Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
Yes, I remember you taking issue with one of my NY predictions - the one that said Donald Trump will quickly fade way as a political player. I certainly got that wrong.
Could he blackmail the Reps to get the nomination, I wonder? "It's me or I run as independent MAGA" type thing?
Trump to Republicans is the equivalent of Jesus to Christianity, he has no need to blackmail them, they will beg him to run and pay him billions to do so.
Why will they want him to run when they know their best chance of winning is with someone else? I don't see it myself. He's 2.5 for the nomination so the betting has it more likely than not that he isn't the GOP candidate. The betting also has it at 27 that he wins the WH for a brand new MAGA party - which is the threat I'm referring to. The dream scenario is he does that and splits the vote and the Dems - with a great not Joe candidate - win easily. An unlikely dream scenario of course but dream scenarios are always unlikely. It's all very fascinating. If we can't make money off all of this we need shooting.
Most GOP voters will still vote for Trump, so he will likely be nominee again if he runs and the Democratic nominee in 2024 will still be re elected. Trump will not start a new party while polls show he can still win the GOP nomination again.
Most likely therefore the GOP will take the House next year but the Democrats will keep the White House therefore.
The interesting thing is if the GOP take the House and Senate next year, if they do then Trump could try and force the GOP in Congress to object to the EC results even if he loses the EC. He could not do that in 2020 as the Democrats held the House and most GOP Senators upheld the EC votes.
Yes. That last scenario should terrify everyone - even @MrEd.
I'd also like to add, amidst all of the doom and gloom, the constant signal boosting of case numbers by the media and the lockdown forever scientists the UK public just shrugged it off. The October economic indicators are well up on September, particularly in services and specifically hospitality based services.
We could, at some point in the next 2-3 weeks, have recovered all of the lost COVID GDP. What's even better is that the predicted slowdown for Q4 hasn't materialised in any of the real time indices so we may end up overshooting the current growth projections and recover a lot more of the "lost growth potential" than is currently pencilled in. Right now we're about 5% below what would otherwise have occurred without COVID, government projections say we will make up 3% of that which then turns into our new baseline. The current level of economic activity and growth in activity is much larger than even the city consensus, there is now a plausible scenario where we recover all of the 5% and then add a bit more before returning to trend growth of ~1.8%.
I'm genuinely at a loss to explain it because as noted earlier, there are millions of people who are simply not participating in society. Potentially it could be the savings rate going up by a huge amount, but that's usually something which takes many years to feed through into the wider economy. It could also be the huge rise in disposable income for the middle class office worker who now has cut their commuting costs by 60-100%. I'm not sure how, but we could conceivably come out of the other side of this pandemic with an economy in better long term shape than when we entered. Some of that makes sense too, businesses have trimmed a lot of fat, output per worker is well up too and on average people who work are happier now than they were pre-pandemic because of flexible working hours.
Hats off to @stodge who did say at the end of last year that there would be a lot then unrealised net gains from this, I doubted him and tbh, I was wrong to do so!
Here in the US (and I suspect most of the rest of the world), we're struggling to quite make it back to baseline because of capacity constraints. I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true in the UK.
It is also worth noting that some UK industries - like travel and tourism - are still running well below prepandemic levels.
So, I'm not quite as optimistic as you. I suspect that we'll need to wait until the second or maybe even the third quarter of 2022 before we're back to prepandemic levels, and until 2023 to get back to trend.
I do expect us to match pre-Covid GDP levels in Q4 but I also agree that catching up with the previous trend line is going to be a lot harder and may or may not happen next year.
Virginia’s #EdEquityVA work is informed by literature, best practice, and research. Below are the resources the Office of Equity and Community Engagement references in the development of our work, as well as texts we recommend:
Walking the Equity Talk: A Guide for Culturally Courageous Leadership in School Communities by John Roert Browne II Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children by Gloria Ladson-Billings Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (third edition) by Geneva Gay Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina Love How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire Using Equity Audits to Create Equitable and Excellent Schools by Linda E. Skrla Cultural Proficiency: A manual for School Leaders by Randall B. Lindsey, Kikanza Nuri-Robins, Raymond D. Terrell, and Delores B. Lindsey Race, Equity, and Education: Sixty Years from Brown by Pedro Noguera, Jill Pierce, Roey Ahram Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools by Glen Singleton Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education by Edward Taylor and David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World Four Hundred Souls – A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 Cultural Proficiency – A Manual for School Leaders, 4th Edition Breakthrough Leadership – Six Principles Guiding Schools Where Inequity Is Not an Option
Lol. Good find. So the Democrats are claiming that Critical Race Theory is not present in Virginian schools yet their education board is using and recommending
Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education by Edward Taylor and David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings
So the ‘big Republican lie’ is actually a ‘big Democrat lie’
On the train to Glasgow and back yesterday pretty much everyone was wearing a mask. I gave myself a brief break when drinking a coffee but otherwise complied. That is still the law up here, of course, but it was being complied with. In the streets of Glasgow masks were pretty rare.
To be fair, when you're outside and there's air circulating, your chances of getting a big dose of Covid are pretty tiny.
I'd also like to add, amidst all of the doom and gloom, the constant signal boosting of case numbers by the media and the lockdown forever scientists the UK public just shrugged it off. The October economic indicators are well up on September, particularly in services and specifically hospitality based services.
We could, at some point in the next 2-3 weeks, have recovered all of the lost COVID GDP. What's even better is that the predicted slowdown for Q4 hasn't materialised in any of the real time indices so we may end up overshooting the current growth projections and recover a lot more of the "lost growth potential" than is currently pencilled in. Right now we're about 5% below what would otherwise have occurred without COVID, government projections say we will make up 3% of that which then turns into our new baseline. The current level of economic activity and growth in activity is much larger than even the city consensus, there is now a plausible scenario where we recover all of the 5% and then add a bit more before returning to trend growth of ~1.8%.
I'm genuinely at a loss to explain it because as noted earlier, there are millions of people who are simply not participating in society. Potentially it could be the savings rate going up by a huge amount, but that's usually something which takes many years to feed through into the wider economy. It could also be the huge rise in disposable income for the middle class office worker who now has cut their commuting costs by 60-100%. I'm not sure how, but we could conceivably come out of the other side of this pandemic with an economy in better long term shape than when we entered. Some of that makes sense too, businesses have trimmed a lot of fat, output per worker is well up too and on average people who work are happier now than they were pre-pandemic because of flexible working hours.
Hats off to @stodge who did say at the end of last year that there would be a lot then unrealised net gains from this, I doubted him and tbh, I was wrong to do so!
Here in the US (and I suspect most of the rest of the world), we're struggling to quite make it back to baseline because of capacity constraints. I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true in the UK.
It is also worth noting that some UK industries - like travel and tourism - are still running well below prepandemic levels.
So, I'm not quite as optimistic as you. I suspect that we'll need to wait until the second or maybe even the third quarter of 2022 before we're back to prepandemic levels, and until 2023 to get back to trend.
And there will be post-pandemic deferred consumption, creating a mini-surge before spending settles back to whatever its long run level will be.
I'd also like to add, amidst all of the doom and gloom, the constant signal boosting of case numbers by the media and the lockdown forever scientists the UK public just shrugged it off. The October economic indicators are well up on September, particularly in services and specifically hospitality based services.
We could, at some point in the next 2-3 weeks, have recovered all of the lost COVID GDP. What's even better is that the predicted slowdown for Q4 hasn't materialised in any of the real time indices so we may end up overshooting the current growth projections and recover a lot more of the "lost growth potential" than is currently pencilled in. Right now we're about 5% below what would otherwise have occurred without COVID, government projections say we will make up 3% of that which then turns into our new baseline. The current level of economic activity and growth in activity is much larger than even the city consensus, there is now a plausible scenario where we recover all of the 5% and then add a bit more before returning to trend growth of ~1.8%.
I'm genuinely at a loss to explain it because as noted earlier, there are millions of people who are simply not participating in society. Potentially it could be the savings rate going up by a huge amount, but that's usually something which takes many years to feed through into the wider economy. It could also be the huge rise in disposable income for the middle class office worker who now has cut their commuting costs by 60-100%. I'm not sure how, but we could conceivably come out of the other side of this pandemic with an economy in better long term shape than when we entered. Some of that makes sense too, businesses have trimmed a lot of fat, output per worker is well up too and on average people who work are happier now than they were pre-pandemic because of flexible working hours.
Hats off to @stodge who did say at the end of last year that there would be a lot then unrealised net gains from this, I doubted him and tbh, I was wrong to do so!
Here in the US (and I suspect most of the rest of the world), we're struggling to quite make it back to baseline because of capacity constraints. I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true in the UK.
It is also worth noting that some UK industries - like travel and tourism - are still running well below prepandemic levels.
So, I'm not quite as optimistic as you. I suspect that we'll need to wait until the second or maybe even the third quarter of 2022 before we're back to prepandemic levels, and until 2023 to get back to trend.
One of the interesting things my colleague pointed out was that the UK had so much slack in the system pre-pandemic wrt employment that capacity constraints will be much easier to get out of with investment in automation. The UK hasn't banked many productivity gains for the better part of 20 years so there's a lot of low hanging fruit which will reduce labour demand quite substantially.
For example, a hand car wash closed down near where my parents live and hey presto, the automatic one has been unmothballed. It's almost a certainty that the legally here employees from that car wash are now waiting tables and getting paid well above the minimum wage to do so but the car wash is unable to operate without them so it's gone.
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
Edit to add: I will be mask conscious while in the UK, because I have a lot of work to do in the US when I return, and I really don't want to get stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
A lot more people will know about the Paterson sleaze now than did before, whichever way it goes.
Quite right. This is absolutely lose lose for Boris. Quite why he allowed himself to be dragged into this mess is beyond me. I can only assume that Paterson's chums at the Speccie called in a very serious favour. There can be no other explanation.
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
Edit to add: I will be mask conscious while in the UK, because I have a lot of work to do in the US when I return, and I really don't want to get stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
It's a piece of piss. Just fill out the passenger locator form. You just need to have a day 2 test booked and the booking reference number in advance. Heathrow is a slick operation now that it's all automated, I was out in 30 mins from the air bridge being connected to sitting in an Uber.
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
Will you be carrying large quantities of artisan sex toys?
This should be fun although I'm not entirely keen on this jigsaw identification.
Azeem Rafiq will be free to name in public the players he has accused of racism and bullying during his Yorkshire career, with the 30-year-old expected to be called to give evidence at a Parliamentary select committee.
In what promises to be a revelatory session before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, Rafiq, 30, will have the opportunity under Parliamentary privilege to detail his allegations.
Those set to be identified include a former Yorkshire and England player, who no longer represents the club, who according to a leaked report of an investigation into Rafiq’s allegations, reported by ESPNCricinfo, engaged in behaviour that “amounted to bullying” but was not deemed racist.
Another senior Yorkshire player, still at the club, escaped disciplinary action despite using the word “P**i” towards Rafiq after the investigation panel decided it was “friendly banter”. That particular finding has caused a furore in the highest circles of government.
