It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
I'm not sure Peter gets the whole idea of "monarchy": you know, where you don't get any say in who gets the job?
It's like those idiots who say they support the monarchy but want William to follow HMQ instead of Charles.
Nothing wrong with the idea of an elective monarchy. Sparta had one.
I’m assuming those elected rulers were drawn from a fairly limited pool and their selection would be based largely on their perceived martial ability? For us that would probably mean Harry or Andrew..
Actually we don't have a wholly hereditary monarchy, succession is controlled by Parliament, as the Act of Settlement and Edward VIII (who needed an Act of Parliament to abdicate) demonstrate.
We never have done, for all the claims of the Pilgrimage of Grace over Henry VIII's Act of Succession. Alfred, Aethelstan, Eadward, Harold, William Rufus, Stephen, Henry II, John, Henry IV, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII, James I and William of Orange were all selected despite the clearly superior claims of other candidates if strict primogeniture was enforced.
In the case of John, Henry IV, Edward IV and Richard III several convenient murders and/or wars greased the process somewhat, while in the case of William Rufus, Stephen, John, Henry VII and William of Orange civil war was the result. But you can't say it wasn't a thing.
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
It’s almost as if those red wall MPs are slowly figuring out they’re in the wrong party.
The surprise is that even now there are people who believe that Johnson and the Tories are not corrupt. However, they are still likely to win the next election. They have lowered expectations to such an extent that 40% of voters believe that as bad as things are currently, they could be a whole lot worse. The Tories couldn’t have done this without significant, long-term, Labour help.
So we are told on this very forum, there is no proof.
It is a coincidence that a string of party donors receive a peerage in short order It is a coincidence that party donors have contentious planning decisions made in their favour It is a coincidence that party donors find themselves awarded 9-figure NHS contracts without tender, especially when they have zero track record in this area to justify the award It is a coincidence that donor money paid for the Number 10 refurb or for holidays or for jets and none of it properly declared.
It is an Outrage to suggest that the Conservative Party is openly, shamelessly and brazenly corrupt. Look how much propriety there is on show!
Your point about polls seems to be the cover. "Yes we're corrupt. But nobody cares. So we can carry on being corrupt". I truly cannot think of any modern government that decided to set aside basic principles of good governance, legality and honesty because "we can". And when previous PMs point this out, the corrupt try and dismiss their arguments because they are "remoaners". As if Brexit is forcing the Tory Party to award £107m PPE contracts to its friends.
There are none so blind as those that cannot see. Just look at Blairs govt ridden with lies that led to an.illegal war.
Blair's name was regularly misspelled for a reason.
Its a wonderful attempt at deflection and whataboutery. I am with you on Iraq - went on the march against the war and everything. But there is no equivalence at all between the Blair government and the Johnson government. None.
The party you support is corrupt. Openly. Brazenly. Shamelessly. Because they know you and people like you will still find excuses for them as they trouser your money.
Quite. A key part of the difference and extent is in attitude and intention.
They are not trousering any of my money. I havent given them any money in a long time. I support no party per say but will never ever vote Labour.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Your political bias is showing again
I cannot understand why anyone would criticise the health secretary for urging people to get their booster which is a good health message
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
If the universe is infinite (as many scientists dont discount) then there will be that teapot between Earth and Mars (or at least planets that are exactly like Earth and Mars )
That doesn't follow. Because there are infinite things doesn't mean that a particular thing is among them.
There are an infinite number of even numbers. Not one of them is odd.
but surely odd numbers cannot be in a set of even numbers by definition. A teapot though (or its atomic makeup) is in the universe so must happen in a infinite universe where all possible arrangement of atoms will happen?
The universe may be infinite but all possible arrangements don't necessarily happen.
Only if they cannot happen (like odd numbers being even numbers) but if they can then they will
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
You are strawmanning the public as even more stupid than it really is. I think the average person understands that double jabbed is pretty safe but boosted is even better, and that when you apply a novel vaccine to a novel disease you learn as you go along. Your final sentence has its answer built in to it.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70...... and I just look at politcs from a different angle to you. Bevaise I dont go with the general view and join in with all the filthy and nasty comments on here i am accused of posting bile. That's bollocks.
Why don't you ever answer the bloody questions. Engage in debate rather than posting your anger.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70....
You twit. We have already been here (a couple of days ago) where you flatteringly thought I was young and I corrected you. I am 67.
It's just I am not an angry bitter old man like you.
yes but those years between 67 and 70 are known to change even the most optimistic to the most cynical. just you see
In my experience it's towards the end of that period when things start to fall off one or not work anywhere near as well. And one can't stick them back on quite as well, no matter how hard the NHS tries! I try not to be bitter, though.
This week has been a shameful episode by a few at the top of the party and it would not surprise me that many good and hard working conservatives are exasperated and angry
They have it in their own hands to take action, either to demand Boris listens to them, or take the necessary steps to replace him
Most PMs would give their eye teeth to still be ahead, even if only by 1%, midterm as Boris is.
Blair is the only recent PM who polled better than Boris is midterm
You cannot see the damage this has caused to the party and trot out every excuse that I am not convinced even you believe
If it was really causing damage to the party, Starmer Labour would be 10% ahead midterm, not 1% behind!
But it's relative innit? How far behind was Starmer a week ago?
The point I’d take from it is that, when every headline in the papers is slaughtering the Tories all week, they’re 1-3 points ahead and, when things are going well for them, they’re 8-10 points ahead.
Doesn’t anyone else see things in this way? I can’t get my head around the enthusiasm to treat every poll outside the context of the ebb and flow of an electoral cycle
It’s like a golfer hitting his first tee shot into the water and shooting a double bogey - it doesn’t mean he’s going to card 36 over par
I agree with you that the underlying position is that the Tories are 4-5 points ahead in an average week, and have been for ages. But I think the concept of "mid-term" with its sibling "swingback" is dated here. The real position is that there's 35% who will vote Tory no matter what, and 5-10% who will consider it on a good day. There's 30% who vote Labour no matter what (remember that Corbyn got over 32% even in 2019), but there's also 15% or so who lean LD or Green, and most of them - especially the Greens - are implacably hostile to the Tories and can't wait to screw them. I don't see where the swingback for the Tories will come from, and there is plenty of evidence that a proportion of voters are tactically-minded in marginals. "Hooray, we're 1% ahead and that's even before swingback" is complacency, and that rarely ends well.
That implies you think REFUK will poll around 5% at the next GE, which I think is implausible. They’ll be lucky to get 2%
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
If the universe is infinite (as many scientists dont discount) then there will be that teapot between Earth and Mars (or at least planets that are exactly like Earth and Mars )
That doesn't follow. Because there are infinite things doesn't mean that a particular thing is among them.
There are an infinite number of even numbers. Not one of them is odd.
but surely odd numbers cannot be in a set of even numbers by definition. A teapot though (or its atomic makeup) is in the universe so must happen in a infinite universe where all possible arrangement of atoms will happen?
The universe may be infinite but all possible arrangements don't necessarily happen.
No, they contingently happen, which is still happening.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
This is an excellent example of much of what is wrong with our politics and indeed our society. The contribution to climate change of human activity is not in the slightest “controversial”; it’s simply that Hitchins doesn’t want it to be true. He doesn’t want it to be true because this has implications that he doesn’t like. It impinges on his sense of freedom, it “entitles” governments to nanny him in ways he doesn’t approve of.
What he actually wants is his own facts, tailored to his own prejudices and beliefs. It is a grossly immature way of thinking. Contrary to what he would claim it is the exact opposite of any scientific method. And anyone who disagrees is not only wrong but morally suspect.
In short he’s an idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.
Agreed, but I would go further. Even if one were to accept his argument that there is some chance of the scientific consensus being wrong, the case for transforming our energy systems would remain overwhelming. He’s arguing for the world to take a very large gamble entailing enormous risks, for very little return. His argument is daft in its own terms.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
If the universe is infinite (as many scientists dont discount) then there will be that teapot between Earth and Mars (or at least planets that are exactly like Earth and Mars )
That doesn't follow. Because there are infinite things doesn't mean that a particular thing is among them.
There are an infinite number of even numbers. Not one of them is odd.
but surely odd numbers cannot be in a set of even numbers by definition. A teapot though (or its atomic makeup) is in the universe so must happen in a infinite universe where all possible arrangement of atoms will happen?
The universe may be infinite but all possible arrangements don't necessarily happen.
Only if they cannot happen (like odd numbers being even numbers) but if they can then they will
With Pi for instance having an infinite number of decimal places (probably random as well) then if you gave each possible digit a corresponding letter then somewhere in the sequence it will spell out the whole books in the British Library in order - never mind monkeys writing Shakespear!
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70....
You twit. We have already been here (a couple of days ago) where you flatteringly thought I was young and I corrected you.
I am 67 as you would know if you read my posts.
It's just I am not an angry bitter old man like you.
Why don't you just go and annoy someone else. Lets just agree to disagree. Pass by my comments, you will feel all the better for so doing..
The surprise is that even now there are people who believe that Johnson and the Tories are not corrupt. However, they are still likely to win the next election. They have lowered expectations to such an extent that 40% of voters believe that as bad as things are currently, they could be a whole lot worse. The Tories couldn’t have done this without significant, long-term, Labour help.
So we are told on this very forum, there is no proof.
It is a coincidence that a string of party donors receive a peerage in short order It is a coincidence that party donors have contentious planning decisions made in their favour It is a coincidence that party donors find themselves awarded 9-figure NHS contracts without tender, especially when they have zero track record in this area to justify the award It is a coincidence that donor money paid for the Number 10 refurb or for holidays or for jets and none of it properly declared.
It is an Outrage to suggest that the Conservative Party is openly, shamelessly and brazenly corrupt. Look how much propriety there is on show!
Your point about polls seems to be the cover. "Yes we're corrupt. But nobody cares. So we can carry on being corrupt". I truly cannot think of any modern government that decided to set aside basic principles of good governance, legality and honesty because "we can". And when previous PMs point this out, the corrupt try and dismiss their arguments because they are "remoaners". As if Brexit is forcing the Tory Party to award £107m PPE contracts to its friends.
There are none so blind as those that cannot see. Just look at Blairs govt ridden with lies that led to an.illegal war.
Blair's name was regularly misspelled for a reason.
Its a wonderful attempt at deflection and whataboutery. I am with you on Iraq - went on the march against the war and everything. But there is no equivalence at all between the Blair government and the Johnson government. None.
The party you support is corrupt. Openly. Brazenly. Shamelessly. Because they know you and people like you will still find excuses for them as they trouser your money.
At least Johnson never promised to be "purer than pure"
The PPE contract of PPE contracts surely is Uniserve.
A £243m turnover logistics company awarded a £473m transport contract without tender. Followed by a further £300m of contracts. Uniserve find themselves in the happy position of being asked to source and buy PPE which they do at inflated prices, and then transport it.Turns out the expensive PPE is useless. Gets stored. A very large number of shipping containers. Guess who gets the contract to store the Uniserve-procured and Uniserve-transported PPE that was expensive and unfit?
