Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Wrong. Apart from Jordan and Israel, Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East with an elected President and elected Parliament
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
Banging my head against a brick wall with bet365's customer service team. Trying to establish the settlement rules for Top Male and Top Female for Strictly. First reply was rubbish.
"This market is for the win only meaning that who you pick, either a male participant or a female participant would have to come first in order for the bet to win. This would mean that reaching the final wouldn't class the bet as a win or a loss at this stage. bets will settle on the overall winner of the competition".
Second reply, from a different agent, is clearer but still rubbish.
"If a male participant goes on to win Strictly Come Dancing, then there would be no Top Woman and bets on this market would be settled as a loss".
Think there could be some value around but just want confirmation on rules but these guys are clueless. If the bets settle on the overall winner there is no need for top male or top female markets with much shorter prices than the outright FFS.
That bet is completely useless as I cannot remember any time when the order of the finalists who didn't win have been announced even after the show.
At best you would get a winner in a single market prior to the final as all other males / female are knocked out and if the actually winner is a person of the opposite sex than both markets would be settled but otherwise not a chance.
yes, the order for the losing finalists hasnt been publicised for years. so my view is that if there are four couples in the final (as last year) and say 2 male and 2 female, if a man wins then he is also top Male, but the 2 females dead heat for top female and the market should be settled at full odds for half your stake. that is what I'm wanting them to confirm.
Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:
a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary. b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.
These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.
One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.
More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).
A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.
The appointment with the GP adds nothing.
What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.
EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.
I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us. People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then? Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....
No wonder people just go to A&E....
It is interesting that the experiences of people around the country are so different. I know of one case in Grantham last year where a stomach cancer patient who had been in remission and started to get symptoms again could not get an appointment with the GP and by the time things were so bad they went to A&E it was too late and they died. Another of my closest friend who became seriously ill after an infection in his leg and was unable to get an appointment so ended up in hospital where they thankfully managed to save his leg. And yet at the same time the country surgeries which are using the Ask My GP app are doing so in such a way that if need be you can get an appointment within a couple of hours. They have assigned a doctor to do online triage but with the expectation of offering face to face visits if either the Doctor or the patient request it and it is meaning they can effectively deal with a much higher workload and those who do need to be seen get a much quicker response.
The problem to me seems to be with those GPs who, for whatever reason, simply don't want to do face to face at all anymore. If that is their attitude then they should find another job.
Say farewell to GPs then.
The reality is we don't have enough GPs and those that are qualified to do it don't need the money anymore.,
Not sure that would be a bad thing. Looking at other countries they don't have the gatekeeper function that GPs enact in the NHS. At least no where near to the same extent. In Poland for example you book directly with a specialist in the area you have an issue. If they think there is another issue they will refer you on.
Eliminate GPs and have triage in hospitals seems a better solution for a lot of people.
That people need a GP referral for chronic conditions especially is utterly absurd. It is pure makework.
How much of this is the Lansley legacy ?
If that's not rhetorical, 'quite a bit', I think. May have been standard procedure before, but the Lansley reforms really set in stone the GP as the gatekeeper.
Our daughter has some long term medication (not a severe condition - facial haemangioma). We're lucky that, being paediatrics, we do have some direct access to the paediatric consultant. But the prescription, although originating in secondary care, is managed in primary care. So when the set of repeat prescriptions comes to an end, we have to make a phone appointment with the GP, which is basically along the lines of: GP: Did the consultant say to continue? Us: Yes GP: Same dose? Us: Yes GP: Ok, I'll put that through then Complete waste of time, ours and the GP's
On the subject of paediatrics, I heard an anecdote that locations such as Bradford and Blackburn are sought after spots for those medics wanting good experience in the field. Conditions that are normally only read about in text books crop up with much greater frequency, giving them much more varied hands-on experience.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
Yes, his general ship in the first Gulf war was simply outstanding. He had overwhelming force of course but he used it to great effect to achieve total victory with the absolute minimum of casualties. I have always thought that there was an indirect causal connection between the complete massacre of Soviet era equipment in that war and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It laid bare the idea that the Russians were even close to matching NATO's power was a complete joke. It became obvious that the 1st Armoured division's firepower was such that it could have marched on Moscow. But it was deployed to great effect.
The Soviets knew the game was up when it came to contesting US military technology way before that. They sent Marshal Kutakhov to Syria after the Beqaa Valley Turkey Shoot in 1982 and his findings indicated an unbridgeable gap.
Sure, but the Republican Guard being wiped out with several hundred tanks and armoured vehicles destroyed when the 1st Armoured had 4 casualties in the war (blue on blue IIRC) showed this was not just a gap but a chasm.
Genuine question, where was the Soviet Union falling short of the USA, by the 1980's?
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
Or is this driven by what happened to them in Scotland?
No, they are pro the Union.
Once Scotland leave and Ireland is reunited the independence train in Wales will start rolling, and Labour here too, will be left at the station.
I guess there's an important difference between Labour and Lafur? Drakeford seems pleasantly rational on the issue which may be the product of Plaid not being much of a threat at the moment? Though SLab were pretty anti SNP even before they were reduced to third party status (they're off the SNPbad scale now).
FPT
All 3 of Rhodri Morgan, Carwyn Jones & Mark Drakeford were/are fluent Welsh speakers.
I think Drakeford said he considered joining Plaid Cymru as a young man, before settling on Llafur. So, Drakeford is popular with many Plaid Cymru voters.
I suspect Drakeford prefers Wales to be in the UK -- but not in a UK run by Johnson or with endless Tory Govts in Westminster.
Drakeford has surprised me (and others) on the upside. He looks like a bumbling, incompetent academic, but he has a set of skills and attributes that has proved electorally successful in Wales.
In fact, I prefer Drakeford to any of his likely successors -- he is standing down as leader of Llafur before the next Senedd elections.
Be interesting to see what happens next to Llafur. Incompetent, half-assed leadership is certainly one of the things that killed SLAB, and that Llafur have so far avoided.
Wales also voted for Brexit, just like England and its 2 main parties are Labour and the Conservatives, just like England.
Nationalism in Wales is just confined to mainly a few Welsh speaking areas on the West coast and in the NorthWest and Anglesey and parts of the Rhondda.
Hence Labour can easily ignore Plaid
Off topic
Things change HY.
I am a staunch supporter of the Union of England, Wales and Scotland. Less so NI. However, if Scotland leave, then what's the point of the "Union" of England and Wales?
Wales are completely ill-equipped for independence, and it is as yet not a popular option, but if Scotland jump ship, so what? I'd give it a whirl. I also think should independence occur the political dynamics of Wales will change. I suspect the Conservatives will hold on as the main opposition group, who will occasionally take power in a rainbow coalition when the left are unpopular, but I am not sure about the centre-left parties including Labour, they might be all subsumed into some centrist porridge that will need to do deals with the Greens and the SWP from time to time.
Meanwhile in England you have Sine Die Boris Johnson Governments. What is there for you not to like?
Scotland won't be leaving anytime soon, No still leads most polls and this government will continue to refuse indyref2 anyway.
However if there was an indyref2 granted under say a Labour minority government in the next 10 years and Scotland voted Yes then obviously in the short term Labour would try and keep Wales otherwise it would be completely screwed in England alone under anything other than a Blairite leader yes.
However in the longer term as I said as young Welsh continue to move to English cities and Tory voting English retirees continue to move to Wales then the already Brexit voting Wales will become indistinguishable from England in its political culture
That's not going to happen.
Johnson has captured the zeitgeist. Not my zeitgeist, but seemingly everyone elses!
Johnson is very English- centric, this is grating in Scotland as we speak and it will become so in Wales. Johnson will eventually have to capitulate to a second IndyRef, and the longer that goes on, the more chance he has of losing Scotland.