Rafiq may also identify two senior officials at Yorkshire, who are also still at the club, who were found to be “dismissive of the concerns of race discrimination” raised by him. Significantly, both those officials were among the group who decided not to share the contents of the investigation’s final report.
Blair and Campbell were able to firmly pin sleaze to the incumbent Tory government.
Will Starmer or Davey be able to do the same?
With the grubbiest Prime Minister in living memory it shouldn't be too taxing for an ex public prosecutor.
A significant problem is that his own party is mired in poor behaviour as well. Not just the anti-Semitic ex-leader and his hangers-on; a senior Labour ex-MP banned from parliamentary property because of his behaviour within parliament; ex-Labour MP, now independent Claudia Webb convicted of quite nasty harassment; ex-Labour MP Fiona Onasanya convicted of perverting the course of justice. And then there's the big elephant in the room: the ongoing (and sadly never to be resolved) Greville Janner child-abuse case. Or the Paedo-finder General Tom Watson (who magically could find all sorts of rumours about sexual abuse by members of the Conservative Party, but never the actual ones in his own), who should have been thrown out of parliament before he stood down. Or the party's deputy leader who thinks 'scum' is an acceptable term to use in public discourse.
So yes, some Tories are bad. But Starmer's own house is rather rickety. The scandals are different, but no better for it.
Looking at the opinion polls, the New Jersey result is more of a surprise than the Virginia one. Nearly all of them had the Democrats ahead by quite large margin in NJ.
New Jersey used to be pretty conservative, a sort of US version of Essex, plenty of socially mobile working class voters and neighbouring a big global city.
Indeed the Republicans won New Jersey at every Presidential election from 1968 until 1992.
It is not Massachussetts or San Francisco or Vermont and full of liberal Democrats but basically moderate swing voters who have largely leaned Democrat in recent years but now seem to be swinging back to the GOP post Trump. That is not a great sign for the Democrats ahead of next year's midterms
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
Just out of interest @MaxPB if you and I were North Korean would you support them regardless and consider me not to be aligned with my country and people because I didn't support everything they did?
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
It is a particularly British trait to denigrate oneself and one's country.
Virginia’s #EdEquityVA work is informed by literature, best practice, and research. Below are the resources the Office of Equity and Community Engagement references in the development of our work, as well as texts we recommend:
Walking the Equity Talk: A Guide for Culturally Courageous Leadership in School Communities by John Roert Browne II Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children by Gloria Ladson-Billings Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (third edition) by Geneva Gay Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina Love How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire Using Equity Audits to Create Equitable and Excellent Schools by Linda E. Skrla Cultural Proficiency: A manual for School Leaders by Randall B. Lindsey, Kikanza Nuri-Robins, Raymond D. Terrell, and Delores B. Lindsey Race, Equity, and Education: Sixty Years from Brown by Pedro Noguera, Jill Pierce, Roey Ahram Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools by Glen Singleton Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education by Edward Taylor and David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World Four Hundred Souls – A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 Cultural Proficiency – A Manual for School Leaders, 4th Edition Breakthrough Leadership – Six Principles Guiding Schools Where Inequity Is Not an Option
Lol. Good find. So the Democrats are claiming that Critical Race Theory is not present in Virginian schools yet their education board is using and recommending
Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education by Edward Taylor and David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings
So the ‘big Republican lie’ is actually a ‘big Democrat lie’
Not only is it not taught in schools, according to MSNBC it isn’t even a real thing.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
It is a particularly British trait to denigrate oneself and one's country.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
If I had the time (which I do) and the inclination (which I sort of do) and the tech nous (which I definitely don't) I could copy into here a stream of examples every single day of braindead bigoted shit from people on the other side - your side - of this fractious divide.
I dare say you could @kinabalu but that wouldn't make this right or acceptable.
No, but my point is we get a prolific splattering of these individual examples of extreme wokery onto the site - from fruity leon in particular but also from several others - but we don't get anybody bothering to do the opposite and believe me somebody could. Every day, half a dozen lurid examples of "antiwoke" activism showing how it drips in racism, misogyny, and just general numbskull stupidity. Then for each example, various lefty posters chipping in to agree how awful it is. Net effect? You'd read a thread and it'd look like the country is a veritable cesspit of hard right sentiment and attitudes. Oh god, Tommy Robinsonism is taking over! Etc. As it is, we're highly slanted. This is what I'm saying.
Totally off topic, but I've just seen the Wimbledon Park fireworks are fully booked and I'm trying to organise a date around them.
Any tips on decent viewpoints outside of the main area? Pubs, Restos etc? I'm thinking of booking somewhere to stay in Wimbledon Village - but I'm too far away to survey the geography.....
On the train to Glasgow and back yesterday pretty much everyone was wearing a mask. I gave myself a brief break when drinking a coffee but otherwise complied. That is still the law up here, of course, but it was being complied with. In the streets of Glasgow masks were pretty rare.
To be fair, when you're outside and there's air circulating, your chances of getting a big dose of Covid are pretty tiny.
Oh agreed. And people seem pretty comfortable with that, if not quite as comfortable as England seemed to be on our recent trip. I still think the need to wear masks inside and on public transport is suppressing the recovery in Scotland though.
On the train to Glasgow and back yesterday pretty much everyone was wearing a mask. I gave myself a brief break when drinking a coffee but otherwise complied. That is still the law up here, of course, but it was being complied with. In the streets of Glasgow masks were pretty rare.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
Yes, I remember you taking issue with one of my NY predictions - the one that said Donald Trump will quickly fade way as a political player. I certainly got that wrong.
Could he blackmail the Reps to get the nomination, I wonder? "It's me or I run as independent MAGA" type thing?
He doesn't need to blackmail them. He can simply win the primary at a canter.
And in any case, since most of the GOP voters believe he is the rightful President, any Republican standing against him in the Primary would be a traitor, a RINO.
There will probably be a moderate Republican, one who accepts the 2020 election result, who will stand against him in the Primary. But they will lose.
On the train to Glasgow and back yesterday pretty much everyone was wearing a mask. I gave myself a brief break when drinking a coffee but otherwise complied. That is still the law up here, of course, but it was being complied with. In the streets of Glasgow masks were pretty rare.
In England on the trains mask-wearing is around 5%. On the tube it's higher.
Just goes to show how powerful those laws are. I'm sure all governments will be itching to give them up.
Actually, I can believe that Boris would be willing to give them up. Ed Davey? Perhaps. Probably. SKS? No effing way.
Not all precincts have reported yet and postal votes can still be accepted for the next 2 (3?) days. But I think there aren't enough outstanding to overturn the result even if there were all for the Dem.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
It is a particularly British trait to denigrate oneself and one's country.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
If I had the time (which I do) and the inclination (which I sort of do) and the tech nous (which I definitely don't) I could copy into here a stream of examples every single day of braindead bigoted shit from people on the other side - your side - of this fractious divide.
Get back to me when you can find gangs of menacing and angry Tory students driving academics out of a British university with abuse and death threats
Yeah, but that's only because Tory students are as common as rocking horse poop
It's almost a certainty that no Tory students or faculty gave a flying fuck about a gay man working anywhere. One only needs to attend a Tory conference to find this out.
I did not intend to imply that they did. I've read my comment again and think that's fairly clear, but perhaps it was not.
I was just finding a (possible) example of academic victimisation from the 'other' side, in response to the kinabalu-Leon exchange.
And, to be honest, I regret that anyway, as it's prime whataboutery. I posted on here that I was sad about Stock's resignation and thought that it reflected very badly on the university. Sussex should have got a grip on this and made sure that her position remained tenable, if able. I add that last get out as they can only really be accountable for student/staff actions (where they have the power to discipline, dismiss, exclude) and there may have been non-university people among the trouble makers. Any action on that would, I guess, be down to the police.
We should all be apalled at what happened to Stock. Other examples of discrimination/victimisation in other places are irrelevant to that.
This should be fun although I'm not entirely keen on this jigsaw identification.
Azeem Rafiq will be free to name in public the players he has accused of racism and bullying during his Yorkshire career, with the 30-year-old expected to be called to give evidence at a Parliamentary select committee.
In what promises to be a revelatory session before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, Rafiq, 30, will have the opportunity under Parliamentary privilege to detail his allegations.
Those set to be identified include a former Yorkshire and England player, who no longer represents the club, who according to a leaked report of an investigation into Rafiq’s allegations, reported by ESPNCricinfo, engaged in behaviour that “amounted to bullying” but was not deemed racist.
Another senior Yorkshire player, still at the club, escaped disciplinary action despite using the word “P**i” towards Rafiq after the investigation panel decided it was “friendly banter”. That particular finding has caused a furore in the highest circles of government.
Rafiq may also identify two senior officials at Yorkshire, who are also still at the club, who were found to be “dismissive of the concerns of race discrimination” raised by him. Significantly, both those officials were among the group who decided not to share the contents of the investigation’s final report.
Presumably he could name them anyway without parliamentary privilege? Not sure what the big deal is, is he worried about getting sued by the players he might name or the club? Truth seems a sensible defence when there has already been a big investigation.
Blair and Campbell were able to firmly pin sleaze to the incumbent Tory government.
Will Starmer or Davey be able to do the same?
With the grubbiest Prime Minister in living memory it shouldn't be too taxing for an ex public prosecutor.
A significant problem is that his own party is mired in poor behaviour as well. Not just the anti-Semitic ex-leader and his hangers-on; a senior Labour ex-MP banned from parliamentary property because of his behaviour within parliament; ex-Labour MP, now independent Claudia Webb convicted of quite nasty harassment; ex-Labour MP Fiona Onasanya convicted of perverting the course of justice. And then there's the big elephant in the room: the ongoing (and sadly never to be resolved) Greville Janner child-abuse case. Or the Paedo-finder General Tom Watson (who magically could find all sorts of rumours about sexual abuse by members of the Conservative Party, but never the actual ones in his own), who should have been thrown out of parliament before he stood down. Or the party's deputy leader who thinks 'scum' is an acceptable term to use in public discourse.
So yes, some Tories are bad. But Starmer's own house is rather rickety. The scandals are different, but no better for it.
One of the major positive functions of the Labour party is to identify Tory sleaze and point it out. Because they're entirely funded by the unions (which is a separate array of problems, but at least it's totally transparent what the unions want from the Party), they should always be in position to sit on the moral high ground and shout when the Conservatives have fallen off it.
Five years of Corbyn and his institutionally racist leadership operation has completely demolished that as a possibility for the medium term, and the country as a whole is much the worse for it.
Totally off topic, but I've just seen the Wimbledon Park fireworks are fully booked and I'm trying to organise a date around them.
Any tips on decent viewpoints outside of the main area? Pubs, Restos etc? I'm thinking of booking somewhere to stay in Wimbledon Village - but I'm too far away to survey the geography.....
"trying to organise a date....booking somewhere to stay...."
