Britain offers a warning of what happens when a country ignores Covid.
Almost as good timing as Starmer calling for Plan B.
Or CNN's Amanpour the other day interviewing the Prime Minister saying that cases were "spiking" in the UK, when they'd been going down for two weeks already. That went viral quoted by a few here - long may cases continue to spike downwards.
Interesting point - the field work on this poll was Oct 29 - Nov 4 so much of it was *before* Paterson row dominated headlines (debate was Nov 3, U-turn Nov 4). Next one should be fascinating...
It was mostly taken before Paterson's resignation though
So are you expecting Cons sub 30% at the next sampling?
No, I expect now the issue has faded the Conservatives may rebound a little
Boris's wallpaper may have faded, but I'm not convinced the Paterson debacle has yet.
Does that mean the wallpaper needs changing again?
The Ipsos MORI survey for The Standard put the Conservatives on 35 per cent, down four points on September, Labour unchanged on 36 per cent, the Greens up a startling five points to 11 per cent, and Liberal Democrats unchanged on nine per cent.
It's an interesting moment. To do a 'Blair' again Labour have to do two jobs. The first is being gifted to them - to portray the government as mired in sleaze and all that, and keep it up for the next two years.
The second is to have a broad leadership which exudes competence and clarity, and beyond doubt has better policies on offer on the subjects that are big for the key voters.
These are things like post-Brexit strategy and vision, housing, transport, education, jobs, debt, deficit, interest rates, inflation, tax, NHS, social care, defence, the union, migration, CO2, free speech, taming the extremes of left and right, terrorism and so on.
Because they are so behind in this they still have little chance of winning, and only a even chance of leading the next government. They should be 20 points ahead.
Where are the killer three word slogans?
Make Brexit Work
Keir is sticking to this and needs to have his front bench team hammering it in every interview. We are where we are. The EU is the past, our trading relationship the future. We need to Make Brexit Work to deliver the hope that people have for our future however they voted.
At the moment too much of the message is "Brexit doesn't work and you are stupid". Change it to "Brexit doesn't work, but it could" and its a mirror held up to Tory failure to deliver. More so if we embark on a trade war.
Make Brexit Work'
BREXIT ISN'T WORKING
is a killer slogan. Reminds everyone of the demographic that matters of the crushing Saatchi and Saatchi 1979 poster: Labour isn't working.
It tells it like it is but, as you say, doesn't make out people were stupid in the first place.
The response to make Brexit work is just how and will that include free movement of labour
Starmer to be fair yesterday ruled out re-joining the EU so he will need a clear policy on how he is to make it work, not just soundbites
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
In respect of the summer exit wave and COVID response since reopening between Boris, Rishi and the Saj we've had real leadership. It's the only area I can really credit the government with, everything else has been dismal, shocking or plain corrupt.
Yes, well credit to you, unlike many of the pro-Brexity posters you don't seem to think Johnson walks on water. I am not sure anything from Johnson could be described as "real leadership"; he really has no clue. As I said on the other post, quoting the Great Man : "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes".
Interesting point - the field work on this poll was Oct 29 - Nov 4 so much of it was *before* Paterson row dominated headlines (debate was Nov 3, U-turn Nov 4). Next one should be fascinating...
It was mostly taken before Paterson's resignation though
So are you expecting Cons sub 30% at the next sampling?
No, I expect now the issue has faded the Conservatives may rebound a little
Boris is at a hospital in the North East and JRM has gone into hiding with apparently Steve Barclay facing off Starmer
The most interesting part of this afternoon debate is not Starmer's open goal but just how many conservative mps come out and attack the decision to try to keep Paterson in place
I would just suggest to red wall mps, come out and fight for decency and show Boris he is on notice to clean up his act or go
What makes you clain JRM has gone into hiding?. Do you have any evidence bar the fact that he isn't there. ?
Leader of the house on a debate about the discipline procedures within the house. You would expect anyone so closely involved to be attending the debate.
Alex Wickham @alexwickham · 1h Other than the £400,000 Geoffrey Cox is trousering as a consultant, his register of interests suggests he is doing up to 80 hours a month on outside work. Which means nearly 2 weeks each month he isn’t working as an MP. Sounds like he’s preparing for a by-election
Of course that's not true as he is not restricted to 4O hrs per week. Lots of MPs work very long hours.
That's not a danger Geoffrey Cox is ever going to face
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
Some examples might be useful. It might be they are enjoying schadenfreude, rather than taking delight in the suffering of others.
Lol. Only Remoaner Quislings bother learning the meaning of furrin words.
Definition of schadenfreude : enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Well, Philip, you have said some really dumb things in th emany many hours you spend on here pointlessly defending the pointless, but this one tops the lot in terms of ignorance:
"HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe."
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
Such a joke it's not even worth replying
And yet you did.
But not with any substantive points, because even you know I'm right.
It's an interesting moment. To do a 'Blair' again Labour have to do two jobs. The first is being gifted to them - to portray the government as mired in sleaze and all that, and keep it up for the next two years.