Thats right - Uniserve! £104m of storage fees in just 3 months this year! Remember that the VIP lane - which secured these contracts - was repeatedly denied to exist by Tory ministers.
And yet people suggest that there should be no enquiry and there is nothing to see here.
And by an astonishing coincidence a Tory MP in the cabinet Office has her constituency address the same as the Uniserve registered office.
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
They aren’t but then what does labour and it’s supporters offer them ? Not being the Tories is not enough.
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
The coalition had been creaking for a while. Maybe since 2016. Is the plan to go protectionist or global? Shrink government or swell it? Strict nanny state or no nanny state?
The "Yippee I'm the leader / I'm the leader / OK what shall we do?" dilemma has been drowned out by the act of Brexit, then by Covid, but it never went away.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because, somewhat disappointingly, what we have found is the vaccinations give fairly limited protection and that after 6-9 months you are once again more vulnerable to this disease. Not nearly as vulnerable as you would be without the vaccines, of course, but vulnerable enough to have a top up. And we are currently administering over 300k of these top ups a day with pretty much all of the most vulnerable who want it already done.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
I'm not sure Peter gets the whole idea of "monarchy": you know, where you don't get any say in who gets the job?
It's like those idiots who say they support the monarchy but want William to follow HMQ instead of Charles.
Nothing wrong with the idea of an elective monarchy. Sparta had one.
I’m assuming those elected rulers were drawn from a fairly limited pool and their selection would be based largely on their perceived martial ability? For us that would probably mean Harry or Andrew..
Actually we don't have a wholly hereditary monarchy, succession is controlled by Parliament, as the Act of Settlement and Edward VIII (who needed an Act of Parliament to abdicate) demonstrate.
We never have done, for all the claims of the Pilgrimage of Grace over Henry VIII's Act of Succession. Alfred, Aethelstan, Eadward, Harold, William Rufus, Stephen, Henry II, John, Henry IV, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII, James I and William of Orange were all selected despite the clearly superior claims of other candidates if strict primogeniture was enforced.
In the case of John, Henry IV, Edward IV and Richard III several convenient murders and/or wars greased the process somewhat, while in the case of William Rufus, Stephen, John, Henry VII and William of Orange civil war was the result. But you can't say it wasn't a thing.
We have a tendency to assume monarchy has been about smooth transitions, despite all evidence to the contrary. Youve not even listed the less successful attempts to alter things.
I think we get in our heads sometimes that monarchy has always meant something like Louis XIV, the arch typical grand, absolute monarch, or that divine right made people pause when opposing, for all time.
As far as I can see most of history no one had any compunction about removing a monarch if they could manage it, and father son succession was often not a thing. Heck, if your son was powerful and grown by the twilight of your reign odds were theyd have rebelled against you.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
It's unfortunate phrasing, but the government knows from experience that people will tend to blame other people, rather than the government, for Covid failures. Why change a winning formula.
That said, my wife and I went online on Friday evening and in five minutes had both arranged our boosters, which we will have at the same time and in the same place next Thursday (if I pass a covid test I am having on Wednesday). If our experience is anything to go by, there really is no reasonable excuse not to get it done.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because, somewhat disappointingly, what we have found is the vaccinations give fairly limited protection and that after 6-9 months you are once again more vulnerable to this disease. Not nearly as vulnerable as you would be without the vaccines, of course, but vulnerable enough to have a top up. And we are currently administering over 300k of these top ups a day with pretty much all of the most vulnerable who want it already done.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
If there is a 'struggle with the boosters', I suggest it's the system for getting them, rather than the desire of people to get them.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70....
You twit. We have already been here (a couple of days ago) where you flatteringly thought I was young and I corrected you.
I am 67 as you would know if you read my posts.
It's just I am not an angry bitter old man like you.
Why don't you just go and annoy someone else. Lets just agree to disagree. Pass by my comments, you will feel all the better for so doing..
Incidentally. I have every right to be cynical. David Cameron was someone I believed in and trusted and look how that turned out. Many people believed in Blair and were betrayed. Nirvana does not exist in politics. You will always end up being let down or betrayed. Labour inficted us with Brown who destroyed the economy thro.his incompeteence and arrogance. Look back in history Politics is littered with it.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
I am always cautious about such calls, as the idea that liberal democracy was effete and ineffective against the challenges of the modern state was core belief of Twentieth Century Totalitarianism.
That said, modern technology does open up the possibility of much more direct democracy, though we have a long way to go before we have a system that doesn't produce contradictory mandates.
The current government is riddled with cronyism, corruption and incompetence, but does have an 80 seat majority. Nonetheless it did a massive U turn midweek because of the outpouring of public outrage at the Leadsom Amendment. A sort of democracy, even if one without a formal public vote.
Authoritarian regimes, such as those found in Russia and China are thriving because they are rooted in a strong understanding of the human condition; and human nature more generally. They have almost completely outwitted western governments in the space of about 2 decades; and have also mastered the use of emergent technology as a way of consolidating their power. No doubt they would welcome direct democracy in the west.
This week has been a shameful episode by a few at the top of the party and it would not surprise me that many good and hard working conservatives are exasperated and angry
They have it in their own hands to take action, either to demand Boris listens to them, or take the necessary steps to replace him
Most PMs would give their eye teeth to still be ahead, even if only by 1%, midterm as Boris is.
Blair is the only recent PM who polled better than Boris is midterm
You cannot see the damage this has caused to the party and trot out every excuse that I am not convinced even you believe
If it was really causing damage to the party, Starmer Labour would be 10% ahead midterm, not 1% behind!
But it's relative innit? How far behind was Starmer a week ago?
The point I’d take from it is that, when every headline in the papers is slaughtering the Tories all week, they’re 1-3 points ahead and, when things are going well for them, they’re 8-10 points ahead.
Doesn’t anyone else see things in this way? I can’t get my head around the enthusiasm to treat every poll outside the context of the ebb and flow of an electoral cycle
It’s like a golfer hitting his first tee shot into the water and shooting a double bogey - it doesn’t mean he’s going to card 36 over par
People are in denial that Boris is still immensely popular, and labour are failing to make inroads in to this; even 2 years in to the current parliament. But there is still a long way to go to the next election.
I'd dispute, gently, the word 'immensely'; I agree he's still well regarded, but I do feel that some of the gloss is, if not actually coming off, wearing very thin. Of course those of us who never held him in high regard are having our opinion justified.
He is ahead in the polls; even in the middle of a world ending corruption scandal. The labour attack lines are rendered ineffective by the fact that the tories did an incomprehensible u-turn. It is very clumsy, bizarre, and defies all political norms, but it seems to work.
What a bizarre interpretation.
Nonetheless your underlying message is one of; the Party of Government are shafting the taxpayer, but all is OK, I think they are getting away with it.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Your political bias is showing again
I cannot understand why anyone would criticise the health secretary for urging people to get their booster which is a good health message
I am not criticising him saying "get boosters".
We need boosters!
I am observing that after months of conditioning in England, they will struggle to achieve it.
The PPE contract of PPE contracts surely is Uniserve.
A £243m turnover logistics company awarded a £473m transport contract without tender. Followed by a further £300m of contracts. Uniserve find themselves in the happy position of being asked to source and buy PPE which they do at inflated prices, and then transport it.Turns out the expensive PPE is useless. Gets stored. A very large number of shipping containers. Guess who gets the contract to store the Uniserve-procured and Uniserve-transported PPE that was expensive and unfit?
Thats right - Uniserve! £104m of storage fees in just 3 months this year! Remember that the VIP lane - which secured these contracts - was repeatedly denied to exist by Tory ministers.
And yet people suggest that there should be no enquiry and there is nothing to see here.
And by an astonishing coincidence a Tory MP in the cabinet Office has her constituency address the same as the Uniserve registered office.
If the PPE is not to the specification laid down when ordering it shouldn’t be paid for full stop.
If it was bought correctly to the standard requested then Uniserve are not at fault and heads should roll in the procurement team.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70....
You twit. We have already been here (a couple of days ago) where you flatteringly thought I was young and I corrected you.
I am 67 as you would know if you read my posts.
It's just I am not an angry bitter old man like you.
Why don't you just go and annoy someone else. Lets just agree to disagree. Pass by my comments, you will feel all the better for so doing..
Incidentally. I have every right to be cynical. David Cameron was someone I believed in and trusted and look how that turned out. Many people believed in Blair and were betrayed. Nirvana does not exist in politics. You will always end up being let down or betrayed. Labour inficted us with Brown who destroyed the economy thro.his incompeteence and arrogance. Look back in history Politics is littered with it.
Oh, and just to.prove how wrong you are about me, I believe that Boris needs to be got rid of and preferably asap.
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
They aren’t but then what does labour and it’s supporters offer them ? Not being the Tories is not enough.
Really? I'd have thought with the present incumbents it would be more than enough
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70....
You twit. We have already been here (a couple of days ago) where you flatteringly thought I was young and I corrected you.
I am 67 as you would know if you read my posts.
It's just I am not an angry bitter old man like you.
Why don't you just go and annoy someone else. Lets just agree to disagree. Pass by my comments, you will feel all the better for so doing..
Nope I will continue calling out your grumpiness as have others because you add nothing positive to the site. There is no humour, no debate, nothing positive. And no I won't feel better by doing so because I'm still a bundle of joy at 67. I think you are confusing who the grumpy person is here.
This week has been a shameful episode by a few at the top of the party and it would not surprise me that many good and hard working conservatives are exasperated and angry
They have it in their own hands to take action, either to demand Boris listens to them, or take the necessary steps to replace him
Most PMs would give their eye teeth to still be ahead, even if only by 1%, midterm as Boris is.
Blair is the only recent PM who polled better than Boris is midterm
You cannot see the damage this has caused to the party and trot out every excuse that I am not convinced even you believe
If it was really causing damage to the party, Starmer Labour would be 10% ahead midterm, not 1% behind!
But it's relative innit? How far behind was Starmer a week ago?
The point I’d take from it is that, when every headline in the papers is slaughtering the Tories all week, they’re 1-3 points ahead and, when things are going well for them, they’re 8-10 points ahead.
Doesn’t anyone else see things in this way? I can’t get my head around the enthusiasm to treat every poll outside the context of the ebb and flow of an electoral cycle
It’s like a golfer hitting his first tee shot into the water and shooting a double bogey - it doesn’t mean he’s going to card 36 over par
I agree with you that the underlying position is that the Tories are 4-5 points ahead in an average week, and have been for ages. But I think the concept of "mid-term" with its sibling "swingback" is dated here. The real position is that there's 35% who will vote Tory no matter what, and 5-10% who will consider it on a good day. There's 30% who vote Labour no matter what (remember that Corbyn got over 32% even in 2019), but there's also 15% or so who lean LD or Green, and most of them - especially the Greens - are implacably hostile to the Tories and can't wait to screw them. I don't see where the swingback for the Tories will come from, and there is plenty of evidence that a proportion of voters are tactically-minded in marginals. "Hooray, we're 1% ahead and that's even before swingback" is complacency, and that rarely ends well.