I have heard of precisely zero people IRL agitating for another lockdown. Yes, I know, dovish London etc etc etc – I realise that other areas are different. But is there anywhere in the UK where people are clinging to their homes, praying that the government soon forces everyone to stay inside? Really? I just can't believe that.I hew heard of precisely zero people ITL agitating for another lockdown. Yes, I know, dovish London etc etc etc – I realise that other areas are different. But is there anywhere in the UK where people are clinging to their homes, praying that the government soon forces everyone to stay inside? Really? I just can't believe that.
Agree, I don't think people are agitating for a lockdown. And we shouldn't need one, unless we get some new and nasty variant.
But, I do know people (older/more vulnerable on average) who are reducing social contact and avoiding events where they feel unsafe. That is likely to continue whilst cases are high I would guess.
The trouble is case numbers now may not be that much higher than the endemic equilibrium. In which case the fear continues, in theory indefinitely.
Where are these fearful people of whom you write? They are certainly not here, in London, where people are behaving as normal, and getting on with their lives.
Well the comment I was responding to gave one such example right there. My parents still seem more fearful than makes sense (they've had their boosters too). I have a client - based just outside London - who will not meet face to face yet until she has had a booster, and I was speaking to a colleague in Geneva yesterday who was wearing a mask at her desk in the office and told me she is keeping clear of any crowded events (and their case rates are much lower than ours). The fear is definitely there. Bear in mind the people we see out and about in London are self-selecting. Logically you're not going to see those who are staying at home out in the streets.
I have been in the get back to normal camp for months but am constantly surprised my how many people aren't, and the only way we bring them onside is I think through the passage of time, and allowing this to fall out of the headlines.
I think the government, NHS and others need to have a big, big get back to normal campaign next spring. Millions of people are in danger of being permanently mentally scarred by this experience and will no longer fully take part in society because of a disease that we have already defeated with vaccines.
We really need to get away from the idea of freedom in theory. I think we're doing a good job through policy but now that needs to be extended to personal feelings. Win back the hearts and minds of the reluctant to experience freedom for real.
We also need to take a long hard look at the "running a tight ship" aspects of the NHS. Yes, it's more efficient to run as close to 100% utilisation as possible, but this leaves minimal flex for the unexpected. With us running between 90-95% in normal times and spiking to 100-105% in winters (the extra 5% accounted for by contracting agency staff and cancelling operations), we've got minimal to negative spare capacity for covid.
We've been constantly running over 5% with covid for a while now (we're at 7-8% capacity taken up with covid), and with capacity eroded by burned out staff and staff isolating, whilst deferred demand from previously cancelled operations is further pushing up the requirement, we've got three choices:
1 - Accept that 10 minutes wait for 999 and non-availability of ambulances (because they're stuck unable to offload patients) will become more frequent, that routine interventions will have very lengthy waiting lists, A&E waits of over 4 hours will become more frequent, and avoidable errors will be made by tired staff.
2 - Impose restrictions due to other illnesses through winter as a matter of routine.
3 - Re-assess the number of hospital beds and doctors in the healthcare system (currently 2.5 beds per 1000 people, vice 5.9 and 8.0 in France and Germany respectively; 2.8 doctors per 1000 people, vice 3.3 and 4.0 in France and Germany) and do whatever it takes to increase those numbers to the point where we can sustain this. I know it takes years to train doctors, but what's been done to get that process started? Or to encourage immigration of doctors and nurses from countries with greater numbers of these?
I find the first option unacceptable and the second abhorrent, which leaves the third, however difficult, to be the only option.
PM's press secretary repeatedly says it is "absolutely not the case" that the plan is about getting Owen Paterson off the hook - insists it's about having a fair appeals process for all MPs.
But she is unable to say whether the Government's decision to rip up the standards process *right now* means that *other* MPs who have fallen foul of the system should have their cases reviewed.
Virginia’s #EdEquityVA work is informed by literature, best practice, and research. Below are the resources the Office of Equity and Community Engagement references in the development of our work, as well as texts we recommend:
Walking the Equity Talk: A Guide for Culturally Courageous Leadership in School Communities by John Roert Browne II Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children by Gloria Ladson-Billings Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (third edition) by Geneva Gay Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina Love How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire Using Equity Audits to Create Equitable and Excellent Schools by Linda E. Skrla Cultural Proficiency: A manual for School Leaders by Randall B. Lindsey, Kikanza Nuri-Robins, Raymond D. Terrell, and Delores B. Lindsey Race, Equity, and Education: Sixty Years from Brown by Pedro Noguera, Jill Pierce, Roey Ahram Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools by Glen Singleton Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education by Edward Taylor and David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World Four Hundred Souls – A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 Cultural Proficiency – A Manual for School Leaders, 4th Edition Breakthrough Leadership – Six Principles Guiding Schools Where Inequity Is Not an Option
Lol. Good find. So the Democrats are claiming that Critical Race Theory is not present in Virginian schools yet their education board is using and recommending
Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education by Edward Taylor and David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings
So the ‘big Republican lie’ is actually a ‘big Democrat lie’
Not only is it not taught in schools, according to MSNBC it isn’t even a real thing.
If the Democrats continue with this "nothing to see" attitude, they are going to get hammered next year. If Biden had any sense, he would pick a full on fight with the Squad et al, and track the Democrats back to the centre. Look at what happened in Buffalo in the Mayor's race there (take a look). What is happening with the Democrat party is reminiscent of what happened with the Labour party in the 1970s / early 1980s when the far left was on the march.
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
It's a piece of piss. Just fill out the passenger locator form. You just need to have a day 2 test booked and the booking reference number in advance. Heathrow is a slick operation now that it's all automated, I was out in 30 mins from the air bridge being connected to sitting in an Uber.
I agree. All my trips (6) have been smooth. I also haven't encountered delays that others have reported. Actually the reverse. The PLF is a pain compared to other countries, but not that bad. If you plan on multiple trips set up an account as it saves entering some of the details each time.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
Yes, I remember you taking issue with one of my NY predictions - the one that said Donald Trump will quickly fade way as a political player. I certainly got that wrong.
Could he blackmail the Reps to get the nomination, I wonder? "It's me or I run as independent MAGA" type thing?
He doesn't need to blackmail them. He can simply win the primary at a canter.
And in any case, since most of the GOP voters believe he is the rightful President, any Republican standing against him in the Primary would be a traitor, a RINO.
There will probably be a moderate Republican, one who accepts the 2020 election result, who will stand against him in the Primary. But they will lose.
Yep, this seems to be the consensus view on here. But I don't share it. I don't think he's getting the GOP nomination. I'm happy to lay that at 2.5 and I have. My problem is my earlier lays at higher prices. I have the average down to 5 but it's still a terrible MTM for me right now.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
It is a particularly British trait to denigrate oneself and one's country.
Looking at the opinion polls, the New Jersey result is more of a surprise than the Virginia one. Nearly all of them had the Democrats ahead by quite large margin in NJ.
New Jersey used to be pretty conservative, a sort of US version of Essex, plenty of socially mobile working class voters and neighbouring a big global city.
Indeed the Republicans won New Jersey at every Presidential election from 1968 until 1992.
It is not Massachussetts or San Francisco or Vermont and full of liberal Democrats but basically moderate swing voters who have largely leaned Democrat in recent years but now seem to be swinging back to the GOP post Trump. That is not a great sign for the Democrats ahead of next year's midterms
If you looked in the weeds at NJ, the signs were there. While Murphy had fairly substantial leads, undecideds were mainly breaking to the GOP. Which, as you said, is not great for the Dems for next year.
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
Edit to add: I will be mask conscious while in the UK, because I have a lot of work to do in the US when I return, and I really don't want to get stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
As Max says, it’s easy. Order a LFTest a day or two before you fly, to be delivered to your address (Boots are very efficient, costs £20).
Fill in a PLForm online. Takes five minutes. Set up an account so next time it’s shorter. Download the pdf to your phone. Or tablet. Or print it out. Have proof of vaccine on your phone
Wear a mask on the flight, except when eating and drinking.
Arrive. Go to your address. Do the test. Sorted
It sounds daunting but it’s actually a breeze, now. You may encounter passport queues but you also may encounter empty airports and minimal fuss
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
If I had the time (which I do) and the inclination (which I sort of do) and the tech nous (which I definitely don't) I could copy into here a stream of examples every single day of braindead bigoted shit from people on the other side - your side - of this fractious divide.
Get back to me when you can find gangs of menacing and angry Tory students driving academics out of a British university with abuse and death threats
Yeah, but that's only because Tory students are as common as rocking horse poop
Guffaw. That’s your best example? A man supposedly driven from his job by…. Saudi Arabia
Ok
By homophobes. Stock was driven out by militant transgender-supporting* activists. Opposite, but both wrong, extremes.
But yes, bad example in response to your question about Tory students. But then, do you have evidence the harassers of Stock were politically affiliated? If not, it becomes a bit of a nonsense question.
Also, as just posted, I regret posting an example at all. What happened to Stock was apalling. I engaged in whataboutery and was wrong to do so.
*there's probably a better term, we can use 'woke' if you like
I have heard of precisely zero people IRL agitating for another lockdown. Yes, I know, dovish London etc etc etc – I realise that other areas are different. But is there anywhere in the UK where people are clinging to their homes, praying that the government soon forces everyone to stay inside? Really? I just can't believe that.I hew heard of precisely zero people ITL agitating for another lockdown. Yes, I know, dovish London etc etc etc – I realise that other areas are different. But is there anywhere in the UK where people are clinging to their homes, praying that the government soon forces everyone to stay inside? Really? I just can't believe that.
Agree, I don't think people are agitating for a lockdown. And we shouldn't need one, unless we get some new and nasty variant.
But, I do know people (older/more vulnerable on average) who are reducing social contact and avoiding events where they feel unsafe. That is likely to continue whilst cases are high I would guess.
The trouble is case numbers now may not be that much higher than the endemic equilibrium. In which case the fear continues, in theory indefinitely.
Where are these fearful people of whom you write? They are certainly not here, in London, where people are behaving as normal, and getting on with their lives.
Obviously you won't see the fearful people, because they will be at home.
You would hear of them though! And work with them (remotely). Yet I can think of precisely zero. I do have one colleague who is more hawkish on masks etc, but even she goes out and fraternises, so it's not clear to me where Team Fear are hiding, or if they exist at all.
Underground and London buses running at 70-80% of pre-pandemic capacity on the weekend.
The commuter stuff may be a shift to working from home which arguably is as much convenience for workers as fear of COVID.
But presumably people going out on public transport less at weekend is a sign of people being concerned about covid.
Er... the vastly reduced volume of international tourists would probably account for most/all of that 20% weekend drop?!
Could be I guess, but I'd be surprised if it's just tourists. There are lots of other indicators that some people are still worried and changing their behaviour:
Those numbers don't pass the sniff test either, my wife and I took the train to Guildford from Waterloo on Sunday and then back again on Monday, I couldn't see a single person wearing a mask, the way there was very busy too because of all the cancellations. Waterloo station was packed on that Sunday and again, the number of people wearing masks was maybe 1 in 10. I think a study using CCTV footage for train stations and trains should be used to judge this, not a survey where people will obviously lie about how virtuous they are being.