Johnson's populism does play well in aspirational working class Wales as it does in the Midlands and Northern England, but I feel, and I maybe wrong, that is tempered by a distrust of English toffs. As we speak Johnson is a working class hero in Wales, but at some point he may become characterised as an English absentee landlord.
One shouldn't assume that Johnson's lack of appeal in Scotland is necessarily because he's a non-Scot telling the Scots what to do. He really, really grates on the kind of elderly pro-Union type who does not like having a 'clown' for a PM.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
It is not a democratic country. In fact, it's slid backwards in recent years.
No I cannot name another ME country that's "more democratic" because apart from Israel there are NO democracies in the ME. Not Jordan, not Iraq, none of them.
But if you think the fact that Iran is worse means you can pretend Iraq is a democracy, then you're just wrong.
The Economist scores both Kuwait and Lebanon higher on the democracy index, and doesn't class either of those as democracies either.
Anybody know about diesel particulate filters? Apparently I have an option of buying a new one or somehow fiddling with the car's computer and making the warning lights go away. Neither option cheap so I suspect the answer is I'm just screwed.
It depends on the manufacturer and how difficult it is to remap the ECU via ODB2 to suppress the DPF codes. I use a combination of Toad Pro and Viezu. The latter is particularly good on BMWs. I've used to change the boost maps of BMW hire cars before I get them out of the car park.
Just suppressing the warning when the DPF is clogged is not a good idea. If you are going full planet killer you're better off just deleting it along with the EGR and the crankcase breather recirc.
Thanks, it's a Toyota. I asked about whether we are just suppressing the warning and got an unconfident no. Apparently they are cleaning the DPF somehow, but resetting the software and deleting the data is essential to avoid this happening repeatedly.
I know **** all about cars, but this explanation seems implausible, and therefore is perhaps true. Essentially with this garage (indeed with every garage) it feels like they are just making it up as I go along.
tips on what to look out for when I test-drive whatever the hell they've done tomorrow?
Have you tried Redex diesel particulate cleaner fuel treatment (£8 at all good motor factors) in the diesel tank, followed by a blast at high revs?
Ever since I watched Fifth Gear restore lost horses to an older car, one tip was by using regular Redex (£4) in the fuel, I use it regularly in both my petrol and diesel cars, and I swear by it. I remember my dad having a shot of Redex with every other refuelling in his 1100 back in the sixties.
There is a specific product marketed to clean particulate filters.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
Jordan has a score 34 and Iraq a score of 29 ie both higher than any other Middle Eastern nations except Israel and Lebanon and Kuwait (I missed out Lebanon which has a score of 43 and Kuwait which debateably has a score of 37 but Powell free it from Saddam too anyway).
UAE, Bahrain, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oman, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Yemen are all less free than Iraq on that chart now
Another England innings completely stalled by Malan. Unfortunately he's a 50/50 coin that flipped 10 heads in a row at the start of his interational career in a format with so few games that it's now going to take 2 or 3 years from the end of his purple patch for the selectors to notice he's very ordinary.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
It is not a democratic country. In fact, it's slid backwards in recent years.
No I cannot name another ME country that's "more democratic" because apart from Israel there are NO democracies in the ME. Not Jordan, not Iraq, none of them.
But if you think the fact that Iran is worse means you can pretend Iraq is a democracy, then you're just wrong.
The Economist scores both Kuwait and Lebanon higher on the democracy index, and doesn't class either of those as democracies either.
Under Saddam Iraq was a dictatorship and the most brutal and unfree region in the Middle East, Iraq is now not a dictatorship and elects its President and Parliament and more free than most Middle Eastern nations.
So in comparison to under Saddam Iraq is far better off and my original comment stands
Or is this driven by what happened to them in Scotland?
No, they are pro the Union.
Once Scotland leave and Ireland is reunited the independence train in Wales will start rolling, and Labour here too, will be left at the station.
I guess there's an important difference between Labour and Lafur? Drakeford seems pleasantly rational on the issue which may be the product of Plaid not being much of a threat at the moment? Though SLab were pretty anti SNP even before they were reduced to third party status (they're off the SNPbad scale now).
FPT
All 3 of Rhodri Morgan, Carwyn Jones & Mark Drakeford were/are fluent Welsh speakers.
I think Drakeford said he considered joining Plaid Cymru as a young man, before settling on Llafur. So, Drakeford is popular with many Plaid Cymru voters.
I suspect Drakeford prefers Wales to be in the UK -- but not in a UK run by Johnson or with endless Tory Govts in Westminster.
Drakeford has surprised me (and others) on the upside. He looks like a bumbling, incompetent academic, but he has a set of skills and attributes that has proved electorally successful in Wales.
In fact, I prefer Drakeford to any of his likely successors -- he is standing down as leader of Llafur before the next Senedd elections.
Be interesting to see what happens next to Llafur. Incompetent, half-assed leadership is certainly one of the things that killed SLAB, and that Llafur have so far avoided.
Wales also voted for Brexit, just like England and its 2 main parties are Labour and the Conservatives, just like England.
Nationalism in Wales is just confined to mainly a few Welsh speaking areas on the West coast and in the NorthWest and Anglesey and parts of the Rhondda.
Hence Labour can easily ignore Plaid
Off topic
Things change HY.
I am a staunch supporter of the Union of England, Wales and Scotland. Less so NI. However, if Scotland leave, then what's the point of the "Union" of England and Wales?
Wales are completely ill-equipped for independence, and it is as yet not a popular option, but if Scotland jump ship, so what? I'd give it a whirl. I also think should independence occur the political dynamics of Wales will change. I suspect the Conservatives will hold on as the main opposition group, who will occasionally take power in a rainbow coalition when the left are unpopular, but I am not sure about the centre-left parties including Labour, they might be all subsumed into some centrist porridge that will need to do deals with the Greens and the SWP from time to time.
Meanwhile in England you have Sine Die Boris Johnson Governments. What is there for you not to like?
Scotland won't be leaving anytime soon, No still leads most polls and this government will continue to refuse indyref2 anyway.
However if there was an indyref2 granted under say a Labour minority government in the next 10 years and Scotland voted Yes then obviously in the short term Labour would try and keep Wales otherwise it would be completely screwed in England alone under anything other than a Blairite leader yes.
However in the longer term as I said as young Welsh continue to move to English cities and Tory voting English retirees continue to move to Wales then the already Brexit voting Wales will become indistinguishable from England in its political culture
That's not going to happen.
Johnson has captured the zeitgeist. Not my zeitgeist, but seemingly everyone elses!
Johnson is very English- centric, this is grating in Scotland as we speak and it will become so in Wales. Johnson will eventually have to capitulate to a second IndyRef, and the longer that goes on, the more chance he has of losing Scotland.
Johnson's populism does play well in aspirational working class Wales as it does in the Midlands and Northern England, but I feel, and I maybe wrong, that is tempered by a distrust of English toffs. As we speak Johnson is a working class hero in Wales, but at some point he may become characterised as an English absentee landlord.
Johnson got 36% in Wales in 2019, the highest Tory score in Wales in decades and 4% higher than the 32% the Tories got in London in 2019 and just 4% behind Labour in Wales compared to 8% behind Labour in the NorthWest for example.
Johnson will refuse indyref2 as long as he is in power and there is sod all Sturgeon can do about it as union matters are reserved to Westminster.
Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:
a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary. b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.
These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.
One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.
More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).
A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.
The appointment with the GP adds nothing.
What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.
EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.
I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us. People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then? Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....
No wonder people just go to A&E....