That implies you think REFUK will poll around 5% at the next GE, which I think is implausible. They’ll be lucky to get 2%
The Mail is crawling with people saying both that they will vote REFUK, and encouraging others to do the same, too. I noticed the same about UKIP in around 2012, just before their big surge.
They have the advantage that their name and immediate branding seems to address exactly the current issues, unlike any of the other parties.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because, somewhat disappointingly, what we have found is the vaccinations give fairly limited protection and that after 6-9 months you are once again more vulnerable to this disease. Not nearly as vulnerable as you would be without the vaccines, of course, but vulnerable enough to have a top up. And we are currently administering over 300k of these top ups a day with pretty much all of the most vulnerable who want it already done.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
I agree with you. But I think the "get your booster" campaign has been rather weak; the well-informed are getting them, but not so much the ill-informed. It's so important that it should be everywhere, and the PM and Javid should be using press conferences or hijacking the media or whatever to get the message out to the over 50s: a booster could save your life, or whatever. It all feels a bit half-hearted, as if the government has other things on its mind at the moment. But boosters should be number one priority.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because, somewhat disappointingly, what we have found is the vaccinations give fairly limited protection and that after 6-9 months you are once again more vulnerable to this disease. Not nearly as vulnerable as you would be without the vaccines, of course, but vulnerable enough to have a top up. And we are currently administering over 300k of these top ups a day with pretty much all of the most vulnerable who want it already done.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
If there is a 'struggle with the boosters', I suggest it's the system for getting them, rather than the desire of people to get them.
It certainly took us some time to gear up again after the falling away of the infrastructure built up for the initial vaccinations but it seems to be going pretty well now. I think that the 13% not vaccinated are a much greater concern.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
This week has been a shameful episode by a few at the top of the party and it would not surprise me that many good and hard working conservatives are exasperated and angry
They have it in their own hands to take action, either to demand Boris listens to them, or take the necessary steps to replace him
Most PMs would give their eye teeth to still be ahead, even if only by 1%, midterm as Boris is.
Blair is the only recent PM who polled better than Boris is midterm
You cannot see the damage this has caused to the party and trot out every excuse that I am not convinced even you believe
If it was really causing damage to the party, Starmer Labour would be 10% ahead midterm, not 1% behind!
But it's relative innit? How far behind was Starmer a week ago?
The point I’d take from it is that, when every headline in the papers is slaughtering the Tories all week, they’re 1-3 points ahead and, when things are going well for them, they’re 8-10 points ahead.
Doesn’t anyone else see things in this way? I can’t get my head around the enthusiasm to treat every poll outside the context of the ebb and flow of an electoral cycle
It’s like a golfer hitting his first tee shot into the water and shooting a double bogey - it doesn’t mean he’s going to card 36 over par
I agree with you that the underlying position is that the Tories are 4-5 points ahead in an average week, and have been for ages. But I think the concept of "mid-term" with its sibling "swingback" is dated here. The real position is that there's 35% who will vote Tory no matter what, and 5-10% who will consider it on a good day. There's 30% who vote Labour no matter what (remember that Corbyn got over 32% even in 2019), but there's also 15% or so who lean LD or Green, and most of them - especially the Greens - are implacably hostile to the Tories and can't wait to screw them. I don't see where the swingback for the Tories will come from, and there is plenty of evidence that a proportion of voters are tactically-minded in marginals. "Hooray, we're 1% ahead and that's even before swingback" is complacency, and that rarely ends well.
That implies you think REFUK will poll around 5% at the next GE, which I think is implausible. They’ll be lucky to get 2%
The Mail is crawling with people saying both that they will vote REFUK, and encouraging others to do so, too. I noticed exactly the same about UKIP in around 2012, just before their big surge.
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
They aren’t but then what does labour and it’s supporters offer them ? Not being the Tories is not enough.
Indeed. Note that I am not saying this is gift week for Labour. I expect that a Sunak-led government will win the next election.
At that election I expect turnout to be low. Red wallers stopped voting Labour for a reason. Many of them just won't vote at all next time, because not voting is easy, and its not as if any of the options are actually good for them.
Just on topic, it is stating the obvious and I am sure the comment has been made downstream, but both parties come out of that looking badly. It is no surprise the views about BJ / the Conservatives have become more critical but look at the perceptions about Starmer / Labour. The number who think Labour are clean and honest have gone down by 6. Labour may be getting caught in the blast but one thing is clear is that people do not see Starmer / Labour as a credible Government.
I see the bbc website have trotted out another picture of a person very alarmed with hand on head looking at a hard copy bill when discussing a price rise or benefit cut etc . This is soooo last century , who gets their bills in the post anyway now (or at least does not know then from some form of electronic communication before they do?)
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because, somewhat disappointingly, what we have found is the vaccinations give fairly limited protection and that after 6-9 months you are once again more vulnerable to this disease. Not nearly as vulnerable as you would be without the vaccines, of course, but vulnerable enough to have a top up. And we are currently administering over 300k of these top ups a day with pretty much all of the most vulnerable who want it already done.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
If there is a 'struggle with the boosters', I suggest it's the system for getting them, rather than the desire of people to get them.
Lets hope so. It depends on where the tipping point is for restrictions over Christmas. If we have triple jabbed the most vulnerable and thats enough we'll be ok. Its the not vulnerable we will struggle with.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because, somewhat disappointingly, what we have found is the vaccinations give fairly limited protection and that after 6-9 months you are once again more vulnerable to this disease. Not nearly as vulnerable as you would be without the vaccines, of course, but vulnerable enough to have a top up. And we are currently administering over 300k of these top ups a day with pretty much all of the most vulnerable who want it already done.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
I agree with you. But I think the "get your booster" campaign has been rather weak; the well-informed are getting them, but not so much the ill-informed. It's so important that it should be everywhere, and the PM and Javid should be using press conferences or hijacking the media or whatever to get the message out to the over 50s: a booster could save your life, or whatever. It all feels a bit half-hearted, as if the government has other things on its mind at the moment. But boosters should be number one priority.
It is being promoted at this moment on Marr in his interview with Dr Susan Hopkins
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
If the universe is infinite (as many scientists dont discount) then there will be that teapot between Earth and Mars (or at least planets that are exactly like Earth and Mars )
That doesn't follow. Because there are infinite things doesn't mean that a particular thing is among them.
There are an infinite number of even numbers. Not one of them is odd.
but surely odd numbers cannot be in a set of even numbers by definition. A teapot though (or its atomic makeup) is in the universe so must happen in a infinite universe where all possible arrangement of atoms will happen?
The universe may be infinite but all possible arrangements don't necessarily happen.
Only if they cannot happen (like odd numbers being even numbers) but if they can then they will
The universe probably isn’t infinite - and the observable universe certainly isn’t.
This week has been a shameful episode by a few at the top of the party and it would not surprise me that many good and hard working conservatives are exasperated and angry
They have it in their own hands to take action, either to demand Boris listens to them, or take the necessary steps to replace him
Most PMs would give their eye teeth to still be ahead, even if only by 1%, midterm as Boris is.
Blair is the only recent PM who polled better than Boris is midterm
You cannot see the damage this has caused to the party and trot out every excuse that I am not convinced even you believe
If it was really causing damage to the party, Starmer Labour would be 10% ahead midterm, not 1% behind!
But it's relative innit? How far behind was Starmer a week ago?
The point I’d take from it is that, when every headline in the papers is slaughtering the Tories all week, they’re 1-3 points ahead and, when things are going well for them, they’re 8-10 points ahead.
Doesn’t anyone else see things in this way? I can’t get my head around the enthusiasm to treat every poll outside the context of the ebb and flow of an electoral cycle
It’s like a golfer hitting his first tee shot into the water and shooting a double bogey - it doesn’t mean he’s going to card 36 over par
I agree with you that the underlying position is that the Tories are 4-5 points ahead in an average week, and have been for ages. But I think the concept of "mid-term" with its sibling "swingback" is dated here. The real position is that there's 35% who will vote Tory no matter what, and 5-10% who will consider it on a good day. There's 30% who vote Labour no matter what (remember that Corbyn got over 32% even in 2019), but there's also 15% or so who lean LD or Green, and most of them - especially the Greens - are implacably hostile to the Tories and can't wait to screw them. I don't see where the swingback for the Tories will come from, and there is plenty of evidence that a proportion of voters are tactically-minded in marginals. "Hooray, we're 1% ahead and that's even before swingback" is complacency, and that rarely ends well.
That implies you think REFUK will poll around 5% at the next GE, which I think is implausible. They’ll be lucky to get 2%
The Mail is crawling with people saying both that they will vote REFUK, and encouraging others to do so, too. I noticed exactly the same about UKIP in around 2012, just before their big surge.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
I answered them the other day. I've thought England was stupid in dropping all restrictions (with almost every other country not doing and having lower pox rates). But they won't implement plan B until they are forced to. The NHS and scientists are clear that unless things change they will have to, lets hope things change.
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70...... and I just look at politcs from a different angle to you. Bevaise I dont go with the general view and join in with all the filthy and nasty comments on here i am accused of posting bile. That's bollocks.
Not everyone becomes cynical with age, indeed many become more idealistic. Cynicism is very corrosive to the soul and should be fought against. The world does not have to be corrupt.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
If the universe is infinite (as many scientists dont discount) then there will be that teapot between Earth and Mars (or at least planets that are exactly like Earth and Mars )
That doesn't follow. Because there are infinite things doesn't mean that a particular thing is among them.
There are an infinite number of even numbers. Not one of them is odd.
but surely odd numbers cannot be in a set of even numbers by definition. A teapot though (or its atomic makeup) is in the universe so must happen in a infinite universe where all possible arrangement of atoms will happen?
The universe may be infinite but all possible arrangements don't necessarily happen.
Only if they cannot happen (like odd numbers being even numbers) but if they can then they will
The universe probably isn’t infinite - and the observable universe certainly isn’t.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70....
You twit. We have already been here (a couple of days ago) where you flatteringly thought I was young and I corrected you.
I am 67 as you would know if you read my posts.
It's just I am not an angry bitter old man like you.
Why don't you just go and annoy someone else. Lets just agree to disagree. Pass by my comments, you will feel all the better for so doing..
Incidentally. I have every right to be cynical. David Cameron was someone I believed in and trusted and look how that turned out. Many people believed in Blair and were betrayed. Nirvana does not exist in politics. You will always end up being let down or betrayed. Labour inficted us with Brown who destroyed the economy thro.his incompeteence and arrogance. Look back in history Politics is littered with it.