In my experience it varies enormously. One Tube train will have 5% maskers, the next 95%
I’ve got a theory that explains it. Almost everyone CARRIES a mask just in case. But many prefer not to wear it
So if they step in a carriage and it’s largely maskless , they happily stay maskless. It then becomes quite a social statement to put a mask ON. Why? Are you infected?
However if they step in a carriage and it’s, say, 60% masked, then their mask goes on, due to peer pressure, and then almost everyone is masked
That explains the random fluctuations
I do believe Sean has a point.
I have noticed similar on the island ferries. Mask wearing was widely observed until July when the national rules changed; subsequently, even though the ferry company continues to ‘require’ them and makes the same announcements over the PA, at the beginning what tended to happen was that some people would get out of their cars wearing masks, but when they saw a good many others not bothering, took them off, such that when passengers returned to their cars, most were maskless. Through the autumn this has settled down and now most people don’t bother any more.
My conclusion is that most people only feel happy wearing a mask in an environment where almost everyone else is doing so.
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
Edit to add: I will be mask conscious while in the UK, because I have a lot of work to do in the US when I return, and I really don't want to get stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
As Max says, it’s easy. Order a LFTest a day or two before you fly, to be delivered to your address (Boots are very efficient, costs £20).
Fill in a PLForm online. Takes five minutes. Set up an account so next time it’s shorter. Download the pdf to your phone. Or tablet. Or print it out. Have proof of vaccine on your phone
Wear a mask on the flight, except when eating and drinking.
Arrive. Go to your address. Do the test. Sorted
It sounds daunting but it’s actually a breeze, now. You may encounter passport queues but you also may encounter empty airports and minimal fuss
Book lf test BEFORE doing locator form, because you need to put the test ref no. into the form
Print stuff AND have it on your phone. Belt and braces.
Just for a bit of balance to the occasional wind energy triumphalism around here, this week's first taste of winter high pressure (low wind, low temperature) means we're relying on well over 20GW of gas to keep the lights on. Given this is a weather pattern that happens frequently every winter for extended periods, there is more or less no over-capacity wind based solution until we get a storage technology capable of scaling to ~ 3000-5000GWh rather than the current world record of 1.6GWh
I was just thinking about this earlier. According to my latest energy bill my expected annual electricity consumption is ~2000 kWh. That's an average of ~40 kWh per week (though would obviously be higher in winter, and a lot higher if my gas boiler was replaced by electricity).
The capacity of the battery in a Tesla is ~100 kWh. People have suggested that, once these have degraded to ~80% capacity that they would then be reconditioned for use as an energy store in homes. That would give me a store of about two weeks average use, less in winter and with electric heating.
80 kWh over 30 million households would be energy storage of ~2,400 GWh - about half the upper bound of your requirement.
That's going to be part of the solution. We will need to build lots of batteries, but we knew that anyway.
On Stock, I have to say that I'd be reluctant to send* my children to Sussex (if they were at that point - there's another 15+ years for them to turn it around) given recent events.
*not that it would be up to me, of course, but if they asked my opinion I'd be more negative
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
Just out of interest @MaxPB if you and I were North Korean would you support them regardless and consider me not to be aligned with my country and people because I didn't support everything they did?
I think on DPRK we'd both support whatever the commisar tells us to. What I find tough to accept is that we have a choice, and you consistently choose to take the opposing side to your country because you're unable to accept a democratic decision that went against you. You want this nation to fail economically and to be humiliated by Macron and others because it proves you right about Brexit. That's the side you're on, whether or not you want to admit it.
A lot more people will know about the Paterson sleaze now than did before, whichever way it goes.
An no more people will care...
I’m with those who maintain that most won’t care, until suddenly they all do.
This administration will go down in history as a risible period in our politics, and there’ll be a time when even most of the PB Tories will choose to forget the time they spent online licking the clown’s feet.
This is an interesting article and shows what an enormous challenge is facing Starmer if Brexit continues to resonate with voters in the North and Midlands.
"But elections experts John Curtice, Stephen Fisher and Patrick English say that by attracting Leave-supporting former Labour voters who might otherwise have backed the Conservatives, Farage may have significantly cut the scale of Labour’s defeat."
An example given is Hartlepool. Labour held it in 2019 with a big vote going to the Brexit Party, but the Tories romped home in the subsequent by-election. I find it very difficult to believe that Labour will win back Hartlepool next time, or any other of the seats they lost in the NE. If anything, they will be fighting to hang on to some of the seats in Teesside and Co Durham that they held in 2019.
This seems about right, but is already well known. This whole argument is part of what is a very big picture: currently the Tories have no potential allies whatsoever (even the awful DUP, IMHO), while Labour cannot win alone.
So the next election is between a party that cannot win alone against a party that must win alone, while the window for an unstable result is pretty wide.
These factors will be the most important bit of background for what will be a unique election in 23/24. Tory tactics already look fairly clear; Labour's less so.
A thought just struck me.
ISTR that Patterson is very close to the DUP. Could the Tories be building credit in advance with a potential intermediary?
Charles. Are you the Charles H referred to by Mrs Helena Kennedy on Radio 4?
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
Edit to add: I will be mask conscious while in the UK, because I have a lot of work to do in the US when I return, and I really don't want to get stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
You will not read much about this in the official guidance online, but in London everyone is wearing their underpants on their heads. It helps filter covid and is a subtle code that helps Londoners keep a safe distance from tourists.
When you arrive at LHR as you approach passport control put them on and share a knowing wink with the Border Force officer. They will let you through quickly. If they don't, then it is helpful at that point to shout loudly. All will be well.
On Stock, I have to say that I'd be reluctant to send* my children to Sussex (if they were at that point - there's another 15+ years for them to turn it around) given recent events.
*not that it would be up to me, of course, but if they asked my opinion I'd be more negative
Students have always been radical, railing against on-campus Barclays branches, etc. University authorities always indulged it perhaps even patronisingly so. When did it get so visceral and personal. I suppose "Barclays" is faceless, while Kathleen Stock is very much a real person.
PM's press secretary repeatedly says it is "absolutely not the case" that the plan is about getting Owen Paterson off the hook - insists it's about having a fair appeals process for all MPs.
But she is unable to say whether the Government's decision to rip up the standards process *right now* means that *other* MPs who have fallen foul of the system should have their cases reviewed.
And aren’t there actually two tabled Tory amendments - one letting Peterson off on the grounds that the process should be changed, and applied to him retrospectively, and a second arguing that he should be let off on compassionate grounds?
The second is rather a giveaway that this is about the outcome, not the process.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
Yes, I remember you taking issue with one of my NY predictions - the one that said Donald Trump will quickly fade way as a political player. I certainly got that wrong.
Could he blackmail the Reps to get the nomination, I wonder? "It's me or I run as independent MAGA" type thing?
Trump to Republicans is the equivalent of Jesus to Christianity, he has no need to blackmail them, they will beg him to run and pay him billions to do so.
Why will they want him to run when they know their best chance of winning is with someone else? I don't see it myself. He's 2.5 for the nomination so the betting has it more likely than not that he isn't the GOP candidate. The betting also has it at 27 that he wins the WH for a brand new MAGA party - which is the threat I'm referring to. The dream scenario is he does that and splits the vote and the Dems - with a great not Joe candidate - win easily. An unlikely dream scenario of course but dream scenarios are always unlikely. It's all very fascinating. If we can't make money off all of this we need shooting.
"they know their best chance of winning is with someone else" - they bet tens of millions of pounds, often six figure life savings on Trump having won the 2020 election even after he lost it, they still believe he won today. You think they really believe anyone else has a better chance? Even if they did Trump would simply brand any such person a RINO traitor and they will be done.
By "they" I mean the calculating party brass not the crazy foot soldiers. I think they'll want a candidate who appeals (enough) to the base but isn't Trump. How they're going to engineer this I can't tell you but it's such an imperative that I think they'll manage it. The WH is a massive prize, the biggest in politics, so I also expect some very ruthless machinations from other players. Just don't buy this "Trump'll walk the nomination" idea. It feels wrong to me. That said, I'm far more confident on my short of him for the presidency than for the nomination.
I have heard of precisely zero people IRL agitating for another lockdown. Yes, I know, dovish London etc etc etc – I realise that other areas are different. But is there anywhere in the UK where people are clinging to their homes, praying that the government soon forces everyone to stay inside? Really? I just can't believe that.I hew heard of precisely zero people ITL agitating for another lockdown. Yes, I know, dovish London etc etc etc – I realise that other areas are different. But is there anywhere in the UK where people are clinging to their homes, praying that the government soon forces everyone to stay inside? Really? I just can't believe that.
Agree, I don't think people are agitating for a lockdown. And we shouldn't need one, unless we get some new and nasty variant.
But, I do know people (older/more vulnerable on average) who are reducing social contact and avoiding events where they feel unsafe. That is likely to continue whilst cases are high I would guess.
The trouble is case numbers now may not be that much higher than the endemic equilibrium. In which case the fear continues, in theory indefinitely.
Where are these fearful people of whom you write? They are certainly not here, in London, where people are behaving as normal, and getting on with their lives.
Obviously you won't see the fearful people, because they will be at home.
You would hear of them though! And work with them (remotely). Yet I can think of precisely zero. I do have one colleague who is more hawkish on masks etc, but even she goes out and fraternises, so it's not clear to me where Team Fear are hiding, or if they exist at all.
Well you have heard of them. I, and others, have given you examples of people we know.
That you don't know of any in your social circle is random chance.
I think by definition someone sheltering in fear in their house will not be out and about.
I'm frustrated by the attitude re some wanting compulsory masks, but not insisting on compulsory vaccination. I can't remember who first brought that up, but its a bloody good point. I'm still required to mask up a lot at work, and I do in shops too. Its annoying more than anything else. But it is NOT a free hit. There are undoubtedly negative effects.
Looking at the opinion polls, the New Jersey result is more of a surprise than the Virginia one. Nearly all of them had the Democrats ahead by quite large margin in NJ.
HY hasn’t read the stats right. The Dems will win in NJ; I haven’t looked at the betting sites, but if there are odds on it, back them.
On Stock, I have to say that I'd be reluctant to send* my children to Sussex (if they were at that point - there's another 15+ years for them to turn it around) given recent events.
*not that it would be up to me, of course, but if they asked my opinion I'd be more negative
Students have always been radical, railing against on-campus Barclays branches, etc. University authorities always indulged it perhaps even patronisingly so. When did it get so visceral and personal. I suppose "Barclays" is faceless, while Kathleen Stock is very much a real person.
One of the most unpleasant aspects of extreme Wokeness is the intimacy of the attacks. The personal, venomous takedowns. I guess it started on social media where people feel free to be horrible, but now that abuse has spread to real life
An oddity of this is that so much of it is blue-on-blue, especially in the UK. The ultra-Woke don’t really go for conservatives. Either cause they can’t find any or because they don’t get upset by their obvious opponents. Instead they go for feminists like Stock or Blairites or Joanna cherry or J K Rowling (a Labour voter), people nominally on the same side
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
Yes, I remember you taking issue with one of my NY predictions - the one that said Donald Trump will quickly fade way as a political player. I certainly got that wrong.