It is interesting that the experiences of people around the country are so different. I know of one case in Grantham last year where a stomach cancer patient who had been in remission and started to get symptoms again could not get an appointment with the GP and by the time things were so bad they went to A&E it was too late and they died. Another of my closest friend who became seriously ill after an infection in his leg and was unable to get an appointment so ended up in hospital where they thankfully managed to save his leg. And yet at the same time the country surgeries which are using the Ask My GP app are doing so in such a way that if need be you can get an appointment within a couple of hours. They have assigned a doctor to do online triage but with the expectation of offering face to face visits if either the Doctor or the patient request it and it is meaning they can effectively deal with a much higher workload and those who do need to be seen get a much quicker response.
The problem to me seems to be with those GPs who, for whatever reason, simply don't want to do face to face at all anymore. If that is their attitude then they should find another job.
Say farewell to GPs then.
The reality is we don't have enough GPs and those that are qualified to do it don't need the money anymore.,
Not sure that would be a bad thing. Looking at other countries they don't have the gatekeeper function that GPs enact in the NHS. At least no where near to the same extent. In Poland for example you book directly with a specialist in the area you have an issue. If they think there is another issue they will refer you on.
Eliminate GPs and have triage in hospitals seems a better solution for a lot of people.
That people need a GP referral for chronic conditions especially is utterly absurd. It is pure makework.
How much of this is the Lansley legacy ?
If that's not rhetorical, 'quite a bit', I think. May have been standard procedure before, but the Lansley reforms really set in stone the GP as the gatekeeper.
Our daughter has some long term medication (not a severe condition - facial haemangioma). We're lucky that, being paediatrics, we do have some direct access to the paediatric consultant. But the prescription, although originating in secondary care, is managed in primary care. So when the set of repeat prescriptions comes to an end, we have to make a phone appointment with the GP, which is basically along the lines of: GP: Did the consultant say to continue? Us: Yes GP: Same dose? Us: Yes GP: Ok, I'll put that through then Complete waste of time, ours and the GP's
On the subject of paediatrics, I heard an anecdote that locations such as Bradford and Blackburn are sought after spots for those medics wanting good experience in the field. Conditions that are normally only read about in text books crop up with much greater frequency, giving them much more varied hands-on experience.
Bradford, certainly (I don't know about Blackburn). Greater incidence of many of the rare congenital conditions, particularly those associated with consanguinuity, i.e. where it would be rare in a more random match for both parents to be carriers for a rare condition but may happen more for closely related partners through e..g arranged marriage. Also one of the reasons for the Born in Bradford cohort studies, in addition to the greater ethnic group mix (i.e. you can actually do more than treat the South Asian ethnic groups as a homogenous group due to greater relative sample size - look at deprivation gradients/other socioeconomic measures within ethnic group, which normally give too small a subsample) and high deprivation.
Or is this driven by what happened to them in Scotland?
No, they are pro the Union.
Once Scotland leave and Ireland is reunited the independence train in Wales will start rolling, and Labour here too, will be left at the station.
I guess there's an important difference between Labour and Lafur? Drakeford seems pleasantly rational on the issue which may be the product of Plaid not being much of a threat at the moment? Though SLab were pretty anti SNP even before they were reduced to third party status (they're off the SNPbad scale now).
FPT
All 3 of Rhodri Morgan, Carwyn Jones & Mark Drakeford were/are fluent Welsh speakers.
I think Drakeford said he considered joining Plaid Cymru as a young man, before settling on Llafur. So, Drakeford is popular with many Plaid Cymru voters.
I suspect Drakeford prefers Wales to be in the UK -- but not in a UK run by Johnson or with endless Tory Govts in Westminster.
Drakeford has surprised me (and others) on the upside. He looks like a bumbling, incompetent academic, but he has a set of skills and attributes that has proved electorally successful in Wales.
In fact, I prefer Drakeford to any of his likely successors -- he is standing down as leader of Llafur before the next Senedd elections.
Be interesting to see what happens next to Llafur. Incompetent, half-assed leadership is certainly one of the things that killed SLAB, and that Llafur have so far avoided.
Wales also voted for Brexit, just like England and its 2 main parties are Labour and the Conservatives, just like England.
Nationalism in Wales is just confined to mainly a few Welsh speaking areas on the West coast and in the NorthWest and Anglesey and parts of the Rhondda.
Hence Labour can easily ignore Plaid
Off topic
Things change HY.
I am a staunch supporter of the Union of England, Wales and Scotland. Less so NI. However, if Scotland leave, then what's the point of the "Union" of England and Wales?
Wales are completely ill-equipped for independence, and it is as yet not a popular option, but if Scotland jump ship, so what? I'd give it a whirl. I also think should independence occur the political dynamics of Wales will change. I suspect the Conservatives will hold on as the main opposition group, who will occasionally take power in a rainbow coalition when the left are unpopular, but I am not sure about the centre-left parties including Labour, they might be all subsumed into some centrist porridge that will need to do deals with the Greens and the SWP from time to time.
Meanwhile in England you have Sine Die Boris Johnson Governments. What is there for you not to like?
Scotland won't be leaving anytime soon, No still leads most polls and this government will continue to refuse indyref2 anyway.
However if there was an indyref2 granted under say a Labour minority government in the next 10 years and Scotland voted Yes then obviously in the short term Labour would try and keep Wales otherwise it would be completely screwed in England alone under anything other than a Blairite leader yes.
However in the longer term as I said as young Welsh continue to move to English cities and Tory voting English retirees continue to move to Wales then the already Brexit voting Wales will become indistinguishable from England in its political culture
That's not going to happen.
Johnson has captured the zeitgeist. Not my zeitgeist, but seemingly everyone elses!
Johnson is very English- centric, this is grating in Scotland as we speak and it will become so in Wales. Johnson will eventually have to capitulate to a second IndyRef, and the longer that goes on, the more chance he has of losing Scotland.
Johnson's populism does play well in aspirational working class Wales as it does in the Midlands and Northern England, but I feel, and I maybe wrong, that is tempered by a distrust of English toffs. As we speak Johnson is a working class hero in Wales, but at some point he may become characterised as an English absentee landlord.
Johnson got 36% in Wales in 2019, the highest Tory score in Wales in decades and 4% higher than the 32% the Tories got in London in 2019 and just 4% behind Labour compared to 8% behind Labour in the NorthWest for example.
Johnson will refuse indyref2 as long as he is in power and there is sod all Sturgeon can do about it as union matters are reserved to Westminster.
I would reply, but I have just been sent to the naughty step by BigG.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
It is not a democratic country. In fact, it's slid backwards in recent years.
No I cannot name another ME country that's "more democratic" because apart from Israel there are NO democracies in the ME. Not Jordan, not Iraq, none of them.
But if you think the fact that Iran is worse means you can pretend Iraq is a democracy, then you're just wrong.
The Economist scores both Kuwait and Lebanon higher on the democracy index, and doesn't class either of those as democracies either.
Under Saddam Iraq was a dictatorship and the most brutal and unfree region in the Middle East, Iraq is now not a dictatorship and elects its President and Parliament and more free than most Middle Eastern nations.
So in comparison to under Saddam Iraq is far better off any my original comment stands
Again, no. Half your original comment stands, which you are now magnifying and emphasising. But the other half was wrong. Why not just say "I was wrong about that bit, but the important part is the other part"? Why do you have to pretend you were right when you were wrong?
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
Jordan has a score 34 and Iraq a score of 29 ie both higher than any other Middle Eastern nations except Israel and Lebanon and Kuwait (I missed out Lebanon which has a score of 43 and Kuwait which debateably has a score of 37 but Powell free it from Saddam too anyway).