Quite honestly, Mr 2, at your age..... and you were around 60, I would think when Cameron began his rise to power ..... you should have known far better than to believe in and trust anyone in politics. I don't think I've 'believed in and trusted' wholeheartedly anyone in politics for many.years. And I've spent many an evening door-knocking on behalf of politicians.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
I answered them the other day. I've thought England was stupid in dropping all restrictions (with almost every other country not doing and having lower pox rates). But they won't implement plan B until they are forced to. The NHS and scientists are clear that unless things change they will have to, lets hope things change.
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
Mr. Boy, are black people (in London, for example) disproportionately likely to carry knives?
That sort of information is vital to providing context for any accusations of racism.
No no no, remember that it’s now only outcomes that are important - so it’s irrelevant whether young black men are more likely to be drug dealers or knife carriers, and it’s racist for the police to not spend equal time searching old white women when looking for drugs and weapons.
More seriously, accusations that police are racist have been a problem for decades, and sadly a whole bunch of genuine issues have been identified. Problems in London are definitely not going away, until there’s a wholesale clearout of the top ranks at the Met.
Policing needs to be by consent, and this applies strongly to stop and search. Nobody is suggesting that stop and search should be 'equal opportunities'; obviously the police are most likely to stop young people, especially those out and about on the streets.
If young black men are roughly 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white equivalents, there would have to be good reason for it. And it is up to the police to demonstrate that good reason through providing data that shows not just who was stopped, but if anything was found. Their reluctance to provide such data is disappointing. Personally, I suspect socio-economic status is in there as well as race, but that data is harder to collect.
So to return to policing by consent. If young black men feel they are being picked on by the police, which they do, that leads to distrust. And such distrust was a key catalyst for the inner-city riots of the 1980s. For the police to be trusted, they have to be open and transparent with the evidence behind their decisions. But they aren't.
Agreed, policing has to be by consent, and in many areas there is distrust of the police.
My guess as to the data, is that it’s incomplete as you suggest (for example, by collating data on race, but not socio-economic class nor precise location), and as such could be easily be manipulated by people wishing to advance a narrative of the police being racist.
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
They aren’t but then what does labour and it’s supporters offer them ? Not being the Tories is not enough.
Indeed. Note that I am not saying this is gift week for Labour. I expect that a Sunak-led government will win the next election.
At that election I expect turnout to be low. Red wallers stopped voting Labour for a reason. Many of them just won't vote at all next time, because not voting is easy, and its not as if any of the options are actually good for them.
Indeed and I expect that to happen too, it is interesting that in the numbers labour and SKS have also seen a decline in their polling numbers on the same issue.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
You don’t *know* any of those statements in your penultimate paragraph. You *believe* them.
Faith and science can co-exist very happily
Science explains the known, and can make educated guesses at both the known unknown and, sometimes, the unknown unknown.
Faith is an explanation for the known unknown.
Fundamentally science explains “the how” and faith “the why”
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
I answered them the other day. I've thought England was stupid in dropping all restrictions (with almost every other country not doing and having lower pox rates). But they won't implement plan B until they are forced to. The NHS and scientists are clear that unless things change they will have to, lets hope things change.
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
With all the indicators showing reducing cases and the likelihood we are near herd immunity it does appear that Boris and HMG will be proven correct in their decisions on this including resisisting the siren calls for plans b or c
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because, somewhat disappointingly, what we have found is the vaccinations give fairly limited protection and that after 6-9 months you are once again more vulnerable to this disease. Not nearly as vulnerable as you would be without the vaccines, of course, but vulnerable enough to have a top up. And we are currently administering over 300k of these top ups a day with pretty much all of the most vulnerable who want it already done.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
I agree with you. But I think the "get your booster" campaign has been rather weak; the well-informed are getting them, but not so much the ill-informed. It's so important that it should be everywhere, and the PM and Javid should be using press conferences or hijacking the media or whatever to get the message out to the over 50s: a booster could save your life, or whatever. It all feels a bit half-hearted, as if the government has other things on its mind at the moment. But boosters should be number one priority.
As I have said, I think the near 13% who are not vaccinated at all should be a much greater concern. I am disappointed that we have not taken that more seriously by developing vaccine passports and positive campaigns like that one in France. Our oldies are making appointments and turning up in large numbers.
I am also concerned about the ethics of boosters. The developed world has used its wealth to appropriate almost all of the available vaccines. That was questionable enough but is it really right that the marginal improvements of a third dose for rich westerners should have been given priority over a first dose for billions in the developing world? When is it going to be their turn?
Even putting the ethics aside I fear that allowing this wretched virus to run rampant in less developed parts of the world is the greatest risk factor for us because it allows further and potentially more dangerous variants to develop. There are echoes of the global warming debate in this. The days when we could focus on what we do and ignore what others do are long past.
Mr. Jonathan, almost all of that is caused by a mostly inept media. We've seen this with lack of understanding over debt and deficit, and the innumerate nonsense of the 'gender pay gap' (people doing different jobs earn different wages - gasp!).
More talented people will come with politicians are less under the microscope by a sensationalist, short-term media that just wants to try and claim scalps.
A more objective approach by broadcast media would be very welcome. Rather saddens me I had to stop watching ITV News because both anchor (Tom Bradby) and political editor (Peston) think their opinions are what people tune in for.
Actually it is you who seems to have misunderstood the gender pay gap.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70...... and I just look at politcs from a different angle to you. Bevaise I dont go with the general view and join in with all the filthy and nasty comments on here i am accused of posting bile. That's bollocks.
Not everyone becomes cynical with age, indeed many become more idealistic. Cynicism is very corrosive to the soul and should be fought against. The world does not have to be corrupt.
Is that though at a certain age (with guaranteed income from a pension ) and responsibilites for others reduced (children grown up) you can be more idealistic again . Being cynical can protect you when you have responsibility and need . The young and the old can be idealistic , the middle less so
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
I answered them the other day. I've thought England was stupid in dropping all restrictions (with almost every other country not doing and having lower pox rates). But they won't implement plan B until they are forced to. The NHS and scientists are clear that unless things change they will have to, lets hope things change.
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
Okay, we are now getting somewhere, thank you.
What restrictions would you impose now?
None. I would roll the clock back to the spring and not drop the requirement for masks.
What you choose to do in England is no longer my concern. But don't say "who saw this coming" when the NHS collapses over the winter as the NHS say its in severe danger of doing.
I would ask what restrictions you would impose but I know the answer is none. Its as if you think the scientists and the people who run the NHS are being "hysterical" in saying how screwed you all are.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
You don’t *know* any of those statements in your penultimate paragraph. You *believe* them.
Faith and science can co-exist very happily …
That is obviously true given the empirical evidence of numerous effective scientists with religious beliefs. Dawkins denies it, though, which is why he’s a flawed scientist and philosopher.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
Or s/he's away in his shed knocking up the next universe, and left his teapot behind by mistake?
Given the nature of so many origin myths “knocking up” could be misinterpreted!!
This week has been a shameful episode by a few at the top of the party and it would not surprise me that many good and hard working conservatives are exasperated and angry
They have it in their own hands to take action, either to demand Boris listens to them, or take the necessary steps to replace him
Most PMs would give their eye teeth to still be ahead, even if only by 1%, midterm as Boris is.
Blair is the only recent PM who polled better than Boris is midterm
You cannot see the damage this has caused to the party and trot out every excuse that I am not convinced even you believe
If it was really causing damage to the party, Starmer Labour would be 10% ahead midterm, not 1% behind!
But it's relative innit? How far behind was Starmer a week ago?
The point I’d take from it is that, when every headline in the papers is slaughtering the Tories all week, they’re 1-3 points ahead and, when things are going well for them, they’re 8-10 points ahead.
Doesn’t anyone else see things in this way? I can’t get my head around the enthusiasm to treat every poll outside the context of the ebb and flow of an electoral cycle
It’s like a golfer hitting his first tee shot into the water and shooting a double bogey - it doesn’t mean he’s going to card 36 over par
I agree with you that the underlying position is that the Tories are 4-5 points ahead in an average week, and have been for ages. But I think the concept of "mid-term" with its sibling "swingback" is dated here. The real position is that there's 35% who will vote Tory no matter what, and 5-10% who will consider it on a good day. There's 30% who vote Labour no matter what (remember that Corbyn got over 32% even in 2019), but there's also 15% or so who lean LD or Green, and most of them - especially the Greens - are implacably hostile to the Tories and can't wait to screw them. I don't see where the swingback for the Tories will come from, and there is plenty of evidence that a proportion of voters are tactically-minded in marginals. "Hooray, we're 1% ahead and that's even before swingback" is complacency, and that rarely ends well.
That implies you think REFUK will poll around 5% at the next GE, which I think is implausible. They’ll be lucky to get 2%
The Mail is crawling with people saying both that they will vote REFUK, and encouraging others to do the same, too. I noticed the same about UKIP in around 2012, just before their big surge.
They have the advantage that their name and immediate branding seems to address exactly the current issues, unlike any of the other parties.
Can’t see it myself. UKIP 2012 had an identifiable goal, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, to aim for, and a charismatic, once in a lifetime leader. They were also up against three parties who all believed in the same thing, so looked like the rebels. REFUK don’t have any of that in their favour at the moment, only if there is another lockdown might they be able to have something tangible to attack
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70....
You twit. We have already been here (a couple of days ago) where you flatteringly thought I was young and I corrected you.
I am 67 as you would know if you read my posts.
It's just I am not an angry bitter old man like you.
Why don't you just go and annoy someone else. Lets just agree to disagree. Pass by my comments, you will feel all the better for so doing..
Incidentally. I have every right to be cynical. David Cameron was someone I believed in and trusted and look how that turned out. Many people believed in Blair and were betrayed. Nirvana does not exist in politics. You will always end up being let down or betrayed. Labour inficted us with Brown who destroyed the economy thro.his incompeteence and arrogance. Look back in history Politics is littered with it.
Quite honestly, Mr 2, at your age..... and you were around 60, I would think when Cameron began his rise to power ..... you should have known far better than to believe in and trust anyone in politics. I don't think I've 'believed in and trusted' wholeheartedly anyone in politics for many.years. And I've spent many an evening door-knocking on behalf of politicians.
I was but a tender 18 year old when I cast my first vote, in 2010, for the LibDem candidate in a (then) safe Labour seat... I agreed with Nick...
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70...... and I just look at politcs from a different angle to you. Bevaise I dont go with the general view and join in with all the filthy and nasty comments on here i am accused of posting bile. That's bollocks.
Not everyone becomes cynical with age, indeed many become more idealistic. Cynicism is very corrosive to the soul and should be fought against. The world does not have to be corrupt.
The best people get more radical as they get older. The more injustice you see, the more necessary change becomes.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
You don’t *know* any of those statements in your penultimate paragraph. You *believe* them.
Faith and science can co-exist very happily
Science explains the known, and can make educated guesses at both the known unknown and, sometimes, the unknown unknown.