Could he blackmail the Reps to get the nomination, I wonder? "It's me or I run as independent MAGA" type thing?
Trump to Republicans is the equivalent of Jesus to Christianity, he has no need to blackmail them, they will beg him to run and pay him billions to do so.
Why will they want him to run when they know their best chance of winning is with someone else? I don't see it myself. He's 2.5 for the nomination so the betting has it more likely than not that he isn't the GOP candidate. The betting also has it at 27 that he wins the WH for a brand new MAGA party - which is the threat I'm referring to. The dream scenario is he does that and splits the vote and the Dems - with a great not Joe candidate - win easily. An unlikely dream scenario of course but dream scenarios are always unlikely. It's all very fascinating. If we can't make money off all of this we need shooting.
"they know their best chance of winning is with someone else" - they bet tens of millions of pounds, often six figure life savings on Trump having won the 2020 election even after he lost it, they still believe he won today. You think they really believe anyone else has a better chance? Even if they did Trump would simply brand any such person a RINO traitor and they will be done.
By "they" I mean the calculating party brass not the crazy foot soldiers. I think they'll want a candidate who appeals (enough) to the base but isn't Trump. How they're going to engineer this I can't tell you but it's such an imperative that I think they'll manage it. The WH is a massive prize, the biggest in politics, so I also expect some very ruthless machinations from other players. Just don't buy this "Trump'll walk the nomination" idea. It feels wrong to me. That said, I'm far more confident on my short of him for the presidency than for the nomination.
The one market I opposed Trump on was the popular vote winner. I have even accepted a loss on that now as think I will be able to lay much shorter later on.
On Stock, I have to say that I'd be reluctant to send* my children to Sussex (if they were at that point - there's another 15+ years for them to turn it around) given recent events.
*not that it would be up to me, of course, but if they asked my opinion I'd be more negative
Students have always been radical, railing against on-campus Barclays branches, etc. University authorities always indulged it perhaps even patronisingly so. When did it get so visceral and personal. I suppose "Barclays" is faceless, while Kathleen Stock is very much a real person.
What strikes me about lefty students (including the never grown up ones like Corbyn) is the entirely arbitrary nature of the things they select to be wankers about. If you want to get beaten up in South Africa, visit a township. That will probably do the trick in itself, but if not, start giving it large about how you stood shoulder to shoulder with them in the fight against Apartheid. The universal view is that it is and was none of your business and that your role in the whole thing was that of an utterly irrelevant wanker.
If you don't believe me, just try it.
I can't believe the average trans or Palestinian feels much different.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
Just out of interest @MaxPB if you and I were North Korean would you support them regardless and consider me not to be aligned with my country and people because I didn't support everything they did?
I think on DPRK we'd both support whatever the commisar tells us to. What I find tough to accept is that we have a choice, and you consistently choose to take the opposing side to your country because you're unable to accept a democratic decision that went against you. You want this nation to fail economically and to be humiliated by Macron and others because it proves you right about Brexit. That's the side you're on, whether or not you want to admit it.
You clearly don't understand how vital it is for the long term future of this country that we fail utterly and go crawling back to our betters. That's what real patriots think.
On Stock, I have to say that I'd be reluctant to send* my children to Sussex (if they were at that point - there's another 15+ years for them to turn it around) given recent events.
*not that it would be up to me, of course, but if they asked my opinion I'd be more negative
Students have always been radical, railing against on-campus Barclays branches, etc. University authorities always indulged it perhaps even patronisingly so. When did it get so visceral and personal. I suppose "Barclays" is faceless, while Kathleen Stock is very much a real person.
Yep, that's the difference. I don't know the full details of the Stock situation, so I'm a little reluctant to comment too deeply, but to take te Barclays example, I've no problem with protests about Barclays (whoever) on campus. But if you're harassing or intimidating Barclay's staff doing their jobs/on their way to/from their jobs then you've crossed a line. A blurred line, to be sure, as intimidation means different things to different people and is hard to define objectively. But I think most of us would know it if we saw it.
There's also a difference in protesting a general thing and a particular on-campus grievance. From the reports, Stock was no transphobic in any meaningful sense on campus (if at all) apparently treating transgender students with respect, usng their preferred pronouns etc. It really should not have been a campaign against her personally, as it (apparently) was.
Now, I'm far away from all of this. Things may have happened of which I know nothing and which might change my views. But I can only comment on the facts as they seem to be to me.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
Yes, I remember you taking issue with one of my NY predictions - the one that said Donald Trump will quickly fade way as a political player. I certainly got that wrong.
Could he blackmail the Reps to get the nomination, I wonder? "It's me or I run as independent MAGA" type thing?
Trump to Republicans is the equivalent of Jesus to Christianity, he has no need to blackmail them, they will beg him to run and pay him billions to do so.
Why will they want him to run when they know their best chance of winning is with someone else? I don't see it myself. He's 2.5 for the nomination so the betting has it more likely than not that he isn't the GOP candidate. The betting also has it at 27 that he wins the WH for a brand new MAGA party - which is the threat I'm referring to. The dream scenario is he does that and splits the vote and the Dems - with a great not Joe candidate - win easily. An unlikely dream scenario of course but dream scenarios are always unlikely. It's all very fascinating. If we can't make money off all of this we need shooting.
I think the lesson from the VA (and possibly NJ) races is that the Republicans now have a strategy for harnessing Trump's ability to fire up the base whilst not pushing a counter-reaction, namely select a candidate who doesn't tie himself into Trump and keeps a distance, yet doesn't bad-mouth him which is what gets Trump's ire. Youngkin was smart. When McAuliffe tried to present him as a Trump acolyte, he resisted the temptation to put as much distance away from Trump as possible.
PS I still think the Texas State race last night where the GOP took a very Hispanic Blue seat in San Antonio probably has longer-term implications
Yes, exactly. A candidate like the guy who's just won. So, their challenge is to stop Trump running for the nomination. How do they do that if we rule out poisoning his chicken wings?
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
It is a particularly British trait to denigrate oneself and one's country.
Funnily enough, it is precisely that trait that enabled us to lead the world in social change over the past four or five hundred years. With such a track record, let’s not give up on it now?
Number 10 insist today’s amendment to the Owen Paterson sanction is nothing to do with the Owen Paterson case, and is about “strengthening” the system to add an appeal process.
It will be interesting to see how many Tory MPs are principled enough to defy the whip. They all should, of course, but I doubt many will.
I hope that the Parliamentary Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, resigns if the amendment is passed. The amendment is basically questioning her honesty and integrity, although of course it's not being sold like that. The lay members of the Committee for Standards may also resign, as should the MPs on it.
Of course this won't have any resonance with the public, who don't care about such matters at the moment. But it's good to see that some honourable Tories on here recognise how much this all stinks.
On the train to Glasgow and back yesterday pretty much everyone was wearing a mask. I gave myself a brief break when drinking a coffee but otherwise complied. That is still the law up here, of course, but it was being complied with. In the streets of Glasgow masks were pretty rare.
In England on the trains mask-wearing is around 5%. On the tube it's higher.
Just goes to show how powerful those laws are. I'm sure all governments will be itching to give them up.
Actually, I can believe that Boris would be willing to give them up. Ed Davey? Perhaps. Probably. SKS? No effing way.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
It is a particularly British trait to denigrate oneself and one's country.
Funnily enough, it is precisely that trait that enabled us to lead the world in social change over the past four or five hundred years. With such a track record, let’s not give up on it now?
I think the most hubristic we got recently was proposing the national motto as "musn't grumble".
When did Cameron’s aide, Steve Hilton, become an ardent anti-Woke campaigner?
Curious
‘Virginia we are all with you today!
Fight back against racist woke indoctrination in schools...the arrogance and failure of Democrat one party rule...the cruel and counter-productive lockdowns and school closures
Wow. So this is no longer a parliamentary issue - saving Paterson is now literally government policy.
I am wondering if saving the Guardian by having their click count go through the roof is also government policy. After all, if it did not exist the Tories would need to invent it.
When did Cameron’s aide, Steve Hilton, become an ardent anti-Woke campaigner?
Curious
‘Virginia we are all with you today!
Fight back against racist woke indoctrination in schools...the arrogance and failure of Democrat one party rule...the cruel and counter-productive lockdowns and school closures
She was talking complete rubbish in a lot of her questions but came across far more interesting than Mogadon Man.
I'd score it 2-1 to Boris.
After Ed, Angela and Reeves have all done better in their replies/questions than dreary Sir Keir ever does normally. Surely MPs in Labour are going to have to do a leadership challenge soon rather than let him bore them on to another defeat?
‘ LOL, Boris says Rayner has "a gigawatt more energy" than Starmer. Actually turning the fact she duffed him up into an advantage for him.’
On the train to Glasgow and back yesterday pretty much everyone was wearing a mask. I gave myself a brief break when drinking a coffee but otherwise complied. That is still the law up here, of course, but it was being complied with. In the streets of Glasgow masks were pretty rare.
I wouldn't expect people to wear masks outside!
And yet some people do seem to expect this. Its never clear when people discuss mask adherence whether they are talking about indoor venues, or just when walking around.
If you spend a lot of money of dinner, but 80% of the final bill is wine, does one normally expect a service charge of 15% on top of the wine bill? Or do you get like a sommelier charge?
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
Just out of interest @MaxPB if you and I were North Korean would you support them regardless and consider me not to be aligned with my country and people because I didn't support everything they did?
I think on DPRK we'd both support whatever the commisar tells us to. What I find tough to accept is that we have a choice, and you consistently choose to take the opposing side to your country because you're unable to accept a democratic decision that went against you. You want this nation to fail economically and to be humiliated by Macron and others because it proves you right about Brexit. That's the side you're on, whether or not you want to admit it.
You clearly don't understand how vital it is for the long term future of this country that we fail utterly and go crawling back to our betters. That's what real patriots think.
It is quite common across the domestic political divide for opposing sides Lab/Cons to want the other's policies to fail. For the long term future of the country (ie to put in their own preferred stripe of govt).
Wow. So this is no longer a parliamentary issue - saving Paterson is now literally government policy.
I am wondering if saving the Guardian by having their click count go through the roof is also government policy. After all, if it did not exist the Tories would need to invent it.
Don't shoot the messenger - some things are right and wrong.
We have an independent standards commissioner explicitly to stop this kind of thing from happening. Patterson has been tried, judged and his conviction upheld. So the Tories want to overturn the entire system as it isn't right that one of theirs gets caught.
2021 VA Gov race Final Result (R) Youngkin 50.7% (+2.3) (D) McAuliffe 48.5%
VA Gov Most Accurate Pollsters 1. Trafalgar (R), Nov 1 Poll Youngkin +2.3% . No error 2. Insider Advantage (R) Nov 1 Youngkin +2 (D+0.3 error) 3. @Peoples_Pundit Nov 1 Youngkin +3 (R+0.7 error)
If you spend a lot of money of dinner, but 80% of the final bill is wine, does one normally expect a service charge of 15% on top of the wine bill? Or do you get like a sommelier charge?