The second is to have a broad leadership which exudes competence and clarity, and beyond doubt has better policies on offer on the subjects that are big for the key voters.
These are things like post-Brexit strategy and vision, housing, transport, education, jobs, debt, deficit, interest rates, inflation, tax, NHS, social care, defence, the union, migration, CO2, free speech, taming the extremes of left and right, terrorism and so on.
Because they are so behind in this they still have little chance of winning, and only a even chance of leading the next government. They should be 20 points ahead.
Where are the killer three word slogans?
Make Brexit Work
Keir is sticking to this and needs to have his front bench team hammering it in every interview. We are where we are. The EU is the past, our trading relationship the future. We need to Make Brexit Work to deliver the hope that people have for our future however they voted.
At the moment too much of the message is "Brexit doesn't work and you are stupid". Change it to "Brexit doesn't work, but it could" and its a mirror held up to Tory failure to deliver. More so if we embark on a trade war.
Make Brexit Work'
BREXIT ISN'T WORKING
is a killer slogan. Reminds everyone of the demographic that matters of the crushing Saatchi and Saatchi 1979 poster: Labour isn't working.
It tells it like it is but, as you say, doesn't make out people were stupid in the first place.
The problem is that, in 1979, the voters could simply vote Tory to get rid of Labour. At the next GE Labour will not be offering the voters the opportunity to get rid of Brexit, so you can't campaign on the "Brexit isn't working" slogan.
That's why "Make Brexit Work" is better. Can Labour convince Leave voters to trust them to do so?
Ms. Heathener, but it implies that the Labour Party will advocate rejoining.
And while that will enthuse some (almost all of whom would vote Labour anyway) it would antagonize more people, both those who wanted us out, and those who are lukewarm either way but do not want to return to a referendum and, potentially, even more negotiating.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
Some examples might be useful. It might be they are enjoying schadenfreude, rather than taking delight in the suffering of others.
Lol. Only Remoaners bother learning the meaning of furrin words.
Definition of schadenfreude : enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others
Hah, yeah, good point. I suppose I mean the enjoyment of commentators having to eat crow after having bleated on about the UK case rate being some sort of disaster.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Well, Philip, you have said some really dumb things in th emany many hours you spend on here pointlessly defending the pointless, but this one tops the lot in terms of ignorance:
"HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe."
If any other country handled the pandemic better then please name any other country in Europe that was able to drop all legal restrictions before the UK?
If they'd done better, they'd have been able to do so. Who was it?
It's an interesting moment. To do a 'Blair' again Labour have to do two jobs. The first is being gifted to them - to portray the government as mired in sleaze and all that, and keep it up for the next two years.
The second is to have a broad leadership which exudes competence and clarity, and beyond doubt has better policies on offer on the subjects that are big for the key voters.
These are things like post-Brexit strategy and vision, housing, transport, education, jobs, debt, deficit, interest rates, inflation, tax, NHS, social care, defence, the union, migration, CO2, free speech, taming the extremes of left and right, terrorism and so on.
Because they are so behind in this they still have little chance of winning, and only a even chance of leading the next government. They should be 20 points ahead.
Where are the killer three word slogans?
Make Brexit Work
Keir is sticking to this and needs to have his front bench team hammering it in every interview. We are where we are. The EU is the past, our trading relationship the future. We need to Make Brexit Work to deliver the hope that people have for our future however they voted.
At the moment too much of the message is "Brexit doesn't work and you are stupid". Change it to "Brexit doesn't work, but it could" and its a mirror held up to Tory failure to deliver. More so if we embark on a trade war.
Make Brexit Work'
BREXIT ISN'T WORKING
is a killer slogan. Reminds everyone of the demographic that matters of the crushing Saatchi and Saatchi 1979 poster: Labour isn't working.
It tells it like it is but, as you say, doesn't make out people were stupid in the first place.
The problem is that, in 1979, the voters could simply vote Tory to get rid of Labour. At the next GE Labour will not be offering the voters the opportunity to get rid of Brexit, so you can't campaign on the "Brexit isn't working" slogan.
That's why "Make Brexit Work" is better. Can Labour convince Leave voters to trust them to do so?
They could convince me but they need to explain how
Interesting point - the field work on this poll was Oct 29 - Nov 4 so much of it was *before* Paterson row dominated headlines (debate was Nov 3, U-turn Nov 4). Next one should be fascinating...
It was mostly taken before Paterson's resignation though
So are you expecting Cons sub 30% at the next sampling?
No, I expect now the issue has faded the Conservatives may rebound a little
Boris is at a hospital in the North East and JRM has gone into hiding with apparently Steve Barclay facing off Starmer
The most interesting part of this afternoon debate is not Starmer's open goal but just how many conservative mps come out and attack the decision to try to keep Paterson in place
I would just suggest to red wall mps, come out and fight for decency and show Boris he is on notice to clean up his act or go
What makes you clain JRM has gone into hiding?. Do you have any evidence bar the fact that he isn't there. ?
Leader of the house on a debate about the discipline procedures within the house. You would expect anyone so closely involved to be attending the debate.