Faith is an explanation for the known unknown.
Fundamentally science explains “the how” and faith “the why”
Faith doesn't explain "the why". Faith is stuff we make up to satisfy our desire for there to be a "why" given our stubborn inability to accept that there isn't one.
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
They aren’t but then what does labour and it’s supporters offer them ? Not being the Tories is not enough.
Indeed. Note that I am not saying this is gift week for Labour. I expect that a Sunak-led government will win the next election.
At that election I expect turnout to be low. Red wallers stopped voting Labour for a reason. Many of them just won't vote at all next time, because not voting is easy, and its not as if any of the options are actually good for them.
Indeed and I expect that to happen too, it is interesting that in the numbers labour and SKS have also seen a decline in their polling numbers on the same issue.
The problem that HYUFD won't face up to is that abstaining is a perfectly valid option for many voters. Voter numbers surge up and down, and all it takes for the Tories to lose scores of seats is for the vote tally to drop back to David Cameron 2015 levels.
This is why corruptiongate is a problem. Most punters dislike having their money stolen. Many will refuse to vote for the party doing so, even if they decide there aren't better options. Which will let in Labour / LibDem / SNP candidates even if their own vote doesn't increase much.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
You don’t *know* any of those statements in your penultimate paragraph. You *believe* them.
Faith and science can co-exist very happily
Science explains the known, and can make educated guesses at both the known unknown and, sometimes, the unknown unknown.
Faith is an explanation for the known unknown.
Fundamentally science explains “the how” and faith “the why”
There is much in religion that is demonstrably wrong, Your thoughts on faith do not really deal with that.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
Yes, the belief in an all-good god is as logically incoherent as a belief in an all-bad one.
Or, in the unlikely starting premise, the human constructs of 'good' and 'bad' probably don't have much meaning or relevance.
Like the ants in your garden someone mentioned above - your various activities in the garden might help, hinder or kill the ants as you go about your entirely unrelated business, and if the ants had the intelligence they might think you were being 'good' when you add food to the compost heap and 'bad' when you kill a few as you walk down the path. But you're not going to be aware, let alone bothered.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
I answered them the other day. I've thought England was stupid in dropping all restrictions (with almost every other country not doing and having lower pox rates). But they won't implement plan B until they are forced to. The NHS and scientists are clear that unless things change they will have to, lets hope things change.
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
Okay, we are now getting somewhere, thank you.
What restrictions would you impose now?
None. I would roll the clock back to the spring and not drop the requirement for masks.
What you choose to do in England is no longer my concern. But don't say "who saw this coming" when the NHS collapses over the winter as the NHS say its in severe danger of doing.
I would ask what restrictions you would impose but I know the answer is none. Its as if you think the scientists and the people who run the NHS are being "hysterical" in saying how screwed you all are.
Right, let me clarify your response.
You would mandate mask wearing in England now. Okay. You would introduce a law that makes it illegal to visit pubs, bars, theatres, clubs and shops without a mask. That’s a very significant imposition.
Would you then also mandate vaccination in England from today?
The flood gates are opening kids, as every pol journo who has been sitting on a sleaze story heads up to their editor's desk...
Jim Pickard @PickardJE · 32m - wealthy benefactors seem guaranteed peerage if they take on temporary role as Tory party treasurer & increase their donations beyond £3m
- in past 20 years all 16 of the party’s main treasurers (apart from most recent) have been offered seat in Lords
If that is true Boris must not be involved then
Not everything bad is his fault. That doesnt make things better, in fact it's worse as it means problems go deeper.
Can't expect the plebs to understand how the real world works - of course wealthy benefactors should be entitled to peerages. What else are peerages for?
I dont think anyone would be shocked people can still effectively buy peerages. But that the treasurers all get one is taking the piss a bit, to suggest all deserved one for other reasons
If you are going to have then concept of working peers appointed by the political parties why are people surprised that senior party figures get them?
The Treasurer’s role is more about leaning on your friends than giving yourself though
Knew you'd come along to defend this concept.
I’m not particularly defending it.
But you can’t make the direct link to the payment, unlike Blair
When its happened 16 times in a row that's pretty compelling as circumstantial evidence goes though.
If it's not a direct link then it's the most remarkable coincidence.
There’s a direct link between being Treasurer/party chief executive and getting a peerage.
Treasurers tend to be wealthy individuals who have given a lot of money over time
But you can’t prove the link that “give a lot of money” = “get a peerage”
Oh please. If in practice it is clear 'be our treasurer and you are guaranteed a peerage, and you can be treasurer by giving us 3 million' and it's clear as day.
I did say it is still circumstantial, but when it's that strong that can be enough - you dont need to see brown envelopes changing hands in every case. Your very narrow approach means any kind of step by step approach to buying influence is not a thing, that it must be exchange X for y, as if middlemen were not a thing.
I largely agree with you - my contention is with @Gallowgate
It is circumstantial evidence, not “proof”. And “corruption” is a very big word to use without proof.
But it’s a consequence of Blair’s cackhanded reform of the Lords
Just on topic, it is stating the obvious and I am sure the comment has been made downstream, but both parties come out of that looking badly. It is no surprise the views about BJ / the Conservatives have become more critical but look at the perceptions about Starmer / Labour. The number who think Labour are clean and honest have gone down by 6. Labour may be getting caught in the blast but one thing is clear is that people do not see Starmer / Labour as a credible Government.
It seems that the so called Spartans in the conservative party who drove Brexit and include JRM and Paterson are under threat from the red wall intake who are furious about last weeks debacle and are organising themselves to take on the increasingly unpopular hard line Brexiteers
Interesting and I wish them well
Supposedly, being told by the whips that you either vote to support corruption / the PM or you lose your towns fund money did not go down well. As in extremely badly. It is gift week for opposition campaigners in the red wall - the government threatened to pull your cash if your MP didn't help cover up corruption.
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
They aren’t but then what does labour and it’s supporters offer them ? Not being the Tories is not enough.
Indeed. Note that I am not saying this is gift week for Labour. I expect that a Sunak-led government will win the next election.
At that election I expect turnout to be low. Red wallers stopped voting Labour for a reason. Many of them just won't vote at all next time, because not voting is easy, and its not as if any of the options are actually good for them.
Indeed and I expect that to happen too, it is interesting that in the numbers labour and SKS have also seen a decline in their polling numbers on the same issue.
The problem that HYUFD won't face up to is that abstaining is a perfectly valid option for many voters. Voter numbers surge up and down, and all it takes for the Tories to lose scores of seats is for the vote tally to drop back to David Cameron 2015 levels.
This is why corruptiongate is a problem. Most punters dislike having their money stolen. Many will refuse to vote for the party doing so, even if they decide there aren't better options. Which will let in Labour / LibDem / SNP candidates even if their own vote doesn't increase much.
Exactly and this seems to be the case. Mike made the point earlier in the week in one of the polls of the Tories 2019 vote only a small portion had gone to labour. A far greater portion was ‘don’t know’
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
You don’t *know* any of those statements in your penultimate paragraph. You *believe* them.
Faith and science can co-exist very happily
Science explains the known, and can make educated guesses at both the known unknown and, sometimes, the unknown unknown.
Faith is an explanation for the known unknown.
Fundamentally science explains “the how” and faith “the why”
Nonsense can co-exist very happily with almost anything, except for straight thinking.
Faith cannot "explain" anything, since by definition its simply an unsupported belief.
If I decide to believe that thunder is the sound of Thor's hammer, I haven't explained thunderstorms, at all. I have simply made up an explanation (or copied someone else's) in the absence of a genuine one.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
I answered them the other day. I've thought England was stupid in dropping all restrictions (with almost every other country not doing and having lower pox rates). But they won't implement plan B until they are forced to. The NHS and scientists are clear that unless things change they will have to, lets hope things change.
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
With all the indicators showing reducing cases and the likelihood we are near herd immunity it does appear that Boris and HMG will be proven correct in their decisions on this including resisisting the siren calls for plans b or c
I hope you are correct. We have seen variances in the daily numbers before and then another spike. That Javid is now pushing a concerted effort to get people to have a booster "or else you lose Christmas" shows how serious the problem is.
Already we have the NHS barely able to process anything non-Covid. Some hospitals have already run out of space, people waiting in some cases for days for a bed on a ward. Make the weather colder and wetter and the problems really kick in. Hence "get jabbed again or no Christmas".
The PPE contract of PPE contracts surely is Uniserve.
A £243m turnover logistics company awarded a £473m transport contract without tender. Followed by a further £300m of contracts. Uniserve find themselves in the happy position of being asked to source and buy PPE which they do at inflated prices, and then transport it.Turns out the expensive PPE is useless. Gets stored. A very large number of shipping containers. Guess who gets the contract to store the Uniserve-procured and Uniserve-transported PPE that was expensive and unfit?
Thats right - Uniserve! £104m of storage fees in just 3 months this year! Remember that the VIP lane - which secured these contracts - was repeatedly denied to exist by Tory ministers.
And yet people suggest that there should be no enquiry and there is nothing to see here.
And by an astonishing coincidence a Tory MP in the cabinet Office has her constituency address the same as the Uniserve registered office.
If the PPE is not to the specification laid down when ordering it shouldn’t be paid for full stop.
If it was bought correctly to the standard requested then Uniserve are not at fault and heads should roll in the procurement team.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think the public will give the government an awful lot of leeway on PPE procurement at the start of the pandemic.
It’s not difficult to imagine a cabinet meeting where SoS Health says “Does anyone know anyone who knows anyone who can get hold of this stuff, because thousands of people will die without it?” Remember that we ended up with, among others, Burberry making clinical gowns and the Mercedes F1 engine factory making CPAP machines.
That doesn’t hold for later procurement problems though, where more scrutiny definitely needs to be applied. Anyone who was clearly out to defraud taxpayers needs to be held accountable.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
You don’t *know* any of those statements in your penultimate paragraph. You *believe* them.
Faith and science can co-exist very happily
Science explains the known, and can make educated guesses at both the known unknown and, sometimes, the unknown unknown.
Faith is an explanation for the known unknown.
Fundamentally science explains “the how” and faith “the why”
Knowledge is true justified belief. The "belief" part is clear. The "true" bit is obviously the case too, since every statement of verifiable truth in all these religions' cosmogonies is demonstrably false. The "justified" is also the case, because the systems we have for assessing the credibility of statements, whether academic or common sense, all work heavily against the supernatural. Something we can't test experimentally, that offers no explanatory power to any phenomenon we see around us violates the teapot principle, Occam's razor, the philosophy of science, everything.
True justified belief = knowledge. You believe there is a God, but I know there isn't. I believe Rome is the capital of France, you know it's Paris. Etc.
I'm not normally absolute about things that are a matter of opinion, but this stuff isn't. It's testable. The idea of gods brings nothing to the table, and all the things that in the past they have brought to the table have been shown to be false. Lightning is not the sparks of Thor's hammer, and you KNOW that to be the case.