When did Cameron’s aide, Steve Hilton, become an ardent anti-Woke campaigner?
Curious
‘Virginia we are all with you today!
Fight back against racist woke indoctrination in schools...the arrogance and failure of Democrat one party rule...the cruel and counter-productive lockdowns and school closures
Looking at the opinion polls, the New Jersey result is more of a surprise than the Virginia one. Nearly all of them had the Democrats ahead by quite large margin in NJ.
HY hasn’t read the stats right. The Dems will win in NJ; I haven’t looked at the betting sites, but if there are odds on it, back them.
Even if the Dems do scrape home in NJ it will likely be by less than 1%, a huge 8% swing to the GOP since the 16% Biden won NJ by in 2020. It would be even bigger than the 6% swing to the GOP in Virginia since 2020 last night which saw the GOP win the Virginia governorship and House of Delegates
Surely the big story of the day is Virginia, not Owen Patterson
Proximately it strongly suggests swinging Republican gains in 2022, rendering Biden a lame duck who will do very little, making it easier for the GOP to retake the White House in 2024
Ultimately, it is much bigger than that. It is the first time a shrewd right winger has cleverly weaponised Wokeness as a stick to thwack the Left, and boy, it works. Voters loathe this race and gender bullshit
I see almost no reason why the Republicans can’t repeat this across America, and the Counter-Reformation could spread to Canada, Oz, and the UK.
I say ‘almost’ because Trump, of course. He is the one confounding factor. Republicans need him to disappear, even as they maintain their grip on his base. If they can do that, they could dominate elections for a decade, because the American Left is not getting any less insane, any time soon
Virginia also neatly answers that persistent question. “What is Wokeness?”. Wokeness is what lost the Virginia election for the Left
Except that "wokeness" as is happening in America like many such culture wars just doesn't apply in the UK.
Last year some responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by saying "OK fair enough to protest American police violence but we don't have that issue in this country" which is right. We equally don't have this "wokeness" of which you are completely dogmatically obsessed about either. It swings both ways.
We have enough issues of our own to worry about, without transplanting American culture wars into the UK.
lol. I’m ‘dogmatically obsessed’ with Wokeness. Ok. Whatever.
You and others keep telling me it’s trivial, not an issue, just new ways of being polite. Yada yaddddda. Well here it is winning a dramatic and important election, and crippling a U.S. president. Wokeness is not trivial, it is huge
On your other point I tend to agree. The UK is not so deeply sunk in the Culture War as America, but we are certainly heading in the same direction. See our endless pointless ranting arguments about statue-toppling and trans rights. We do not have the poisoned racial debate of America, thank God, but in other ways we are even worse than them (the trans-TERF war is nastier in Britain)
Ironically the best way for Britain to avoid America’s fate is for us to keep electing moderate Tories, who will stand firm against the wilder lunacies
"Moderate" Tory MPs are about to end independent oversight of their colleagues' behaviour, are set to back plans to make it harder to vote in elections, support making public protest illegal and believe the government should be beyond judicial scrutiny. But at least we get to protect statues of people who made fortunes from slavery. Phew!
This is what I find crazy. Yes, "wokeism" is illiberal and there are a handful of unfair firings from academia. But such a mentality is clearly nowhere near taking control of the main left wing party. Meanwhile the Republicans incited an attack on the US seat of government, actively fought efforts to deal with a pandemic that has killed half a million Americans, are electing conspiracy theorists to control elections. Yet it's the left that are the main problem? It is bonkers.
Well put. And when only 41% of Republican voters believe that the votes are actually counted correctly when it is their party who is responsible for most voter suppression and undermining the system you have a society that is just fragmenting before our eyes. It is a warning to us all.
Voter Suppression, or stopping cheating. I agree with Farage totally on the dangers of mass postal voting. If you want it to be your vote should be between you and the ballot box. When I was younger I would have had little choice but vote Labour with the postal vote. I never have.
Postal vote should be absentee and for the properly disabled only.
Which is demonstrable nonsense. Colorado, for instance, has had 100% postal voting since 2013, and it works fine.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
If I had the time (which I do) and the inclination (which I sort of do) and the tech nous (which I definitely don't) I could copy into here a stream of examples every single day of braindead bigoted shit from people on the other side - your side - of this fractious divide.
I dare say you could @kinabalu but that wouldn't make this right or acceptable.
No, but my point is we get a prolific splattering of these individual examples of extreme wokery onto the site - from fruity leon in particular but also from several others - but we don't get anybody bothering to do the opposite and believe me somebody could. Every day, half a dozen lurid examples of "antiwoke" activism showing how it drips in racism, misogyny, and just general numbskull stupidity. Then for each example, various lefty posters chipping in to agree how awful it is. Net effect? You'd read a thread and it'd look like the country is a veritable cesspit of hard right sentiment and attitudes. Oh god, Tommy Robinsonism is taking over! Etc. As it is, we're highly slanted. This is what I'm saying.
Anyone who wants a mild dose of this can follow Sadiq Khan on FB and see what kind of comments he gets under every post, usually from some old dude with a union jack background to their thumbnail. There are assorted idiots on all sides, and social media has given them a platform they lacked before. (FWIW I think what happened at Sussex is a disgrace, there are idiots on all sides like I said).
Wow. So this is no longer a parliamentary issue - saving Paterson is now literally government policy.
I am wondering if saving the Guardian by having their click count go through the roof is also government policy. After all, if it did not exist the Tories would need to invent it.
Don't shoot the messenger - some things are right and wrong.
We have an independent standards commissioner explicitly to stop this kind of thing from happening. Patterson has been tried, judged and his conviction upheld. So the Tories want to overturn the entire system as it isn't right that one of theirs gets caught.
IANAL but doesn't the phrase "conviction upheld" normally refer to an appeal and there's been no appeal here? I've heard of judge, jury and executioner before, but not judge, jury, appeal and executioner all being in one.
She was talking complete rubbish in a lot of her questions but came across far more interesting than Mogadon Man.
I'd score it 2-1 to Boris.
After Ed, Angela and Reeves have all done better in their replies/questions than dreary Sir Keir ever does normally. Surely MPs in Labour are going to have to do a leadership challenge soon rather than let him bore them on to another defeat?
‘ LOL, Boris says Rayner has "a gigawatt more energy" than Starmer. Actually turning the fact she duffed him up into an advantage for him.’
Didn't work that well for loser Trump in the end though. I have always said it is in the interests of Tories to talk up Rayner because she is so repulsive to the floating voter. A Labour Party led by Rayner (or some other Corbynite left wing nutter) is about the only thing that could persuade me to vote Tory at the moment
She was talking complete rubbish in a lot of her questions but came across far more interesting than Mogadon Man.
I'd score it 2-1 to Boris.
After Ed, Angela and Reeves have all done better in their replies/questions than dreary Sir Keir ever does normally. Surely MPs in Labour are going to have to do a leadership challenge soon rather than let him bore them on to another defeat?
‘ LOL, Boris says Rayner has "a gigawatt more energy" than Starmer. Actually turning the fact she duffed him up into an advantage for him.’
Whatever the rights or wrongs of this case, this does smack of hubris. If there was a competent Labour leader (no, not Corbyn), the government would take a real beating from this.
Might yet do so.
One of the patterns in Johnson's behaviour is to bounce controversial stuff through the Commons before anyone can organise an opposition to it. The obvious example was the NI increase; the Brexit deal followed the same timeline, and now this- it wasn't really on the radar this time yesterday.
As a raw power play, it works. But the underlying issues (paying more money to the government, relating to Europe, now the rights and wrongs of MP behaviour) don't go away.
The best way to kill this story is to send Paterson on a fact-finding mission to the Bahamas for 30 days...
She was talking complete rubbish in a lot of her questions but came across far more interesting than Mogadon Man.
I'd score it 2-1 to Boris.
After Ed, Angela and Reeves have all done better in their replies/questions than dreary Sir Keir ever does normally. Surely MPs in Labour are going to have to do a leadership challenge soon rather than let him bore them on to another defeat?
‘ LOL, Boris says Rayner has "a gigawatt more energy" than Starmer. Actually turning the fact she duffed him up into an advantage for him.’
Didn't work that well for loser Trump in the end though. I have always said it is in the interests of Tories to talk up Rayner because she is so repulsive to the floating voter. A Labour Party led by Rayner (or some other Corbynite left wing nutter) is about the only thing that could persuade me to vote Tory at the moment
Rayner is many things, but she is by no means a "Corbynite left wing nutter".
2021 VA Gov race Final Result (R) Youngkin 50.7% (+2.3) (D) McAuliffe 48.5%
VA Gov Most Accurate Pollsters 1. Trafalgar (R), Nov 1 Poll Youngkin +2.3% . No error 2. Insider Advantage (R) Nov 1 Youngkin +2 (D+0.3 error) 3. @Peoples_Pundit Nov 1 Youngkin +3 (R+0.7 error)
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
Just out of interest @MaxPB if you and I were North Korean would you support them regardless and consider me not to be aligned with my country and people because I didn't support everything they did?
I think on DPRK we'd both support whatever the commisar tells us to. What I find tough to accept is that we have a choice, and you consistently choose to take the opposing side to your country because you're unable to accept a democratic decision that went against you. You want this nation to fail economically and to be humiliated by Macron and others because it proves you right about Brexit. That's the side you're on, whether or not you want to admit it.
You clearly don't understand how vital it is for the long term future of this country that we fail utterly and go crawling back to our betters. That's what real patriots think.
It is quite common across the domestic political divide for opposing sides Lab/Cons to want the other's policies to fail. For the long term future of the country (ie to put in their own preferred stripe of govt).
There's also the question of whether it's better for a policy to fail quickly, to allow for a course correction, or slowly. Ultimately it's irrelevant since it will succeed or fail based on its merits not because any of us are wishing it well or ill.
Surely the big story of the day is Virginia, not Owen Patterson
Proximately it strongly suggests swinging Republican gains in 2022, rendering Biden a lame duck who will do very little, making it easier for the GOP to retake the White House in 2024
Ultimately, it is much bigger than that. It is the first time a shrewd right winger has cleverly weaponised Wokeness as a stick to thwack the Left, and boy, it works. Voters loathe this race and gender bullshit
I see almost no reason why the Republicans can’t repeat this across America, and the Counter-Reformation could spread to Canada, Oz, and the UK.
I say ‘almost’ because Trump, of course. He is the one confounding factor. Republicans need him to disappear, even as they maintain their grip on his base. If they can do that, they could dominate elections for a decade, because the American Left is not getting any less insane, any time soon
Virginia also neatly answers that persistent question. “What is Wokeness?”. Wokeness is what lost the Virginia election for the Left
Except that "wokeness" as is happening in America like many such culture wars just doesn't apply in the UK.
Last year some responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by saying "OK fair enough to protest American police violence but we don't have that issue in this country" which is right. We equally don't have this "wokeness" of which you are completely dogmatically obsessed about either. It swings both ways.
