Boothroyd was the office - a Speaker, not a self promoter.
Martin was toady
Bercow was.... Bercow
Hoyle seems to be more like Boothroyd.

The issue was that Bercow decided that he was going to take part in the politics in the House. If you are a Remainer, this might seem to be a glorious thing, but it involved tearing up a bit of the mos maiorum. Once you start doing that..... Well, it reminds me of Pompey complaining about other people breaking the rules....

O/T 5 years ago today we voted to leave. Today I am off to London to spend the day on the lash with some of my fellow campaigners to celebrate the anniversary. If anybody sees a very drunken and dishevelled man trying to get on the last train back to Liverpool from Euston tonight, either please help me on or shove me under it depending on how you voted.

Strong Britain, Great Nation,

Strong Britain, Great Nation...

I noticed on the last thread that you sneered at the British values of tolerance, kindness, pride and respect.

Which of those virtues are not worth celebrating and encouraging?

The virtue of not dictating to primary school children to sing a right wing thinktank's version of a song supposedly to celebrate the nation which pretends that Northern Ireland isn't a thing.

Charles - are you providing succour to this nonsense out of remaining party loyalty, or do you really want us to go American and have a pledge of allegiance every morning in schools?

As Lieutenant Tawny Madison said in Galaxy Quest: Well Fuck That.

I’m commenting on @Foxy ’s sneering attitude.

A quintessential part of being British is to denigrate oneself.

It is manifestly not to shout and get arsey about how marvelous your own values are.

Always someone else's fault:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Tuesday that the EU is "backfiring" in its goal to set consistent travel rules as countries take varying approaches to the surge of a new COVID variant in Britain.

Her critical remarks singled out Portugal, which has allowed the entry of British tourists despite the highly infectious Delta virus variant actively circulating in the U.K.

“What I regret is that we have not yet been able to achieve a uniform behavior among the member states in terms of travel restrictions. That is backfiring," Merkel said at a joint press conference in Berlin with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

https://www.politico.eu/article/portugal-travel-coronavirus-united-kingdom-angela-merkel-delta-variant-india/

Perhaps if Germany sequenced more of its positive cases it would have a better handle on the extent of Delta in Germany....

FPT:
> John Bercow will not be nominated for a peerage by Sir Keir Starmer despite his defection to the Labour Party.

Sources close to Starmer said that the former Speaker of the House of Commons, the first in two centuries not to be given a seat in the Lords upon retirement, would not be made a peer by the present Labour leadership.

The opposition’s snub to Bercow, 58, effectively destroys any chance he once had of fulfilling his well-publicised ambition of joining other past Speakers in the upper chamber.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caa20c90-d38a-11eb-bd02-4c692e62e3fd?shareToken=17a6930ac80496aa423712b038c2575d

what will the longer term outcome of the refusal to grant Bercow a peerage,, Speakers increasingly at the beck and call of the Executive or ones who go completely independent. Nothing much was ever proven against Bercow? wrt the bullying allegations, so I am unsure why he has been refused a seat in the Lords....

Because everyone who has the power to nominate him hates his guts.

Bercow should have been given a peerage by default for services to the House. That the government chose not to bother demonstrates their continuing contempt for the House and basic due process.

Speakers pop up in the other place and intone their experience of parliament and due democratic process. That Bercow is not going to be able to do so demonstrates shame on Johnson's government which literally nobody cares about.

So of course serkeir isn't nominating him. It's not for him to do so. Perhaps PM Sunak will do so as part of his efforts to rehabilitate the Conservative Party.

Well one cant help but be mildly amused that a man who went large on killing "tradition" and taking a different view is now appealing to "tradition" to get his peerage.

FPT:
> John Bercow will not be nominated for a peerage by Sir Keir Starmer despite his defection to the Labour Party.

Sources close to Starmer said that the former Speaker of the House of Commons, the first in two centuries not to be given a seat in the Lords upon retirement, would not be made a peer by the present Labour leadership.

The opposition’s snub to Bercow, 58, effectively destroys any chance he once had of fulfilling his well-publicised ambition of joining other past Speakers in the upper chamber.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caa20c90-d38a-11eb-bd02-4c692e62e3fd?shareToken=17a6930ac80496aa423712b038c2575d

SKS is doing the right thing here. I suspect Bercow joined the Labour Party because he felt snubbed, and because he thought he was such a "prize", that it would land him a peerage.

Such a shame that SKS didn't agree.

You mean the f***wit didn’t do a deal in advance? 😂😂😂

FPT:
> John Bercow will not be nominated for a peerage by Sir Keir Starmer despite his defection to the Labour Party.

Sources close to Starmer said that the former Speaker of the House of Commons, the first in two centuries not to be given a seat in the Lords upon retirement, would not be made a peer by the present Labour leadership.

The opposition’s snub to Bercow, 58, effectively destroys any chance he once had of fulfilling his well-publicised ambition of joining other past Speakers in the upper chamber.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caa20c90-d38a-11eb-bd02-4c692e62e3fd?shareToken=17a6930ac80496aa423712b038c2575d

SKS is doing the right thing here. I suspect Bercow joined the Labour Party because he felt snubbed, and because he thought he was such a "prize", that it would land him a peerage.

Such a shame that SKS didn't agree.

If Israel fails to contain covid this is terrible news for the whole world

A link might help your cause

I think we'd all be fascinated to hear about the wave of serious illness and death currently in progress in Israel.

Wait, there isn't one?

Fancy that.

Hmm. Sadly there is some truth in this claim

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-sees-highest-covid-daily-infections-in-two-months-as-delta-variant-spreads-1.9928700

So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.

It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.

But the news is the news


"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"


https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1407462148410810368?s=20

Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong

Bring on the aliens

If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.

This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.

There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)

And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.

There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.

His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.

Just hope he is wrong.

https://mobile.twitter.com/GVDBossche

IIRC the data so far suggest that complete vaccination works about as well on Delta as on Alpha or the original Plague.

We should expect escape to happen, but gradually, as with the flu. Which is why we have to go through the rigmarole of flu jabs for the vulnerable every year.

So, perhaps we end up having to do the same with Covid? Fine.

I am not sure that comparison with the flu is actually correct. For flu, the problem is that two different proteins - hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) are expressed on the surface. There are 18 different versions of the HA hemagglutinin, and 11 different versions of the N neuraminidase, so a potential 198 different combinations of the two of which 131 have so far been seen. The antigenicity of the virus changes completely as the H and N proteins change from one version to another (H1N1, H5N3 and so on). This enables the flu virus to both flip and drift, and is what makes creating this year's flu vaccine a crap shoot based on your best guess as to which proteins will be expressed in this year's flu.

With SARS-CoV-2, we have only one protein, the Spike protein. What we are talking about is minor changes in that one protein, changes which themselves are highly constrained as, if you change the spike protein too much, it will not be able to bind to the ACE2 receptor, and so will not be able to infect.

Protein modeling indicates that there are very, very few potential mutations to the Spike protein that will both enable it to escape current vaccines and still be able to bind to the ACE2 receptor.