The flood gates are opening kids, as every pol journo who has been sitting on a sleaze story heads up to their editor's desk...
Jim Pickard @PickardJE · 32m - wealthy benefactors seem guaranteed peerage if they take on temporary role as Tory party treasurer & increase their donations beyond £3m
- in past 20 years all 16 of the party’s main treasurers (apart from most recent) have been offered seat in Lords
If that is true Boris must not be involved then
No one is bothered by the sale of peerages, which is ancient tradition in British politics.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
If the universe is infinite (as many scientists dont discount) then there will be that teapot between Earth and Mars (or at least planets that are exactly like Earth and Mars )
That doesn't follow. Because there are infinite things doesn't mean that a particular thing is among them.
There are an infinite number of even numbers. Not one of them is odd.
Give that there is a Tesla Roadster in bobit between Earth an Mars, the probability of a teapot joining it must be much larger than it was. Indeed, do we know Elon Musk didn’t put one in its boot?
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70...... and I just look at politcs from a different angle to you. Bevaise I dont go with the general view and join in with all the filthy and nasty comments on here i am accused of posting bile. That's bollocks.
Not everyone becomes cynical with age, indeed many become more idealistic. Cynicism is very corrosive to the soul and should be fought against. The world does not have to be corrupt.
The best people get more radical as they get older. The more injustice you see, the more necessary change becomes.
When I was young I think I was quite naive and my naivety was reflected chiefly in a belief that all people were fundamentally good. I have now realised that many people are damaged and warped and harbour a deep selfishness and hatred towards other people that is deeply harmful. I think I have become more strong minded about fighting those forces in our society and world as I have become older though. So I don't think I have lost my idealism but perhaps it has become tempered by more realism about what people are actually like.
The Lords is just a state benefit for old party suck ups. Abolish it.
House of Lords = House of UNELECTED HAS-BEENS!
The has-beens aren't the main problem. Has-beens will have some useful insights from the time that they were are-nows.
It's the (electoral-politically) never-wases who chucked a pile of cash at a political party and subsequently gained a seat in the legislature form which they can never be removed.
I'm sure it's always happened, but it's not right, is it?
It's not right, but Labour didn't finish the job of reform, and the Tories ofcourse wouldn't be interested. Fewer donations and a stronger upper chamber aren't a particularly appealing combination.
And the donations thing is fundamental.
I get the arguments against taxpayer funding. But if we, as a public, aren't prepared to pay for politics, someone else will. And we can't be too shocked if the mega rich, the tawdry and the nutty buy up the system and define the options for the rest of us.
What planet do you live on , these parasites cost us a fortune every day. They have money shovelled at them. With all the perks it will not be far shot of 400K. They employ their families , live high on the hog on expenses , even claiming fortunes for paper clips, milk teabags ,porn , etc , also gold plated pensions, big payoffs when they are caught with fingers in the till, and on and on. So you think that something that would get you jailed in any other business is perfectly acceptabl, how very Tory.
This week has been a shameful episode by a few at the top of the party and it would not surprise me that many good and hard working conservatives are exasperated and angry
They have it in their own hands to take action, either to demand Boris listens to them, or take the necessary steps to replace him
Most PMs would give their eye teeth to still be ahead, even if only by 1%, midterm as Boris is.
Blair is the only recent PM who polled better than Boris is midterm
You cannot see the damage this has caused to the party and trot out every excuse that I am not convinced even you believe
If it was really causing damage to the party, Starmer Labour would be 10% ahead midterm, not 1% behind!
But it's relative innit? How far behind was Starmer a week ago?
The point I’d take from it is that, when every headline in the papers is slaughtering the Tories all week, they’re 1-3 points ahead and, when things are going well for them, they’re 8-10 points ahead.
Doesn’t anyone else see things in this way? I can’t get my head around the enthusiasm to treat every poll outside the context of the ebb and flow of an electoral cycle
It’s like a golfer hitting his first tee shot into the water and shooting a double bogey - it doesn’t mean he’s going to card 36 over par
I agree with you that the underlying position is that the Tories are 4-5 points ahead in an average week, and have been for ages. But I think the concept of "mid-term" with its sibling "swingback" is dated here. The real position is that there's 35% who will vote Tory no matter what, and 5-10% who will consider it on a good day. There's 30% who vote Labour no matter what (remember that Corbyn got over 32% even in 2019), but there's also 15% or so who lean LD or Green, and most of them - especially the Greens - are implacably hostile to the Tories and can't wait to screw them. I don't see where the swingback for the Tories will come from, and there is plenty of evidence that a proportion of voters are tactically-minded in marginals. "Hooray, we're 1% ahead and that's even before swingback" is complacency, and that rarely ends well.
That implies you think REFUK will poll around 5% at the next GE, which I think is implausible. They’ll be lucky to get 2%
The Mail is crawling with people saying both that they will vote REFUK, and encouraging others to do the same, too. I noticed the same about UKIP in around 2012, just before their big surge.
They have the advantage that their name and immediate branding seems to address exactly the current issues, unlike any of the other parties.
Can’t see it myself. UKIP 2012 had an identifiable goal, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, to aim for, and a charismatic, once in a lifetime leader. They were also up against three parties who all believed in the same thing, so looked like the rebels. REFUK don’t have any of that in their favour at the moment, only if there is another lockdown might they be able to have something tangible to attack
REFUK is the refuge of the angry. I expect a lot of people to not vote. Easy enough for a decent chunk of the extra 2.5m Tory votes in 2019 vs 2015 to stay at home. Voting REFUK is a protest, and you have to be really angry to go out to the polling station to deliver a protest.
The Lords is just a state benefit for old party suck ups. Abolish it.
The Lords is actually filled with experienced, successful people from businessmen, to sportspeople, politicians, academics, figures from the arts, scientists, religious leaders, lawyers, journalists, charity heads, ex generals, ex police etc as well as the handful of remaining hereditary peers.
It cannot prevent bills being passed but has on the whole highly educated people with a stake in the nation who bring their expertise to scrutinise legislation and if necessary can ask the Commons to thing again.
Indeed on the whole most Lords were at the top of their professions or fields before they became peers, most MPs however were mid tier in their professions or professional political advisers before they got elected
Lord Botham. Enough said.
Lord Botham is one of our most successful cricketers of all time who has done a huge amount of charity work too.
He attended an ordinary comprehensive in Somerset. He has as much right to be there as any other peer as a talented individual with a lot to offer in life experience to making laws
Lord Botham has spoken a grand total of twice since he joined the Lords. It really sounds like he's contributing greatly to the legislative process.
bet he has scoffed a lot more subsidised food and drink when he signed in to collect his 350 quid and cover his expenses bills.
"I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family.
The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics. Yet in the past few days, three generations of Royals have given their support to one of the most contentious causes in human history.
Of course you would barely know it now, because so many other institutions have collapsed into conformity in the past year or so, but the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial. "
Are there actually any parties in the UK at the moment who agree with him?
Sinn Féin
Sinn Fėin don’t think climate change is caused by human activity? I didn’t know that.
Found this in a recent SF document: 'Climate Justice and a Just Transition We need to confront global warming, and the methods and alternatives we use must be inclusive and democratic. Sinn Féin believes that the transition to ecological sustainability must be framed by principles of social justice and equality. We need a just transition to a carbon-free future. If the process is not fair, neither will the outcome, that is for certain.'
There's quite a lot more and where there's disagreement it's with methods, not principles.
Thanks. So it looks like Peter Hutchins idea that “ the view that climate change is caused by human activity remains controversial” is not really true in the UK, certainly not amongst significant political parties.
Imagine if politics was as effective as medical science.
We need reform to renew our democracy.
Reform is always proposed by parties not in power and with little hope of gaining it.. You are bleating like the Lib Dems. Sort your Party out, have policies people will vote for...
As already pointed out you are just appallingly cynical. Someone who can never accept that some people do things for the right reasons and not for personal gain.
And just to show how ridiculous your statement is you are also therefore justifying dictatorships. After all according to your logic the only people who object to dictatorships are those who can't get into power under the existing system. Bonkers logic. Most object on principle not because they gain from it.
I dont know why you have chosen to be on my case all the time but so be it.
Its not cynical, its statement of facts and how politics works. BLAIR hung out the possibility of electoral reform until Labour won and then hung the Lib Dens out to dry as there was never any intention of enacting such a policy.
Now that is cynical behaviour.
Yes that case was cynical, but you haven't actually answered my points. If you believe what you believe then why not support a dictatorship? Same rules apply. Some of us actually object to stuff because we believe is it wrong, not because we gain from it. Why do you assume we are all so cynical.
Why am I on your case (as you know I am not alone)? Because you seem a very angry bitter individual who sees the worst in everyone. You never post anything constructive or humourous. You just post bile. It is very sad.
I have every right to be cynical. Politics is a cynical business. You are obviously young.. wait till you get to 70....
You twit. We have already been here (a couple of days ago) where you flatteringly thought I was young and I corrected you. I am 67.
It's just I am not an angry bitter old man like you.
yes but those years between 67 and 70 are known to change even the most optimistic to the most cynical. just you see
In my experience it's towards the end of that period when things start to fall off one or not work anywhere near as well. And one can't stick them back on quite as well, no matter how hard the NHS tries! I try not to be bitter, though.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
I answered them the other day. I've thought England was stupid in dropping all restrictions (with almost every other country not doing and having lower pox rates). But they won't implement plan B until they are forced to. The NHS and scientists are clear that unless things change they will have to, lets hope things change.
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
Okay, we are now getting somewhere, thank you.
What restrictions would you impose now?
None. I would roll the clock back to the spring and not drop the requirement for masks.
What you choose to do in England is no longer my concern. But don't say "who saw this coming" when the NHS collapses over the winter as the NHS say its in severe danger of doing.
I would ask what restrictions you would impose but I know the answer is none. Its as if you think the scientists and the people who run the NHS are being "hysterical" in saying how screwed you all are.
Right, let me clarify your response.
You would mandate mask wearing in England now. Okay. You would introduce a law that makes it illegal to visit pubs, bars, theatres, clubs and shops without a mask. That’s a very significant imposition.
Would you then also mandate vaccination in England from today?
?
Where did I say ban visiting pubs etc? They aren't banned up here or in Germany or in the rest of the world that hasn't been as daft as England in dropping them. England - like the rest of the developed world - should have maintained a mask mandate.
You didn't. you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Politically any new restrictions will be difficult because so many people down there think its all over. Hence the need for Plan B, Plan C, "Jabbed or Christmas gets it" etc etc
You keep asking what I think. I don't think. But I listen to what Whitty, Vallance, Van-Tam, Taylor etc think. I know nothing on this subject, I am not a doctor or a virologist or someone qualified to disagree with them. Unlike you and many on here apparently.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Lots of words an opinion make. An experience is an anecdote created.