UAE, Bahrain, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oman, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Yemen are all less free than Iraq on that chart now
Iraq holds regular, competitive elections, and the country’s various partisan, religious, and ethnic groups generally enjoy representation in the political system. However, democratic governance is impeded in practice by corruption and security threats. In the Kurdistan region, democratic institutions lack the strength to contain the influence of long-standing power brokers. Increasingly, Iran has been able to influence politics in Baghdad. Civil liberties are generally respected in Iraqi law, but the state has limited capacity to prevent and punish violations.
If you want a direct comparison, other nations include Burma on 28, Brunei on 28, Zimbabwe on 28, Nicaragua on 30, and Thailand on 30.
Anybody know about diesel particulate filters? Apparently I have an option of buying a new one or somehow fiddling with the car's computer and making the warning lights go away. Neither option cheap so I suspect the answer is I'm just screwed.
It depends on the manufacturer and how difficult it is to remap the ECU via ODB2 to suppress the DPF codes. I use a combination of Toad Pro and Viezu. The latter is particularly good on BMWs. I've used to change the boost maps of BMW hire cars before I get them out of the car park.
Just suppressing the warning when the DPF is clogged is not a good idea. If you are going full planet killer you're better off just deleting it along with the EGR and the crankcase breather recirc.
Thanks, it's a Toyota. I asked about whether we are just suppressing the warning and got an unconfident no. Apparently they are cleaning the DPF somehow, but resetting the software and deleting the data is essential to avoid this happening repeatedly.
I know **** all about cars, but this explanation seems implausible, and therefore is perhaps true. Essentially with this garage (indeed with every garage) it feels like they are just making it up as I go along.
tips on what to look out for when I test-drive whatever the hell they've done tomorrow?
Have you tried Redex diesel particulate cleaner fuel treatment (£8 at all good motor factors) in the diesel tank, followed by a blast at high revs?
Ever since I watched Fifth Gear restore lost horses to an older car, one tip was by using regular Redex (£4) in the fuel, I use it regularly in both my petrol and diesel cars, and I swear by it. I remember my dad having a shot of Redex with every other refuelling in his 1100 back in the sixties.
There is a specific product marketed to clean particulate filters.
Re-mapping the car does seem excessive.
Sounds worth a try to be honest, thanks for the advice!
Anybody know about diesel particulate filters? Apparently I have an option of buying a new one or somehow fiddling with the car's computer and making the warning lights go away. Neither option cheap so I suspect the answer is I'm just screwed.
It depends on the manufacturer and how difficult it is to remap the ECU via ODB2 to suppress the DPF codes. I use a combination of Toad Pro and Viezu. The latter is particularly good on BMWs. I've used to change the boost maps of BMW hire cars before I get them out of the car park.
Just suppressing the warning when the DPF is clogged is not a good idea. If you are going full planet killer you're better off just deleting it along with the EGR and the crankcase breather recirc.
Thanks, it's a Toyota. I asked about whether we are just suppressing the warning and got an unconfident no. Apparently they are cleaning the DPF somehow, but resetting the software and deleting the data is essential to avoid this happening repeatedly.
I know **** all about cars, but this explanation seems implausible, and therefore is perhaps true. Essentially with this garage (indeed with every garage) it feels like they are just making it up as I go along.
tips on what to look out for when I test-drive whatever the hell they've done tomorrow?
Have you tried Redex diesel particulate cleaner fuel treatment (£8 at all good motor factors) in the diesel tank, followed by a blast at high revs?
Ever since I watched Fifth Gear restore lost horses to an older car, one tip was by using regular Redex (£4) in the fuel, I use it regularly in both my petrol and diesel cars, and I swear by it. I remember my dad having a shot of Redex with every other refuelling in his 1100 back in the sixties.
There is a specific product marketed to clean particulate filters.
Re-mapping the car does seem excessive.
Sounds worth a try to be honest, thanks for the advice!
Incredibly moving tributes to Sir David Amess by Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer. Mood is somber, but the warmth across the Commons benches is unlike anything I’ve seen. Overwhelmingly, there’s sense of loss for one of the most liked and respected MPs by all parliamentarians.
And many people have zero choice of GP, unless they pay to go private.
In urban areas, which is after all where most people live, there is always a choice. Group practices also allow you to specify either "first available" or "must be Dr X and I'll wait longer if necessary".
I remember doing a seminar for a Chinese medical group who were interested in the system - they said the problem in China is that GPs are thought inferior to doctors in hospitals, so people with non-trivial conditions bypass the GPs and insist on being seen at A&E. I explained that in Britain that would not be permitted for non-emergency treatment and they would simply be sent away, and they thought that was disturbingly authoritarian and would not be accepted by the Chinese. It was one of those role-reversal moments that make you blink.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
Jordan has a score 34 and Iraq a score of 29 ie both higher than any other Middle Eastern nations except Israel and Lebanon and Kuwait (I missed out Lebanon which has a score of 43 and Kuwait which debateably has a score of 37 but Powell free it from Saddam too anyway).
UAE, Bahrain, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oman, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Yemen are all less free than Iraq on that chart now
Iraq holds regular, competitive elections, and the country’s various partisan, religious, and ethnic groups generally enjoy representation in the political system. However, democratic governance is impeded in practice by corruption and security threats. In the Kurdistan region, democratic institutions lack the strength to contain the influence of long-standing power brokers. Increasingly, Iran has been able to influence politics in Baghdad. Civil liberties are generally respected in Iraqi law, but the state has limited capacity to prevent and punish violations.
If you want a direct comparison, other nations include Burma on 28, Brunei on 28, Zimbabwe on 28, Nicaragua on 30, and Thailand on 30.
So Iraq is also now more free than Burma, Brunei and Zimbabwe then.
What an astonishing achievement compared to where it was under Saddam
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
Yes, his general ship in the first Gulf war was simply outstanding. He had overwhelming force of course but he used it to great effect to achieve total victory with the absolute minimum of casualties. I have always thought that there was an indirect causal connection between the complete massacre of Soviet era equipment in that war and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It laid bare the idea that the Russians were even close to matching NATO's power was a complete joke. It became obvious that the 1st Armoured division's firepower was such that it could have marched on Moscow. But it was deployed to great effect.
The Soviets knew the game was up when it came to contesting US military technology way before that. They sent Marshal Kutakhov to Syria after the Beqaa Valley Turkey Shoot in 1982 and his findings indicated an unbridgeable gap.
Sure, but the Republican Guard being wiped out with several hundred tanks and armoured vehicles destroyed when the 1st Armoured had 4 casualties in the war (blue on blue IIRC) showed this was not just a gap but a chasm.
Post conflict wargaming by the US military suggested that the Americans got a bit lucky. The battle of 73 Eastings basically had everything go right in their favour. Specifically their total air superiority had supressed the Iraqi forces to absolute minimum combined with the Iraqi pickets completely failing to operate and radio in a warning of attack meant when the attack started most Iraqi's thought it was further airstrikes and so hunkered down rather than man their vehicles.
Combined with limited visiblity that the American's IR system could overcome (which wasn't present in the export versions of the soviet Tanks the Iraqi forces were using) plus the range difference in the main guns meant an overwhelming set of advantages that added up to insurmountable odds.
Taking away even one of these advantages resulted in the attacking American forces taking significant casualties in the wargames.
It would be very rash to look at previous gen export equipment manned be demoralised troops with zero air cover and compare to what the Soviets could field. None of the advantages the Americans held would have been replicated on a battlefield of Central Europe.