We have enough issues of our own to worry about, without transplanting American culture wars into the UK.
lol. I’m ‘dogmatically obsessed’ with Wokeness. Ok. Whatever.
You and others keep telling me it’s trivial, not an issue, just new ways of being polite. Yada yaddddda. Well here it is winning a dramatic and important election, and crippling a U.S. president. Wokeness is not trivial, it is huge
On your other point I tend to agree. The UK is not so deeply sunk in the Culture War as America, but we are certainly heading in the same direction. See our endless pointless ranting arguments about statue-toppling and trans rights. We do not have the poisoned racial debate of America, thank God, but in other ways we are even worse than them (the trans-TERF war is nastier in Britain)
Ironically the best way for Britain to avoid America’s fate is for us to keep electing moderate Tories, who will stand firm against the wilder lunacies
"Moderate" Tory MPs are about to end independent oversight of their colleagues' behaviour, are set to back plans to make it harder to vote in elections, support making public protest illegal and believe the government should be beyond judicial scrutiny. But at least we get to protect statues of people who made fortunes from slavery. Phew!
This is what I find crazy. Yes, "wokeism" is illiberal and there are a handful of unfair firings from academia. But such a mentality is clearly nowhere near taking control of the main left wing party. Meanwhile the Republicans incited an attack on the US seat of government, actively fought efforts to deal with a pandemic that has killed half a million Americans, are electing conspiracy theorists to control elections. Yet it's the left that are the main problem? It is bonkers.
Well put. And when only 41% of Republican voters believe that the votes are actually counted correctly when it is their party who is responsible for most voter suppression and undermining the system you have a society that is just fragmenting before our eyes. It is a warning to us all.
Voter Suppression, or stopping cheating. I agree with Farage totally on the dangers of mass postal voting. If you want it to be your vote should be between you and the ballot box. When I was younger I would have had little choice but vote Labour with the postal vote. I never have.
Postal vote should be absentee and for the properly disabled only.
Which is demonstrable nonsense. Colorado, for instance, has had 100% postal voting since 2013, and it works fine.
A former swing state, now consistently Democrat, I see your game!
I have heard of precisely zero people IRL agitating for another lockdown. Yes, I know, dovish London etc etc etc – I realise that other areas are different. But is there anywhere in the UK where people are clinging to their homes, praying that the government soon forces everyone to stay inside? Really? I just can't believe that.I hew heard of precisely zero people ITL agitating for another lockdown. Yes, I know, dovish London etc etc etc – I realise that other areas are different. But is there anywhere in the UK where people are clinging to their homes, praying that the government soon forces everyone to stay inside? Really? I just can't believe that.
Agree, I don't think people are agitating for a lockdown. And we shouldn't need one, unless we get some new and nasty variant.
But, I do know people (older/more vulnerable on average) who are reducing social contact and avoiding events where they feel unsafe. That is likely to continue whilst cases are high I would guess.
The trouble is case numbers now may not be that much higher than the endemic equilibrium. In which case the fear continues, in theory indefinitely.
Where are these fearful people of whom you write? They are certainly not here, in London, where people are behaving as normal, and getting on with their lives.
Obviously you won't see the fearful people, because they will be at home.
You would hear of them though! And work with them (remotely). Yet I can think of precisely zero. I do have one colleague who is more hawkish on masks etc, but even she goes out and fraternises, so it's not clear to me where Team Fear are hiding, or if they exist at all.
Underground and London buses running at 70-80% of pre-pandemic capacity on the weekend.
The commuter stuff may be a shift to working from home which arguably is as much convenience for workers as fear of COVID.
But presumably people going out on public transport less at weekend is a sign of people being concerned about covid.
Er... the vastly reduced volume of international tourists would probably account for most/all of that 20% weekend drop?!
Could be I guess, but I'd be surprised if it's just tourists. There are lots of other indicators that some people are still worried and changing their behaviour:
Those numbers don't pass the sniff test either, my wife and I took the train to Guildford from Waterloo on Sunday and then back again on Monday, I couldn't see a single person wearing a mask, the way there was very busy too because of all the cancellations. Waterloo station was packed on that Sunday and again, the number of people wearing masks was maybe 1 in 10. I think a study using CCTV footage for train stations and trains should be used to judge this, not a survey where people will obviously lie about how virtuous they are being.
Yet I was on the train home to Brockley from London Bridge yesterday at rush hour and I would say it was about 50-60% masked at least. So much so that some geezers presumably from beyond the white van curtain were moaning loudly about all the people in their masks.
I tend to wear a mask on the train and tube as a reassurance to fellow passengers and to avoid getting nervous looks, rather than through any epidemiological risk assessment on my part.
Again 50-60% sounds fair, the graphic points to a masking rate of 80% or higher, that definitely isn't the case. Even in the current casedemic that the media have irresponsibly tried to push people are pretty steadfast and the numbers wearing a mask are declining.
A couple of weekends ago we had this ridiculous situation of going to a late night bar in Camden packed full of people not wearing masks and then those same people piling onto a tube train at half past midnight and suddenly we were supposed to wear masks. The same is true for offices and other workplaces, we spend all day unmasked with people indoors where clearly COVID clearly doesn't have an entry card to get past the lobby but then we're expected to mask up for the tube and trains despite everyone spending their days indoors and unmasked?
Yes. The ultimate piece of covid theatre is – the actual theatre. Everyone packs into a very cosy theatre, unmasked, then into an even tinier theatre bar, unmasked. Then into a tube, upon which 50% of them don masks.
As others have said, it's a variable function of social conformity, rather than risk assessment.
Anyone who thinks Woke ‘isn’t an issue’ in the UK should watch this. From this morning
‘How awful this was to listen to. Students are possessed with Salem-style levels of hysteria. Where are the ones who say "hang on, guys, this is just wrong?" What a cowardly country. Shameful.’
There are nutters on both extremes of woke and anti woke, so sure it is an issue. Just a very minor one in the big scheme of things compared to the economy, environment, healthcare, international co-operation, housing, policing etc.
It’s not minor.
But I give up. PB is determined to ignore it. Fair enough
But watch this space. Woke might get Trump re-elected. Think on that
I have tipped him up consistently since Jan 2021 and will win a fair amount if he does, although very much hope he loses.
I dread the idea of a 2nd Trump presidency. He’s a dangerous maniac who could cancel American democracy
Luckily, American voters sense this. They really don’t want to vote for him. My fear is that the Democrats will lurch ever further to the Left, double down on Wokery, and then in despair US voters will see Trump as the lesser of two evils
Don't you think there is disproportionately more US moral panic directed at wokery than the frequently much crazier shenanigans of the American Christian right? Creationism, QAnon, Birtherism, you name it. Things that have direct consequences for politics. They seem to be shrugged off as a few crazies whilst the goings on of the crazies on the far left are expected to poison the entire Democrat party.
Fair points. I think the disparity is because Woke (I’m still waiting for an alternative word) is an elite project exported from academe and handed down from top politicians, and is now infesting all levels of business, education, law, the arts, media, even science. It is an imposed ideology, and a revolutionary one
QAnon and the rest are perennial pitchfork insurrections, they are not new, nor are they as menacing to many, even if the theories have got crazier
January 6 WAS new. And very scary - to me. But I remind PB-ers that the Trumpites at the Capitol were only trying to do at speed what Remoaners tried to do for 2 years. Get a legal national vote overturned. Cancel democracy
The fact that you can compare 6 Jan to Remainers says everything about your biased view.
Also if you mean by Remoaners Rejoiners why not say so. Just cos this is your definition of the word it isn't everybody's, so it just confuses your message and just looks like an insult. I only know what you mean because of a previous exchange with you.
The similarity is that both were trying to use a mechanism other than the ballot box to overturn a democratic vote. If you can't see that then more fool you and it confirms my existing view of your true allegiance not being to this country and its people.
Max again you are reading stuff into stuff I didn't post. I commented on making the comparison between 6 Jan and the actions of Remainers. No sane person can claim they are comparable regardless of the rights and wrongs as several have pointed out. You did the same the other day reading stuff into what I didn't post. You even commented on my views on the NI agreement which I have not even mentioned. Again I ask are you mixing me up with someone else?
Re my true allegiance not being to this country again I don't know where you get that from (you may of seen earlier I criticized Spain in a dispute with the UK). As a default I support England and GB. That is primarily at sporting events. However I judge people on what they do and say regardless of nationality. I find it odd anyone would do differently because of their nationality.
It is a particularly British trait to denigrate oneself and one's country.
Believe me the French are good at it too. I think we share an exceptionalism - made worse by the fact we've not travelled much recently - which is both positive and negative. People seem to be given to believe either that Britain (or the republique) is the greatest country in the world, or uniquely bad and incompetent. Few people seem comfortable with the idea that we could be remotely normal. Good at some things, bad or middling at others.
This isn't a good look. Labour analysis suggests that of the 59 backbench MPs who have signed up to the motion scrapping the Standards Cttee, nearly a quarter (14) have been found to have breached parliamentary standards. https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1455899621939728387
She was talking complete rubbish in a lot of her questions but came across far more interesting than Mogadon Man.
I'd score it 2-1 to Boris.
After Ed, Angela and Reeves have all done better in their replies/questions than dreary Sir Keir ever does normally. Surely MPs in Labour are going to have to do a leadership challenge soon rather than let him bore them on to another defeat?
‘ LOL, Boris says Rayner has "a gigawatt more energy" than Starmer. Actually turning the fact she duffed him up into an advantage for him.’
Didn't work that well for loser Trump in the end though. I have always said it is in the interests of Tories to talk up Rayner because she is so repulsive to the floating voter. A Labour Party led by Rayner (or some other Corbynite left wing nutter) is about the only thing that could persuade me to vote Tory at the moment
Rayner is many things, but she is by no means a "Corbynite left wing nutter".
Perhaps, but I did use the small word "or", though followed by the word "other" could have caused confusion. I will rephrase: A Labour Party led by Rayner (or alternatively some Corbynite left wing nutter) is one of the few things that could persuade me to vote Tory at the moment
Looking at the opinion polls, the New Jersey result is more of a surprise than the Virginia one. Nearly all of them had the Democrats ahead by quite large margin in NJ.
HY hasn’t read the stats right. The Dems will win in NJ; I haven’t looked at the betting sites, but if there are odds on it, back them.
Even if the Dems do scrape home in NJ it will likely be by less than 1%, a huge 8% swing to the GOP since the 16% Biden won NJ by in 2020. It would be even bigger than the 6% swing to the GOP in Virginia since 2020 last night which saw the GOP win the Virginia governorship and House of Delegates
Democrats now ahead in NJ by about 1400 votes but last batch of votes slightly swung back to the GOP. Will be extremely tight.
When did Cameron’s aide, Steve Hilton, become an ardent anti-Woke campaigner?
Curious
‘Virginia we are all with you today!
Fight back against racist woke indoctrination in schools...the arrogance and failure of Democrat one party rule...the cruel and counter-productive lockdowns and school closures
Comments
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.187090973
Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education by Edward Taylor and David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings
So the ‘big Republican lie’ is actually a ‘big Democrat lie’
It's not one bad apple. It looks like party policy.