Booked my booster online yesterday for 1.20 today. Very simple. System worked. Available after 5 months from tomorrow. After all the recent clamoring and shouting for the reintroduction of restrictions do you really think people are unaware of the continuation of Covid 19. Hermits may be unware.
The Lords is just a state benefit for old party suck ups. Abolish it.
The Lords is actually filled with experienced, successful people from businessmen, to sportspeople, politicians, academics, figures from the arts, scientists, religious leaders, lawyers, journalists, charity heads, ex generals, ex police etc as well as the handful of remaining hereditary peers.
It cannot prevent bills being passed but has on the whole highly educated people with a stake in the nation who bring their expertise to scrutinise legislation and if necessary can ask the Commons to thing again.
Indeed on the whole most Lords were at the top of their professions or fields before they became peers, most MPs however were mid tier in their professions or professional political advisers before they got elected
Lord Botham. Enough said.
Lord Botham is one of our most successful cricketers of all time who has done a huge amount of charity work too.
He attended an ordinary comprehensive in Somerset. He has as much right to be there as any other peer as a talented individual with a lot to offer in life experience to making laws
Lord Botham has spoken a grand total of twice since he joined the Lords. It really sounds like he's contributing greatly to the legislative process.
bet he has scoffed a lot more subsidised food and drink when he signed in to collect his 350 quid and cover his expenses bills.
As mentioned yesterday, he's certainly a world expert in partying.
Propose that the House of Lords be reconstituted, to consist of elected Lords of Parliament selected from pubs and private clubs across the UK, chosen on first-past-the-tap basis, with due allocation for coffee bars, hookah lounges and other hangouts to fully represent the tea-totalling community.
If all the Lords were people who stood their round it would certainly improve the place, and I imagine it would make the Palace of Westminster bars very jolly places to have a drink.
Mr. Boy, are black people (in London, for example) disproportionately likely to carry knives?
That sort of information is vital to providing context for any accusations of racism.
No no no, remember that it’s now only outcomes that are important - so it’s irrelevant whether young black men are more likely to be drug dealers or knife carriers, and it’s racist for the police to not spend equal time searching old white women when looking for drugs and weapons.
More seriously, accusations that police are racist have been a problem for decades, and sadly a whole bunch of genuine issues have been identified. Problems in London are definitely not going away, until there’s a wholesale clearout of the top ranks at the Met.
Policing needs to be by consent, and this applies strongly to stop and search. Nobody is suggesting that stop and search should be 'equal opportunities'; obviously the police are most likely to stop young people, especially those out and about on the streets.
If young black men are roughly 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white equivalents, there would have to be good reason for it. And it is up to the police to demonstrate that good reason through providing data that shows not just who was stopped, but if anything was found. Their reluctance to provide such data is disappointing. Personally, I suspect socio-economic status is in there as well as race, but that data is harder to collect.
So to return to policing by consent. If young black men feel they are being picked on by the police, which they do, that leads to distrust. And such distrust was a key catalyst for the inner-city riots of the 1980s. For the police to be trusted, they have to be open and transparent with the evidence behind their decisions. But they aren't.
Agreed, policing has to be by consent, and in many areas there is distrust of the police.
My guess as to the data, is that it’s incomplete as you suggest (for example, by collating data on race, but not socio-economic class nor precise location), and as such could be easily be manipulated by people wishing to advance a narrative of the police being racist.
Yes, but equally the data could be manipulated by people wishing to advance a narrative of the police not being racist.
Just an idle thought. If stop and search were used to target rich young boys (and girls) who work in the City, what do you think the outcome would be? I reckon a spike in charges for possession of cocaine.
Just on topic, it is stating the obvious and I am sure the comment has been made downstream, but both parties come out of that looking badly. It is no surprise the views about BJ / the Conservatives have become more critical but look at the perceptions about Starmer / Labour. The number who think Labour are clean and honest have gone down by 6. Labour may be getting caught in the blast but one thing is clear is that people do not see Starmer / Labour as a credible Government.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because, somewhat disappointingly, what we have found is the vaccinations give fairly limited protection and that after 6-9 months you are once again more vulnerable to this disease. Not nearly as vulnerable as you would be without the vaccines, of course, but vulnerable enough to have a top up. And we are currently administering over 300k of these top ups a day with pretty much all of the most vulnerable who want it already done.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
If there is a 'struggle with the boosters', I suggest it's the system for getting them, rather than the desire of people to get them.
Lets hope so. It depends on where the tipping point is for restrictions over Christmas. If we have triple jabbed the most vulnerable and thats enough we'll be ok. Its the not vulnerable we will struggle with.
I think it’s @stodge’s perception thing here. For some reason the perception is that the booster programme is failing. And yet we have done over 10 million. I don’t know why the perception is what it is, but I think we are on track to protect the most vulnerable, again. But, and it’s a big but, some of the frail and elderly who get three jabs will still die of Covid, or within 28 days of a positive test. People become more susceptible as they age. Fact of life and death.
Totally O/t but have I seen somewhere that the Government is going to accept any WHO approved vaccine, including the Chinese ones, as evidence of vaccination? My Thai daughter-in-law is hoping to come over (en famille, obviously) at Christmas.
Anyway, setting aside open brazen corruption for a moment, I note that Javed is out telling people we need a 3rd Covid vaccine to "save Christmas". In other words when they have to impose restrictions again it is our fault not his.
They will struggle with boosters. There appears to be a real problem in getting the system to administer them even when people want them. And why would people want them? They've been told vaxxed = safe. Passports weren't intruduced formally in England but they have been informally. You need to show your vax status. Double vaxxed? You're safe, in you come.
So if you are safe, and anyway we all know people who still catch Covid having been double-jabbed - then why do we need a booster to "save Christmas"?
Because a booster offers increased protection to more vulnerable groups.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
I answered them the other day. I've thought England was stupid in dropping all restrictions (with almost every other country not doing and having lower pox rates). But they won't implement plan B until they are forced to. The NHS and scientists are clear that unless things change they will have to, lets hope things change.
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
With all the indicators showing reducing cases and the likelihood we are near herd immunity it does appear that Boris and HMG will be proven correct in their decisions on this including resisisting the siren calls for plans b or c
I hope you are correct. We have seen variances in the daily numbers before and then another spike. That Javid is now pushing a concerted effort to get people to have a booster "or else you lose Christmas" shows how serious the problem is.
Already we have the NHS barely able to process anything non-Covid. Some hospitals have already run out of space, people waiting in some cases for days for a bed on a ward. Make the weather colder and wetter and the problems really kick in. Hence "get jabbed again or no Christmas".
I don’t believe Javid is saying that because he thinks it’s true, it’s just psychological pressure on people to do the right thing. Three weeks ago some of us were saying that the cases in school kids would start falling soon, as they will all have had Covid. That has come to pass, and it will hugely impact the case numbers. By opening when we did and, yes, allowing lots of cases relative to other nations, albeit with greater testing perhaps skewing things a bit, we have put ourselves in a better position for winter than some other nations. It has not been without cost. No doubt hospitals are under pressure and services are struggling. But the reason for that is the pandemic. Do you imagine other nations hospitals are not under pressure?
My latest from family Corbynista towers is supposed rumours of Boris calling an election this December (news to me!), Cummings is a psycho, Starmer is vague and abstains all the time. Oh, and a story about about Buden farting - I wonder what their equivalent of PB for news is.
Mr. Jonathan, almost all of that is caused by a mostly inept media. We've seen this with lack of understanding over debt and deficit, and the innumerate nonsense of the 'gender pay gap' (people doing different jobs earn different wages - gasp!).
More talented people will come with politicians are less under the microscope by a sensationalist, short-term media that just wants to try and claim scalps.
A more objective approach by broadcast media would be very welcome. Rather saddens me I had to stop watching ITV News because both anchor (Tom Bradby) and political editor (Peston) think their opinions are what people tune in for.
The media is part of it. The media didn’t cause last week’s debacle.
I'm a bit behind on watching the fascinating Blair/Brown/New Labour documentaries. One thing that struck me from the second episode was that Blair had urged Brown to go for the leadership in 1992, but Brown had declined, on the basis of loyalty to his mentor, and a sense that it was John Smith's turn. Then, when Smith died in 1994, Blair decided to go for the leadership himself, rather than to defer to Brown.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, and regardless of which of them was the better Prime Minister, it seemed a very good example of how our politics promotes those who are motivated mainly by self-aggrandisement, or a messianic self-belief, over those who are slightly less egotistical, or have other principles.
I don't know how you would go about changing that, without introducing a whole host of other different problems, but I think anything we can do to reduce the Presidentialism of our politics, to distribute power - across the Cabinet, to local government, to individuals - has got to be helpful.
When listening to English history podcasts it's notable how often ordinary people are able to turn to the law to settle their disputes, over land, mostly. Not perfectly, bribery was often a major factor, but it stands in marked contrast to how hard it is for normal people to gain legal redress in our times. Make it easier for normal people to gain legal redress against companies and that would be a large transfer of power.
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
If the universe is infinite (as many scientists dont discount) then there will be that teapot between Earth and Mars (or at least planets that are exactly like Earth and Mars )
That doesn't follow. Because there are infinite things doesn't mean that a particular thing is among them.
There are an infinite number of even numbers. Not one of them is odd.
but surely odd numbers cannot be in a set of even numbers by definition. A teapot though (or its atomic makeup) is in the universe so must happen in a infinite universe where all possible arrangement of atoms will happen?
The universe may be infinite but all possible arrangements don't necessarily happen.
Only if they cannot happen (like odd numbers being even numbers) but if they can then they will
Even in an infinite universe there are things that could happen but haven't happened, even if they might happen in the future. Possibilities are almost infinite too so there's no reason they all have to have happened.
Anyway the evidence points towards the universe being finite (and expanding).
On @Leon ‘s narrow definition, I guess I’m an agnostic (along with Professor Richard Dawkins, the paramount evolutionary biologist of our time).
I don’t KNOW there is no higher power - indeed I hope there is, and that she’s a good person, albeit clearly imperfect, just like the rest of us.
I just think, on balance, it’s very unlikely.
You also don't "know" that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. Except you kinda do.
The requirement imposed by idiots like Leon on being certain about there being no God really don't apply, and you are under no requirement at all to meet them. As soon as a religious person makes a specific and falsifiable claim that can be tested by experiment (while staying alive), then we're in business.
And in actual fact, Leon agrees. Unless he is a dedicated believer in Islam, and Buddhism, and Shintō, and Zoroastrianism, and the Roman pantheon, and animism, and the hundreds of other barking-mad religions out there, then he shares almost everything in common with atheists. He only differs on one single point, that THIS one, whatever brand of mumbo jumbo he happens to have stumbled across at an impressionable age, THAT'S the one that's true. It's weapons-grade nonsense.