All well and good but tightening our monitoring of potential jihadis and their internet use and travel plans would be more appropriate I would have thought given who the killer was
Offtopic, what's this Mail+? Much nicer than the main Mail website
Thanks - I'd never heard of it either till they invited me to write. It seems to be a semi-paywall online edition, with extra content and no adverts in exchange for £5/month. They left my piece and several others non-paywalled, presumably because of the subject.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
Jordan has a score 34 and Iraq a score of 29 ie both higher than any other Middle Eastern nations except Israel and Lebanon and Kuwait (I missed out Lebanon which has a score of 43 and Kuwait which debateably has a score of 37 but Powell free it from Saddam too anyway).
UAE, Bahrain, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oman, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Yemen are all less free than Iraq on that chart now
Iraq holds regular, competitive elections, and the country’s various partisan, religious, and ethnic groups generally enjoy representation in the political system. However, democratic governance is impeded in practice by corruption and security threats. In the Kurdistan region, democratic institutions lack the strength to contain the influence of long-standing power brokers. Increasingly, Iran has been able to influence politics in Baghdad. Civil liberties are generally respected in Iraqi law, but the state has limited capacity to prevent and punish violations.
If you want a direct comparison, other nations include Burma on 28, Brunei on 28, Zimbabwe on 28, Nicaragua on 30, and Thailand on 30.
So Iraq is also now more free than Burma, Brunei and Zimbabwe then.
What an astonishing achievement compared to where it was under Saddam
At this moment of lovely words across the HOC to Sir David Amess I am surprised you are not listening and I would just suggest to you, and everyone, to listen to Mark Francois speech which was just so moving and angrily denounced on line companies and speaks for all of us
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
Jordan has a score 34 and Iraq a score of 29 ie both higher than any other Middle Eastern nations except Israel and Lebanon and Kuwait (I missed out Lebanon which has a score of 43 and Kuwait which debateably has a score of 37 but Powell free it from Saddam too anyway).
UAE, Bahrain, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oman, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Yemen are all less free than Iraq on that chart now
Iraq holds regular, competitive elections, and the country’s various partisan, religious, and ethnic groups generally enjoy representation in the political system. However, democratic governance is impeded in practice by corruption and security threats. In the Kurdistan region, democratic institutions lack the strength to contain the influence of long-standing power brokers. Increasingly, Iran has been able to influence politics in Baghdad. Civil liberties are generally respected in Iraqi law, but the state has limited capacity to prevent and punish violations.
If you want a direct comparison, other nations include Burma on 28, Brunei on 28, Zimbabwe on 28, Nicaragua on 30, and Thailand on 30.
So Iraq is also now more free than Burma, Brunei and Zimbabwe then.
What an astonishing achievement compared to where it was under Saddam
I know you wrote that in all seriousness, but it did make me LOL.
Let me understand. You pay £5 a month to access rational, balanced articles that would never see the light of day in the regular Mail? Why not just read a newspaper which isn't the Mail instead?
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Offtopic, what's this Mail+? Much nicer than the main Mail website
Thanks - I'd never heard of it either till they invited me to write. It seems to be a semi-paywall online edition, with extra content and no adverts in exchange for £5/month. They left my piece and several others non-paywalled, presumably because of the subject.
Cracking piece Nick. Makes one wish that had known Sir David personally.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
Jordan has a score 34 and Iraq a score of 29 ie both higher than any other Middle Eastern nations except Israel and Lebanon and Kuwait (I missed out Lebanon which has a score of 43 and Kuwait which debateably has a score of 37 but Powell free it from Saddam too anyway).
UAE, Bahrain, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oman, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Yemen are all less free than Iraq on that chart now
Iraq holds regular, competitive elections, and the country’s various partisan, religious, and ethnic groups generally enjoy representation in the political system. However, democratic governance is impeded in practice by corruption and security threats. In the Kurdistan region, democratic institutions lack the strength to contain the influence of long-standing power brokers. Increasingly, Iran has been able to influence politics in Baghdad. Civil liberties are generally respected in Iraqi law, but the state has limited capacity to prevent and punish violations.
If you want a direct comparison, other nations include Burma on 28, Brunei on 28, Zimbabwe on 28, Nicaragua on 30, and Thailand on 30.
So Iraq is also now more free than Burma, Brunei and Zimbabwe then.
Um, only slightly! And remember, a score of less than 37 is considered NOT FREE!
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
As long as we remain slightly ahead of Zimbabwe, that's all that matters
Let me understand. You pay £5 a month to access rational, balanced articles that would never see the light of day in the regular Mail? Why not just read a newspaper which isn't the Mail instead?
Do any papers produce rational balanced articles these days?
Following up on what was sparked by Andrew Lilco's disingenuous factoid earlier, I've overlain English hospitalisations per age category (I had to interpolate at the boundaries as for some reason, hospitalisations have different age groups to cases).
NHS England only provides the age case hospitalisations back to October last year. Taking 7-day averages of each (to smooth out day-of-week effects) and normalising the peak of hospitalisations to the peak of cases (both in the 40+), we're looking at this:
Although the steepness of climbs in the hospitalisations is consistently below that in the cases as we go to the right. Partly due to the blend of cases within the 40+ group, and partly due to vaccinations and (whisper it) possibly, right at the very right hand side and with the latest climb in cases but muffled climb in hospitalisations, early sight of the booster effect?
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
There's a case to be made for the law on littering in the countryside to be tightened up, but it would be about equally relevant to what happened to Amess.
Excellent General. Seriously ordinary Secretary of State. His evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was totally embarrassing. I started off wanting to believe it and ended up nothing short of incredulous.
Edit, on reflection that could have been better phrased but the evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the UN was on a par with that they had such weapons in Iraq itself.
Nonetheless he played a pivotal role in liberating Kuwait and also getting rid of Saddam so Iraq is now a free and democratic state, certainly compared to most of the Middle East
This is just a lie. Iraq is not currently a free democratic state. It is an unfree autocracy.
Apart from Jordan and Israel Iraq is now the most democratic and free nation in the Middle East.
Under Saddam it was led by the most brutal dictator in the Middle East.
So my comment stands absolutely
Iraq is now a free and democratic state {factcheck: The Economist's Democracy Index classes it as "Authoritarian"} certainly compared to most of the Middle East {factcheck: true}
Your comment was both false and true.
Nope my comment was both valid and completely true.
Iraq's President and Parliament are elected in democratic elections with multiple party candidates and it is far more free than under Saddam. Name me one other Middle Eastern country other than Israel and Jordan now more free and democratic than Iraq is now?
Jordan has a score 34 and Iraq a score of 29 ie both higher than any other Middle Eastern nations except Israel and Lebanon and Kuwait (I missed out Lebanon which has a score of 43 and Kuwait which debateably has a score of 37 but Powell free it from Saddam too anyway).
UAE, Bahrain, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oman, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Yemen are all less free than Iraq on that chart now
Iraq holds regular, competitive elections, and the country’s various partisan, religious, and ethnic groups generally enjoy representation in the political system. However, democratic governance is impeded in practice by corruption and security threats. In the Kurdistan region, democratic institutions lack the strength to contain the influence of long-standing power brokers. Increasingly, Iran has been able to influence politics in Baghdad. Civil liberties are generally respected in Iraqi law, but the state has limited capacity to prevent and punish violations.
If you want a direct comparison, other nations include Burma on 28, Brunei on 28, Zimbabwe on 28, Nicaragua on 30, and Thailand on 30.
So Iraq is also now more free than Burma, Brunei and Zimbabwe then.
What an astonishing achievement compared to where it was under Saddam
I know you wrote that in all seriousness, but it did make me LOL.
A decade of war and 600,000 people dead including 5000 Western servicemen, to achieve a *slightly* less autocratic regime than Zimbabwe.
All well and good but tightening our monitoring of potential jihadis and their internet use and travel plans would be more appropriate I would have thought given who the killer was
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
Are all dogs dangerous?