For example, a hand car wash closed down near where my parents live and hey presto, the automatic one has been unmothballed. It's almost a certainty that the legally here employees from that car wash are now waiting tables and getting paid well above the minimum wage to do so but the car wash is unable to operate without them so it's gone.
I return to the UK for two weeks on 14 November to see OGH, my family and friends.
This means I shall be traveling through Heathrow. I know some of you (@Leon) have braved international travel of late, and I would appreciate any advice.
Edit to add: I will be mask conscious while in the UK, because I have a lot of work to do in the US when I return, and I really don't want to get stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Azeem Rafiq will be free to name in public the players he has accused of racism and bullying during his Yorkshire career, with the 30-year-old expected to be called to give evidence at a Parliamentary select committee.
In what promises to be a revelatory session before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, Rafiq, 30, will have the opportunity under Parliamentary privilege to detail his allegations.
Those set to be identified include a former Yorkshire and England player, who no longer represents the club, who according to a leaked report of an investigation into Rafiq’s allegations, reported by ESPNCricinfo, engaged in behaviour that “amounted to bullying” but was not deemed racist.
Another senior Yorkshire player, still at the club, escaped disciplinary action despite using the word “P**i” towards Rafiq after the investigation panel decided it was “friendly banter”. That particular finding has caused a furore in the highest circles of government.
Rafiq may also identify two senior officials at Yorkshire, who are also still at the club, who were found to be “dismissive of the concerns of race discrimination” raised by him. Significantly, both those officials were among the group who decided not to share the contents of the investigation’s final report.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azeem-rafiq-to-be-given-chance-to-name-publicly-the-yorkshire-players-he-accuses-of-racism-q9fvnc8pr
So yes, some Tories are bad. But Starmer's own house is rather rickety. The scandals are different, but no better for it.
Indeed the Republicans won New Jersey at every Presidential election from 1968 until 1992.
It is not Massachussetts or San Francisco or Vermont and full of liberal Democrats but basically moderate swing voters who have largely leaned Democrat in recent years but now seem to be swinging back to the GOP post Trump. That is not a great sign for the Democrats ahead of next year's midterms
https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1455693642866298887
Any tips on decent viewpoints outside of the main area? Pubs, Restos etc? I'm thinking of booking somewhere to stay in Wimbledon Village - but I'm too far away to survey the geography.....
And in any case, since most of the GOP voters believe he is the rightful President, any Republican standing against him in the Primary would be a traitor, a RINO.
There will probably be a moderate Republican, one who accepts the 2020 election result, who will stand against him in the Primary. But they will lose.
Just goes to show how powerful those laws are. I'm sure all governments will be itching to give them up.
Actually, I can believe that Boris would be willing to give them up. Ed Davey? Perhaps. Probably. SKS? No effing way.
I was just finding a (possible) example of academic victimisation from the 'other' side, in response to the kinabalu-Leon exchange.
And, to be honest, I regret that anyway, as it's prime whataboutery. I posted on here that I was sad about Stock's resignation and thought that it reflected very badly on the university. Sussex should have got a grip on this and made sure that her position remained tenable, if able. I add that last get out as they can only really be accountable for student/staff actions (where they have the power to discipline, dismiss, exclude) and there may have been non-university people among the trouble makers. Any action on that would, I guess, be down to the police.
We should all be apalled at what happened to Stock. Other examples of discrimination/victimisation in other places are irrelevant to that.
Emery to stay at Villarreal, annoyed that Newcastle leaked the news he was going to join them the day of Villareal's champions league match.
https://theathletic.com/news/unai-emery-to-remain-at-villarreal-in-blow-for-newcastle/WzroWADfTz5o/
Five years of Corbyn and his institutionally racist leadership operation has completely demolished that as a possibility for the medium term, and the country as a whole is much the worse for it.
Good to see such optimism.
Yes, it's more efficient to run as close to 100% utilisation as possible, but this leaves minimal flex for the unexpected. With us running between 90-95% in normal times and spiking to 100-105% in winters (the extra 5% accounted for by contracting agency staff and cancelling operations), we've got minimal to negative spare capacity for covid.
We've been constantly running over 5% with covid for a while now (we're at 7-8% capacity taken up with covid), and with capacity eroded by burned out staff and staff isolating, whilst deferred demand from previously cancelled operations is further pushing up the requirement, we've got three choices:
1 - Accept that 10 minutes wait for 999 and non-availability of ambulances (because they're stuck unable to offload patients) will become more frequent, that routine interventions will have very lengthy waiting lists, A&E waits of over 4 hours will become more frequent, and avoidable errors will be made by tired staff.
2 - Impose restrictions due to other illnesses through winter as a matter of routine.
3 - Re-assess the number of hospital beds and doctors in the healthcare system (currently 2.5 beds per 1000 people, vice 5.9 and 8.0 in France and Germany respectively; 2.8 doctors per 1000 people, vice 3.3 and 4.0 in France and Germany) and do whatever it takes to increase those numbers to the point where we can sustain this. I know it takes years to train doctors, but what's been done to get that process started? Or to encourage immigration of doctors and nurses from countries with greater numbers of these?
I find the first option unacceptable and the second abhorrent, which leaves the third, however difficult, to be the only option.
But she is unable to say whether the Government's decision to rip up the standards process *right now* means that *other* MPs who have fallen foul of the system should have their cases reviewed.
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1455890139436273672
https://www.boots.com/covid-19-testing
Fill in a PLForm online. Takes five minutes. Set up an account so next time it’s shorter. Download the pdf to your phone. Or tablet. Or print it out. Have proof of vaccine on your phone
Wear a mask on the flight, except when eating and drinking.
Arrive. Go to your address. Do the test. Sorted
It sounds daunting but it’s actually a breeze, now. You may encounter passport queues but you also may encounter empty airports and minimal fuss
But yes, bad example in response to your question about Tory students. But then, do you have evidence the harassers of Stock were politically affiliated? If not, it becomes a bit of a nonsense question.
Also, as just posted, I regret posting an example at all. What happened to Stock was apalling. I engaged in whataboutery and was wrong to do so.
*there's probably a better term, we can use 'woke' if you like
I have noticed similar on the island ferries. Mask wearing was widely observed until July when the national rules changed; subsequently, even though the ferry company continues to ‘require’ them and makes the same announcements over the PA, at the beginning what tended to happen was that some people would get out of their cars wearing masks, but when they saw a good many others not bothering, took them off, such that when passengers returned to their cars, most were maskless. Through the autumn this has settled down and now most people don’t bother any more.
My conclusion is that most people only feel happy wearing a mask in an environment where almost everyone else is doing so.
Print stuff AND have it on your phone. Belt and braces.
The capacity of the battery in a Tesla is ~100 kWh. People have suggested that, once these have degraded to ~80% capacity that they would then be reconditioned for use as an energy store in homes. That would give me a store of about two weeks average use, less in winter and with electric heating.
80 kWh over 30 million households would be energy storage of ~2,400 GWh - about half the upper bound of your requirement.
That's going to be part of the solution. We will need to build lots of batteries, but we knew that anyway.
*not that it would be up to me, of course, but if they asked my opinion I'd be more negative
This administration will go down in history as a risible period in our politics, and there’ll be a time when even most of the PB Tories will choose to forget the time they spent online licking the clown’s feet.
The only question is, how long.
When you arrive at LHR as you approach passport control put them on and share a knowing wink with the Border Force officer. They will let you through quickly. If they don't, then it is helpful at that point to shout loudly. All will be well.
The second is rather a giveaway that this is about the outcome, not the process.
I'm frustrated by the attitude re some wanting compulsory masks, but not insisting on compulsory vaccination.
I can't remember who first brought that up, but its a bloody good point. I'm still required to mask up a lot at work, and I do in shops too. Its annoying more than anything else. But it is NOT a free hit. There are undoubtedly negative effects.
https://twitter.com/Laura_K_Hughes/status/1455872387887546376
An oddity of this is that so much of it is blue-on-blue, especially in the UK. The ultra-Woke don’t really go for conservatives. Either cause they can’t find any or because they don’t get upset by their obvious opponents. Instead they go for feminists like Stock or Blairites or Joanna cherry or J K Rowling (a Labour voter), people nominally on the same side
If you don't believe me, just try it.
I can't believe the average trans or Palestinian feels much different.
But it should be a conscience vote on both sides.
There's also a difference in protesting a general thing and a particular on-campus grievance. From the reports, Stock was no transphobic in any meaningful sense on campus (if at all) apparently treating transgender students with respect, usng their preferred pronouns etc. It really should not have been a campaign against her personally, as it (apparently) was.
Now, I'm far away from all of this. Things may have happened of which I know nothing and which might change my views. But I can only comment on the facts as they seem to be to me.
No10 spox denies this suggests the government believes the public are “entirely gullible”.
https://twitter.com/mikeysmith/status/1455896600681844737
I hope that the Parliamentary Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, resigns if the amendment is passed. The amendment is basically questioning her honesty and integrity, although of course it's not being sold like that. The lay members of the Committee for Standards may also resign, as should the MPs on it.
Of course this won't have any resonance with the public, who don't care about such matters at the moment. But it's good to see that some honourable Tories on here recognise how much this all stinks.
It's a poor joke, I know.
Curious
‘Virginia we are all with you today!
Fight back against racist woke indoctrination in schools...the arrogance and failure of Democrat one party rule...the cruel and counter-productive lockdowns and school closures
Go Virginia, lead the way ✊’
https://twitter.com/stevehiltonx/status/1455540861484224512?s=21
If you spend a lot of money of dinner, but 80% of the final bill is wine, does one normally expect a service charge of 15% on top of the wine bill? Or do you get like a sommelier charge?
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/jaw-dropping-37000-bill-salt-21855487
We have an independent standards commissioner explicitly to stop this kind of thing from happening. Patterson has been tried, judged and his conviction upheld. So the Tories want to overturn the entire system as it isn't right that one of theirs gets caught.
2021 VA Gov race Final Result
(R) Youngkin 50.7% (+2.3)
(D) McAuliffe 48.5%
VA Gov Most Accurate Pollsters
1. Trafalgar (R), Nov 1 Poll
Youngkin +2.3% . No error
2. Insider Advantage (R) Nov 1
Youngkin +2 (D+0.3 error)
3. @Peoples_Pundit Nov 1
Youngkin +3 (R+0.7 error)
https://twitter.com/pollsandodds/status/1455890280167653380?s=21
But at a lesser scale then yes. Put on 15% of whatever you are presented with. Otherwise it gets into "but I didn't have a starter" territory.
Colorado, for instance, has had 100% postal voting since 2013, and it works fine.
(FWIW I think what happened at Sussex is a disgrace, there are idiots on all sides like I said).
As others have said, it's a variable function of social conformity, rather than risk assessment.
Labour analysis suggests that of the 59 backbench MPs who have signed up to the motion scrapping the Standards Cttee, nearly a quarter (14) have been found to have breached parliamentary standards.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1455899621939728387
I’ve always quite liked him. A free thinker. But Trump? Pff