I know that Jesus was not the son of God. I know that Mohammad was not Allah's prophet. I know that Izanagi and Izanami didn't descend to Earth and beget kami. I know that it's not my ancestors in the flames. I know there isn't a divine yogi sitting on top of Mount Kailash with a serpent round his neck and the River Ganges flowing from his hair. And almost everyone in the whole world agrees with most of that paragraph, knows multiple of those statements to be true.
Happy Sunday, everyone.
I think we can safely say that Leon isn't a dedicated believer in Islam!
From a human point of view, one can look at the huge variety of spiritual belief systems across the world and through the ages of history, and reasonably conclude that if most of them are completely made up then it is very likely that they all have been.
From a religious point of view it always surprises me that so much argument focuses on the question of the existence or otherwise of a creator or supernatural being, and so little on whether, if there is one, it makes any sense to organise societies to worship and pray to it. Who knows what values this being has, what it might be up to, and whether or not it has any concern about individual human lives? Who knows whether it has any active interest in the fate of its creation(s) or whether it actively intervenes in our world? I could write a whole paragraph of scenarios with a creator where no religion as currently constituted makes any sense, but I am sure most PB'ers can do the imaginative legwork for yourselves.
I would say it is very likely there is a controlling force in the universe (and therefore a "god" ) but its none of the guesses so far and doubt that the real god has much interest in us on planet earth! A bit like the the Queen having a keen interest in some ants in my garden (well maybe Prince Charles does !)
So God is possibly that teapot between the Earth and Mars orbits?
If the universe is infinite (as many scientists dont discount) then there will be that teapot between Earth and Mars (or at least planets that are exactly like Earth and Mars )
That doesn't follow. Because there are infinite things doesn't mean that a particular thing is among them.
There are an infinite number of even numbers. Not one of them is odd.
but surely odd numbers cannot be in a set of even numbers by definition. A teapot though (or its atomic makeup) is in the universe so must happen in a infinite universe where all possible arrangement of atoms will happen?
The universe may be infinite but all possible arrangements don't necessarily happen.
Only if they cannot happen (like odd numbers being even numbers) but if they can then they will
Even in an infinite universe there are things that could happen but haven't happened, even if they might happen in the future. Possibilities are almost infinite too so there's no reason they all have to have happened.
Anyway the evidence points towards the universe being finite (and expanding).
Does it? Last time I looked at the available evidence it showed an open, or (the theorists’ favourite) a flat, universe.
Comments
As I post almost incessantly, red wall voters are not stupid.
In the case of John, Henry IV, Edward IV and Richard III several convenient murders and/or wars greased the process somewhat, while in the case of William Rufus, Stephen, John, Henry VII and William of Orange civil war was the result. But you can't say it wasn't a thing.
I cannot understand why anyone would criticise the health secretary for urging people to get their booster which is a good health message
I try not to be bitter, though.
Even if one were to accept his argument that there is some chance of the scientific consensus being wrong, the case for transforming our energy systems would remain overwhelming. He’s arguing for the world to take a very large gamble entailing enormous risks, for very little return. His argument is daft in its own terms.
Your forecast looks more likely today than it did this time last week.
The "Yippee I'm the leader / I'm the leader / OK what shall we do?" dilemma has been drowned out by the act of Brexit, then by Covid, but it never went away.
So we are not struggling with boosters, far from it. People do not seem to suffering the confusion you hypothesise.
I think we get in our heads sometimes that monarchy has always meant something like Louis XIV, the arch typical grand, absolute monarch, or that divine right made people pause when opposing, for all time.
As far as I can see most of history no one had any compunction about removing a monarch if they could manage it, and father son succession was often not a thing. Heck, if your son was powerful and grown by the twilight of your reign odds were theyd have rebelled against you.
That said, my wife and I went online on Friday evening and in five minutes had both arranged our boosters, which we will have at the same time and in the same place next Thursday (if I pass a covid test I am having on Wednesday). If our experience is anything to go by, there really is no reasonable excuse not to get it done.
Nonetheless your underlying message is one of; the Party of Government are shafting the taxpayer, but all is OK, I think they are getting away with it.
We need boosters!
I am observing that after months of conditioning in England, they will struggle to achieve it.
If it was bought correctly to the standard requested then Uniserve are not at fault and heads should roll in the procurement team.
They have the advantage that their name and immediate branding seems to address exactly the current issues, unlike any of the other parties.
What’s your view on restrictions by the way? Would you retain the status quo or impose additional restrictions now?
You still haven’t answered those questions.
At that election I expect turnout to be low. Red wallers stopped voting Labour for a reason. Many of them just won't vote at all next time, because not voting is easy, and its not as if any of the options are actually good for them.
PS hello @CorrectHorseBattery rooting for your big bet on a Labour poll lead!!!
You witter on like I enjoy restrictions. I don't, I truly hate them. But we do need them. And the likes of the CEO of the NHS Confederation is not "hysterical" in saying the same.
I don't think I've 'believed in and trusted' wholeheartedly anyone in politics for many.years.
And I've spent many an evening door-knocking on behalf of politicians.
What restrictions would you impose now?
My guess as to the data, is that it’s incomplete as you suggest (for example, by collating data on race, but not socio-economic class nor precise location), and as such could be easily be manipulated by people wishing to advance a narrative of the police being racist.
Faith and science can co-exist very happily
Science explains the known, and can make educated guesses at both the known unknown and, sometimes, the unknown unknown.
Faith is an explanation for the known unknown.
Fundamentally science explains “the how” and faith “the why”
I am also concerned about the ethics of boosters. The developed world has used its wealth to appropriate almost all of the available vaccines. That was questionable enough but is it really right that the marginal improvements of a third dose for rich westerners should have been given priority over a first dose for billions in the developing world? When is it going to be their turn?
Even putting the ethics aside I fear that allowing this wretched virus to run rampant in less developed parts of the world is the greatest risk factor for us because it allows further and potentially more dangerous variants to develop. There are echoes of the global warming debate in this. The days when we could focus on what we do and ignore what others do are long past.
What you choose to do in England is no longer my concern. But don't say "who saw this coming" when the NHS collapses over the winter as the NHS say its in severe danger of doing.
I would ask what restrictions you would impose but I know the answer is none. Its as if you think the scientists and the people who run the NHS are being "hysterical" in saying how screwed you all are.
https://twitter.com/angelarayner/status/1457279072128602115?s=21
Dawkins denies it, though, which is why he’s a flawed scientist and philosopher.
This is why corruptiongate is a problem. Most punters dislike having their money stolen. Many will refuse to vote for the party doing so, even if they decide there aren't better options. Which will let in Labour / LibDem / SNP candidates even if their own vote doesn't increase much.
Like the ants in your garden someone mentioned above - your various activities in the garden might help, hinder or kill the ants as you go about your entirely unrelated business, and if the ants had the intelligence they might think you were being 'good' when you add food to the compost heap and 'bad' when you kill a few as you walk down the path. But you're not going to be aware, let alone bothered.
You would mandate mask wearing in England now. Okay. You would introduce a law that makes it illegal to visit pubs, bars, theatres, clubs and shops without a mask. That’s a very significant imposition.
Would you then also mandate vaccination in England from today?
It is circumstantial evidence, not “proof”. And “corruption” is a very big word to use without proof.
But it’s a consequence of Blair’s cackhanded reform of the Lords
Faith cannot "explain" anything, since by definition its simply an unsupported belief.
If I decide to believe that thunder is the sound of Thor's hammer, I haven't explained thunderstorms, at all. I have simply made up an explanation (or copied someone else's) in the absence of a genuine one.
Already we have the NHS barely able to process anything non-Covid. Some hospitals have already run out of space, people waiting in some cases for days for a bed on a ward. Make the weather colder and wetter and the problems really kick in. Hence "get jabbed again or no Christmas".
It’s not difficult to imagine a cabinet meeting where SoS Health says “Does anyone know anyone who knows anyone who can get hold of this stuff, because thousands of people will die without it?” Remember that we ended up with, among others, Burberry making clinical gowns and the Mercedes F1 engine factory making CPAP machines.
That doesn’t hold for later procurement problems though, where more scrutiny definitely needs to be applied. Anyone who was clearly out to defraud taxpayers needs to be held accountable.
True justified belief = knowledge. You believe there is a God, but I know there isn't. I believe Rome is the capital of France, you know it's Paris. Etc.
I'm not normally absolute about things that are a matter of opinion, but this stuff isn't. It's testable. The idea of gods brings nothing to the table, and all the things that in the past they have brought to the table have been shown to be false. Lightning is not the sparks of Thor's hammer, and you KNOW that to be the case.
This thread has been sent to purgatory
Where did I say ban visiting pubs etc? They aren't banned up here or in Germany or in the rest of the world that hasn't been as daft as England in dropping them. England - like the rest of the developed world - should have maintained a mask mandate.
You didn't. you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Politically any new restrictions will be difficult because so many people down there think its all over. Hence the need for Plan B, Plan C, "Jabbed or Christmas gets it" etc etc
You keep asking what I think. I don't think. But I listen to what Whitty, Vallance, Van-Tam, Taylor etc think. I know nothing on this subject, I am not a doctor or a virologist or someone qualified to disagree with them. Unlike you and many on here apparently.
An experience is an anecdote created.
Booked my booster online yesterday for 1.20 today.
Very simple. System worked. Available after 5 months from tomorrow.
After all the recent clamoring and shouting for the reintroduction of restrictions do you really think people are unaware of the continuation of Covid 19.
Hermits may be unware.
Just an idle thought. If stop and search were used to target rich young boys (and girls) who work in the City, what do you think the outcome would be? I reckon a spike in charges for possession of cocaine.
My Thai daughter-in-law is hoping to come over (en famille, obviously) at Christmas.
By opening when we did and, yes, allowing lots of cases relative to other nations, albeit with greater testing perhaps skewing things a bit, we have put ourselves in a better position for winter than some other nations. It has not been without cost. No doubt hospitals are under pressure and services are struggling. But the reason for that is the pandemic. Do you imagine other nations hospitals are not under pressure?
Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, and regardless of which of them was the better Prime Minister, it seemed a very good example of how our politics promotes those who are motivated mainly by self-aggrandisement, or a messianic self-belief, over those who are slightly less egotistical, or have other principles.
I don't know how you would go about changing that, without introducing a whole host of other different problems, but I think anything we can do to reduce the Presidentialism of our politics, to distribute power - across the Cabinet, to local government, to individuals - has got to be helpful.
When listening to English history podcasts it's notable how often ordinary people are able to turn to the law to settle their disputes, over land, mostly. Not perfectly, bribery was often a major factor, but it stands in marked contrast to how hard it is for normal people to gain legal redress in our times. Make it easier for normal people to gain legal redress against companies and that would be a large transfer of power.
https://twitter.com/A_B_Evans/status/1457308159803109380?s=20
https://www.holyrood.com/comment/view,comment-the-snp-is-electorally-dominant-but-constitutionally-impotent
Anyway the evidence points towards the universe being finite (and expanding).