The sorts of sweeping rules that some seem to be proposing would have a chilling effect on freedom of speech. That is already a criticism that can be levelled at he latest online safety bill passing through Parliament.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
There's a case to be made for the law on littering in the countryside to be tightened up, but it would be about equally relevant to what happened to Amess.
Stopping anonymous trolls on the internet threatening violence on MPs has nothing to do with what happened? I think there is quite a significant connection between the two. Certainly more of a connection than littering.
All well and good but tightening our monitoring of potential jihadis and their internet use and travel plans would be more appropriate I would have thought given who the killer was
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Freedom comes with responsibility
A great man said - "With great power comes great irresponsibility"
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
Are all dogs dangerous?
The sorts of sweeping rules that some seem to be proposing would have a chilling effect on freedom of speech. That is already a criticism that can be levelled at he latest online safety bill passing through Parliament.
I disagree. There's nothing saying anonymous speech is protected. You can say what you want, you just have to face the consequences if you are inciting violence.
It's great that Southend is going to be a city; a suitable memorial to a good man.
---
Now for a joking bit: Given how long they've been trying to become a city, I bet the good burghers of Northampton are annoyed they didn't think of bumping off one of their two MPs ...
All well and good but tightening our monitoring of potential jihadis and their internet use and travel plans would be more appropriate I would have thought given who the killer was
Serious point of order HY. "Suspect".
I don't think there is any doubt it.
The language is important to ensure justice runs its course.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Freedom to send an anonymous tweet hoping that someone burns to death in a car and you will be able to watch the person melt? That freedom?
I trained as a computer scientist. The idea of the freedom of the Internet as articulated by say Perry Barlow sounded fantastic in 1990s.
Unfortunately it has met the reality of a significant chunk of human nature.
Another England innings completely stalled by Malan. Unfortunately he's a 50/50 coin that flipped 10 heads in a row at the start of his interational career in a format with so few games that it's now going to take 2 or 3 years from the end of his purple patch for the selectors to notice he's very ordinary.
Why has the BBC not got even a scorecard for this game v India on its website, nor the game listed on its fixture page, while providing audio commentary of Sri Lanka v Naimbia?
It's great that Southend is going to be a city; a suitable memorial to a good man.
---
Now for a joking bit: Given how long they've been trying to become a city, I bet the good burghers of Northampton are annoyed they didn't think of bumping off one of their two MPs ...
A point not made in the best possible taste, but Johnson's intervention is an "interesting" one.
It's great that Southend is going to be a city; a suitable memorial to a good man.
---
Now for a joking bit: Given how long they've been trying to become a city, I bet the good burghers of Northampton are annoyed they didn't think of bumping off one of their two MPs ...
Someone made the same joke elsewhere.
The issue becomes really awkward when the motive of the assassin was to ensure City status for the Town...
More seriously, it's the perfect memorial to the man...
One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.
Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.
Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.
The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.
If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.
Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.
It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
Yes.
There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.
(Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.
If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.
If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.
But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.
Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.
And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
Kickstart what process?
I don't think an artificial, unjustified "balance" helps anyone. Hiring someone as your "token" minority individual doesn't really do either them, their "community" or your team any favours. Nor does it deal with any impediments of racism that made such an imbalance happen - and it creates a backlash that potentially makes such impediments worse not better.
Lets say you have an impediment stopping black people working in your team and want to address that. If you find out what impediments were stopping you from getting the good black applicants through then great, job done. But if you're not doing that then unless you suddenly have a way to eg find the best black person (in which case why aren't you hiring them in the first place?) if you're just hiring to meet "quota" requirements then you're going to overlook the best black person and potentially hire a dud because you overlooked the star that you were supposed to hire because you were too busy worrying about quotas rather than looking at the individuals involved.
That "positive discrimination" doesn't help the star that you should have hired but still hasn't been, and it doesn't help your team.
Positive discrimination is clearly a controversial and emotive issue. I'm not arguing it is necessarily the right thing to do. I think it may be the right thing to do in certain contexts.
Change takes time. The top people need experience, but racism has meant that non-white people haven't been able to get those experiences and so a non-racist selection for the top jobs still inherits past racism. The process to fix that is slow without positive discrimination. If a typical career takes 40 years, it might take 40 years of non-racist practice before you see a representative workforce. That's why some kickstarting may be valuable in some situations.
What if one of the impediments of racism is that people see a line-up at the top that is predominantly white and either perpetuate that racism by thinking that is how things should be, or don't see opportunities for themselves and go elsewhere? How do you fix that impediment? Positive discrimination may do that.
Why should positive discrimination mean you hire a dud? You can still apply all your other usual hiring decision making. You're just giving an additional leg-up to non-white candidates. If decision makers are so flustered by "worrying about quotas" that they don't look at the individuals involved, then they're hardly competent to be on hiring panels!
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Freedom comes with responsibility
A great man said - "With great power comes great irresponsibility"
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
They're not trying to ban being an anonymous troll, they're trying to ban being anonymous full stop. If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear, right? Utterly pathetic how quickly we're declining.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
There's a case to be made for the law on littering in the countryside to be tightened up, but it would be about equally relevant to what happened to Amess.
Stopping anonymous trolls on the internet threatening violence on MPs has nothing to do with what happened? I think there is quite a significant connection between the two. Certainly more of a connection than littering.
We'll have to wait and see, but I think it was more Islam than Instagram in this case. And I am afraid that even in the saddest circumstances we have to remain vigilant when politicians start demanding penalties for being rude about politicians. Especially utter creeps like Francois.
All well and good but tightening our monitoring of potential jihadis and their internet use and travel plans would be more appropriate I would have thought given who the killer was
Serious point of order HY. "Suspect".
I don't think there is any doubt it.
That's one way of avoiding jury service I suppose.
Incredibly moving tributes to Sir David Amess by Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer. Mood is somber, but the warmth across the Commons benches is unlike anything I’ve seen. Overwhelmingly, there’s sense of loss for one of the most liked and respected MPs by all parliamentarians.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Freedom comes with responsibility
A great man said - "With great power comes great irresponsibility"
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Freedom comes with responsibility
A great man said - "With great power comes great irresponsibility"
Incredibly moving tributes to Sir David Amess by Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer. Mood is somber, but the warmth across the Commons benches is unlike anything I’ve seen. Overwhelmingly, there’s sense of loss for one of the most liked and respected MPs by all parliamentarians.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
There's a case to be made for the law on littering in the countryside to be tightened up, but it would be about equally relevant to what happened to Amess.
Stopping anonymous trolls on the internet threatening violence on MPs has nothing to do with what happened? I think there is quite a significant connection between the two. Certainly more of a connection than littering.
We'll have to wait and see, but I think it was more Islam than Instagram in this case. And I am afraid that even in the saddest circumstances we have to remain vigilant when politicians start demanding penalties for being rude about politicians. Especially utter creeps like Francois.
But there is a connection, despite the different motives. And really, there is a world of difference between being rude and the type of abuse they are referring to.
It's great that Southend is going to be a city; a suitable memorial to a good man.
---
Now for a joking bit: Given how long they've been trying to become a city, I bet the good burghers of Northampton are annoyed they didn't think of bumping off one of their two MPs ...
Someone made the same joke elsewhere.
The issue becomes really awkward when the motive of the assassin was to ensure City status for the Town...
More seriously, it's the perfect memorial to the man...
Incredibly moving tributes to Sir David Amess by Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer. Mood is somber, but the warmth across the Commons benches is unlike anything I’ve seen. Overwhelmingly, there’s sense of loss for one of the most liked and respected MPs by all parliamentarians.
All well and good but tightening our monitoring of potential jihadis and their internet use and travel plans would be more appropriate I would have thought given who the killer was
Serious point of order HY. "Suspect".
I don't think there is any doubt it.
That's one way of avoiding jury service I suppose.
Safe in the knowledge I won't be selected. Still, it would be one hell of a defence counsel that got him off this one.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
There's a case to be made for the law on littering in the countryside to be tightened up, but it would be about equally relevant to what happened to Amess.
Stopping anonymous trolls on the internet threatening violence on MPs has nothing to do with what happened? I think there is quite a significant connection between the two. Certainly more of a connection than littering.
We'll have to wait and see, but I think it was more Islam than Instagram in this case. And I am afraid that even in the saddest circumstances we have to remain vigilant when politicians start demanding penalties for being rude about politicians. Especially utter creeps like Francois.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Freedom to send an anonymous tweet hoping that someone burns to death in a car and you will be able to watch the person melt? That freedom?
I trained as a computer scientist. The idea of the freedom of the Internet as articulated by say Perry Barlow sounded fantastic in 1990s.
Unfortunately it has met the reality of a significant chunk of human nature.
The non sequitur in your second paragraph is so good it should be set to music.
Sadly, freedom of speech means actual freedom of actual speech, including a lot of speech which you or I might find repugnant. Your example is a poor one though, as it is virtually certainly illegal under current laws.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
They're not trying to ban being an anonymous troll, they're trying to ban being anonymous full stop. If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear, right? Utterly pathetic how quickly we're declining.
Sorry, I still haven't seen where this right to being anonymous when you are talking to someone else is. Not anonymous from the state, but anonymous from the other person.
It's great that Southend is going to be a city; a suitable memorial to a good man.
---
Now for a joking bit: Given how long they've been trying to become a city, I bet the good burghers of Northampton are annoyed they didn't think of bumping off one of their two MPs ...
Someone made the same joke elsewhere.
The issue becomes really awkward when the motive of the assassin was to ensure City status for the Town...
More seriously, it's the perfect memorial to the man...
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
There's a case to be made for the law on littering in the countryside to be tightened up, but it would be about equally relevant to what happened to Amess.
Stopping anonymous trolls on the internet threatening violence on MPs has nothing to do with what happened? I think there is quite a significant connection between the two. Certainly more of a connection than littering.
We'll have to wait and see, but I think it was more Islam than Instagram in this case. And I am afraid that even in the saddest circumstances we have to remain vigilant when politicians start demanding penalties for being rude about politicians. Especially utter creeps like Francois.
(Panel solicitor for an estate agent I am using to sell a property has just gone bust .... argh. Sorting out a replacement.)
There are quite serious questions over attempting to ban internet anonymity for people who might be under threat if decloaked - it needs really careful consideration.
An example is people who's former partner might pose a threat. Another is activists against authoritarian regimes. Here in the early days of blogging in this country a number of people were sacked from their jobs simply for the act of writing about their work - under spurious use of various unacceptable contract clauses. Local authorities were particularly prone to doing it.
And in criminal cases tracing anonymous accounts can usually be done by the authorities.
We already have a large amount of law in this area.
To me attempting to ban anonymity full stop is too simplistic and too easy an answer.
One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.
Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.
Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.
The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.
If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.
Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.
It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
Yes.
There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.
(Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.
If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.
If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.
But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.
Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.
And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
Kickstart what process?
I don't think an artificial, unjustified "balance" helps anyone. Hiring someone as your "token" minority individual doesn't really do either them, their "community" or your team any favours. Nor does it deal with any impediments of racism that made such an imbalance happen - and it creates a backlash that potentially makes such impediments worse not better.
Lets say you have an impediment stopping black people working in your team and want to address that. If you find out what impediments were stopping you from getting the good black applicants through then great, job done. But if you're not doing that then unless you suddenly have a way to eg find the best black person (in which case why aren't you hiring them in the first place?) if you're just hiring to meet "quota" requirements then you're going to overlook the best black person and potentially hire a dud because you overlooked the star that you were supposed to hire because you were too busy worrying about quotas rather than looking at the individuals involved.
That "positive discrimination" doesn't help the star that you should have hired but still hasn't been, and it doesn't help your team.
Positive discrimination is clearly a controversial and emotive issue. I'm not arguing it is necessarily the right thing to do. I think it may be the right thing to do in certain contexts.
Change takes time. The top people need experience, but racism has meant that non-white people haven't been able to get those experiences and so a non-racist selection for the top jobs still inherits past racism. The process to fix that is slow without positive discrimination. If a typical career takes 40 years, it might take 40 years of non-racist practice before you see a representative workforce. That's why some kickstarting may be valuable in some situations.
What if one of the impediments of racism is that people see a line-up at the top that is predominantly white and either perpetuate that racism by thinking that is how things should be, or don't see opportunities for themselves and go elsewhere? How do you fix that impediment? Positive discrimination may do that.
Why should positive discrimination mean you hire a dud? You can still apply all your other usual hiring decision making. You're just giving an additional leg-up to non-white candidates. If decision makers are so flustered by "worrying about quotas" that they don't look at the individuals involved, then they're hardly competent to be on hiring panels!
I agree. I suspect many companies practice "affirmative action" (which is the correct term), but do so covertly because it is technically illegal in UK. Companies have workforces and particularly leadership teams that are completely unrepresentative of the country at large. They should be allowed to correct this where possible, and be able to do it openly. Ensuring companies have a gender balanced and ethnically diverse leadership teams should be encouraged, not made to be done under the radar. @Philip_Thompson shouldn't worry that male white people will get a raw deal - there would need to be a very large amount of affirmative action to make this the case.
Isnt it illegal to threaten violence now? i am sure it is . I am not sure what new laws are being proposed but they must be more than that then surely? Genuinely cannot see what new laws would say or ban that is currently not illegal?
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Freedom to send an anonymous tweet hoping that someone burns to death in a car and you will be able to watch the person melt? That freedom?
I trained as a computer scientist. The idea of the freedom of the Internet as articulated by say Perry Barlow sounded fantastic in 1990s.
Unfortunately it has met the reality of a significant chunk of human nature.
The non sequitur in your second paragraph is so good it should be set to music.
Sadly, freedom of speech means actual freedom of actual speech, including a lot of speech which you or I might find repugnant. Your example is a poor one though, as it is virtually certainly illegal under current laws.
Not my example to be honest. It was the one used by Francois. Sent to a female MP.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
They're not trying to ban being an anonymous troll, they're trying to ban being anonymous full stop. If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear, right? Utterly pathetic how quickly we're declining.
Sorry, I still haven't seen where this right to being anonymous when you are talking to someone else is. Not anonymous from the state, but anonymous from the other person.
That's odd, because you are currently exercising it. As things stand, it is enshrined in data protection law.
Francois calls for big toughening of social media harm laws
I suppose reducing freedom for everyone is much easier than taking action about the specific relevant factor which is a bit too embarassing for the modern Conservative party to touch.
Is there a basic fundamental right to be an anonymous troll online?
There's a case to be made for the law on littering in the countryside to be tightened up, but it would be about equally relevant to what happened to Amess.
Stopping anonymous trolls on the internet threatening violence on MPs has nothing to do with what happened? I think there is quite a significant connection between the two. Certainly more of a connection than littering.
We'll have to wait and see, but I think it was more Islam than Instagram in this case. And I am afraid that even in the saddest circumstances we have to remain vigilant when politicians start demanding penalties for being rude about politicians. Especially utter creeps like Francois.
You clearly have not listened to his tribute
Certainly not.
The tribute was welcomed across the house with Ian Blackford saying it is the first time he has agreed with everything he said
Banging my head against a brick wall with bet365's customer service team. Trying to establish the settlement rules for Top Male and Top Female for Strictly. First reply was rubbish.
"This market is for the win only meaning that who you pick, either a male participant or a female participant would have to come first in order for the bet to win. This would mean that reaching the final wouldn't class the bet as a win or a loss at this stage. bets will settle on the overall winner of the competition".
Second reply, from a different agent, is clearer but still rubbish.
"If a male participant goes on to win Strictly Come Dancing, then there would be no Top Woman and bets on this market would be settled as a loss".
Think there could be some value around but just want confirmation on rules but these guys are clueless. If the bets settle on the overall winner there is no need for top male or top female markets with much shorter prices than the outright FFS.
The obvious way to settle it is the winner win one category. Based on historical format there is no specific runner up so you would have 2-3 contestants joint 2nd. If there is only one of the opposite gender to the winner they win the other category, if their are more than one it is a dead heat.
If all the finalists are the same gender then the last person eliminated of the opposite gender wins their category.
It's great that Southend is going to be a city; a suitable memorial to a good man.
---
Now for a joking bit: Given how long they've been trying to become a city, I bet the good burghers of Northampton are annoyed they didn't think of bumping off one of their two MPs ...
Scotland is still vaccinating under 18s much, *much* faster than England. Because Scotland are using the same vaccination infrastructure as for adults, while England is using school nurses and local immunisation teams whose budgets have been slashed by years of public health cuts
Comments
Globally, Freedom House say:
"2020 was the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom."
Maybe to SNP Types.
Personally - I like the hair.
Jordan is also NOT FREE:
https://freedomhouse.org/country/jordan/freedom-world/2021
No I cannot name another ME country that's "more democratic" because apart from Israel there are NO democracies in the ME. Not Jordan, not Iraq, none of them.
But if you think the fact that Iran is worse means you can pretend Iraq is a democracy, then you're just wrong.
The Economist scores both Kuwait and Lebanon higher on the democracy index, and doesn't class either of those as democracies either.
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1450109134079156226?s=20
SKS captioned as "Keir Starmer" rather than "Sir Keir Starmer" #BBCBias
Ever since I watched Fifth Gear restore lost horses to an older car, one tip was by using regular Redex (£4) in the fuel, I use it regularly in both my petrol and diesel cars, and I swear by it. I remember my dad having a shot of Redex with every other refuelling in his 1100 back in the sixties.
There is a specific product marketed to clean particulate filters.
Re-mapping the car does seem excessive.
https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/comment/116605/my-friend-sir-david-amess-animal-rights-death-deep-hole
UAE, Bahrain, Syria, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oman, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Yemen are all less free than Iraq on that chart now
Thought not.
So in comparison to under Saddam Iraq is far better off and my original comment stands
In the meantime I have to charge up my internet device.
Catch you all later.
Feel free to flag and off-topic, but I genuinely have been saddened by Mr Amess's dreadful passing.
Johnson will refuse indyref2 as long as he is in power and there is sod all Sturgeon can do about it as union matters are reserved to Westminster.
But the other half was wrong. Why not just say "I was wrong about that bit, but the important part is the other part"?
Why do you have to pretend you were right when you were wrong?
If you want a direct comparison, other nations include Burma on 28, Brunei on 28, Zimbabwe on 28, Nicaragua on 30, and Thailand on 30.
Offtopic, what's this Mail+? Much nicer than the main Mail website
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1450112875356463112?s=20
I remember doing a seminar for a Chinese medical group who were interested in the system - they said the problem in China is that GPs are thought inferior to doctors in hospitals, so people with non-trivial conditions bypass the GPs and insist on being seen at A&E. I explained that in Britain that would not be permitted for non-emergency treatment and they would simply be sent away, and they thought that was disturbingly authoritarian and would not be accepted by the Chinese. It was one of those role-reversal moments that make you blink.
What an astonishing achievement compared to where it was under Saddam
Combined with limited visiblity that the American's IR system could overcome (which wasn't present in the export versions of the soviet Tanks the Iraqi forces were using) plus the range difference in the main guns meant an overwhelming set of advantages that added up to insurmountable odds.
Taking away even one of these advantages resulted in the attacking American forces taking significant casualties in the wargames.
It would be very rash to look at previous gen export equipment manned be demoralised troops with zero air cover and compare to what the Soviets could field. None of the advantages the Americans held would have been replicated on a battlefield of Central Europe.
Why not just read a newspaper which isn't the Mail instead?
NHS England only provides the age case hospitalisations back to October last year. Taking 7-day averages of each (to smooth out day-of-week effects) and normalising the peak of hospitalisations to the peak of cases (both in the 40+), we're looking at this:
Although the steepness of climbs in the hospitalisations is consistently below that in the cases as we go to the right. Partly due to the blend of cases within the 40+ group, and partly due to vaccinations and (whisper it) possibly, right at the very right hand side and with the latest climb in cases but muffled climb in hospitalisations, early sight of the booster effect?
The sorts of sweeping rules that some seem to be proposing would have a chilling effect on freedom of speech. That is already a criticism that can be levelled at he latest online safety bill passing through Parliament.
---
Now for a joking bit:
Given how long they've been trying to become a city, I bet the good burghers of Northampton are annoyed they didn't think of bumping off one of their two MPs ...
Davey caption as "Sir Ed Davey" cf. Starmer #BBCBias
(I only half charged my internet device to tell you this but I believe BBC bias shouldn't put called out as much as possible)
I trained as a computer scientist. The idea of the freedom of the Internet as articulated by say Perry Barlow sounded fantastic in 1990s.
Unfortunately it has met the reality of a significant chunk of human nature.
The issue becomes really awkward when the motive of the assassin was to ensure City status for the Town...
More seriously, it's the perfect memorial to the man...
Change takes time. The top people need experience, but racism has meant that non-white people haven't been able to get those experiences and so a non-racist selection for the top jobs still inherits past racism. The process to fix that is slow without positive discrimination. If a typical career takes 40 years, it might take 40 years of non-racist practice before you see a representative workforce. That's why some kickstarting may be valuable in some situations.
What if one of the impediments of racism is that people see a line-up at the top that is predominantly white and either perpetuate that racism by thinking that is how things should be, or don't see opportunities for themselves and go elsewhere? How do you fix that impediment? Positive discrimination may do that.
Why should positive discrimination mean you hire a dud? You can still apply all your other usual hiring decision making. You're just giving an additional leg-up to non-white candidates. If decision makers are so flustered by "worrying about quotas" that they don't look at the individuals involved, then they're hardly competent to be on hiring panels!
Sadly, freedom of speech means actual freedom of actual speech, including a lot of speech which you or I might find repugnant. Your example is a poor one though, as it is virtually certainly illegal under current laws.
(Panel solicitor for an estate agent I am using to sell a property has just gone bust .... argh. Sorting out a replacement.)
There are quite serious questions over attempting to ban internet anonymity for people who might be under threat if decloaked - it needs really careful consideration.
An example is people who's former partner might pose a threat. Another is activists against authoritarian regimes. Here in the early days of blogging in this country a number of people were sacked from their jobs simply for the act of writing about their work - under spurious use of various unacceptable contract clauses. Local authorities were particularly prone to doing it.
And in criminal cases tracing anonymous accounts can usually be done by the authorities.
We already have a large amount of law in this area.
To me attempting to ban anonymity full stop is too simplistic and too easy an answer.
DUP Leader captioned as a Sir
Does anyone have an other suggestions as to why SKS is stripped of the "Sir" other than-
#BBCBias
You could maybe listen to it and reflect
If all the finalists are the same gender then the last person eliminated of the opposite gender wins their category.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stately-homes-are-a-refuge-not-a-battlefield-mfr9n9fn0
https://twitter.com/VictimOfMaths/status/1450122658234970114?s=20