Missing the point again. You claim he has gone into hiding with no evidence to back up your assertion bar the fact that he isn't there. A sort of general smear.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
Such a joke it's not even worth replying
And yet you did.
But not with any substantive points, because even you know I'm right.
No I just don't think you're worth my time and energy. So I didn't and won't.
It’s not particularly enjoyable to watch PB turn into a slagging match where posters round on each other.
A good swedge is a pb.com highlight. Particularly if it's a tory blue-on-blue.
I would love to see one of them turn into an IRL punch up.
Yep, there's been quite a lot of blue-on-blue discord on here recently. Put Big G, HYUFD and PT in the same room and it would be mayhem.
By contrast, the red-on-red action has been pretty tame - just BJO switching sides. As for the yellows, well, they just don't bother arguing with one another.
I think this is a metaphor for wider issues of party unity.
Remember BigG and PT both voted for Blair though unlike me, if Labour got into government again and the Conservatives went into opposition I could see at least BigG shifting back to Labour or the LDs again
Thank you for proving my point!
Remember I spent 13 years campaigning and voting for the Conservatives in opposition, eventually the cycle will turn again but I will still be voting for and backing the blues.
Just out of interest how old are you @HYUFD ? That comment puts you over 40 if you could vote in 97. I don't know why but I imagined you as late 20s or early 30s. My guess wasn't actually based on anything really.
I am just under 40, I could not vote in 1997 but I did canvass with a friend's mother who was a local Tory member.
I attended my first campaign rally in 1992 for Major in rural Gravesham when he was on his soapbox and have been involved campaigning for the Conservatives in some capacity in every general election since
Life begins at 40. Ask yourself what your values and principles are, then look at the party you are attached to like a limpet and realise you parted ways morally a long time before.
If you are a Majorite Tory why are you condoning Borisite blue Labour policies that you have opposed all this time? What is the point in you keeping Labour out only to do what Labour do? If you are a Majorite Tory why condone outrageous corruption?
That moment of absolute clarity when you realise the party is beneath you and you walk away is golden. I hope you enjoy it - and the personal cleansing of your own morality - as much as I did.
I am not a Majorite Tory, I am just a Tory.
I have campaigned for Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May and Boris (and briefly met Thatcher once at a reception)
And the rest? You'll back your party regardless of what it does or how it clashes with your own principles because it's your party?
Like a football team in other words.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Ms. Heathener, but it implies that the Labour Party will advocate rejoining.
And while that will enthuse some (almost all of whom would vote Labour anyway) it would antagonize more people, both those who wanted us out, and those who are lukewarm either way but do not want to return to a referendum and, potentially, even more negotiating.
They won't, Starmer would largely campaign on closer alignment to the SM and CU in terms of regulations and to appease the SNP and LDs who he would need to become PM. However he would also likely campaign to keep the current points system with maybe a bit more leeway in shortage areas, to win over the Redwall
Ms. Heathener, but it implies that the Labour Party will advocate rejoining.
And while that will enthuse some (almost all of whom would vote Labour anyway) it would antagonize more people, both those who wanted us out, and those who are lukewarm either way but do not want to return to a referendum and, potentially, even more negotiating.
I'm not so sure. I'm a great believer, depressing though it may be, in the power of negative advertising. You don't have to offer an alternative on a billboard. 'Labour isn't working' didn't actually have a giant tory caption. All they need to put is a little Vote Labour marker in the bottom corner.
It's about overt and subliminal messaging. If you hammer home what most everyone now realises, namely that Brexit isn't working, Boris Johnson goes down with it.
It’s not particularly enjoyable to watch PB turn into a slagging match where posters round on each other.
A good swedge is a pb.com highlight. Particularly if it's a tory blue-on-blue.
I would love to see one of them turn into an IRL punch up.
Yep, there's been quite a lot of blue-on-blue discord on here recently. Put Big G, HYUFD and PT in the same room and it would be mayhem.
By contrast, the red-on-red action has been pretty tame - just BJO switching sides. As for the yellows, well, they just don't bother arguing with one another.
I think this is a metaphor for wider issues of party unity.
Remember BigG and PT both voted for Blair though unlike me, if Labour got into government again and the Conservatives went into opposition I could see at least BigG shifting back to Labour or the LDs again
Thank you for proving my point!
Remember I spent 13 years campaigning and voting for the Conservatives in opposition, eventually the cycle will turn again but I will still be voting for and backing the blues.
Just out of interest how old are you @HYUFD ? That comment puts you over 40 if you could vote in 97. I don't know why but I imagined you as late 20s or early 30s. My guess wasn't actually based on anything really.
I am just under 40, I could not vote in 1997 but I did canvass with a friend's mother who was a local Tory member.
I attended my first campaign rally in 1992 for Major in rural Gravesham when he was on his soapbox and have been involved campaigning for the Conservatives in some capacity in every general election since
Life begins at 40. Ask yourself what your values and principles are, then look at the party you are attached to like a limpet and realise you parted ways morally a long time before.
If you are a Majorite Tory why are you condoning Borisite blue Labour policies that you have opposed all this time? What is the point in you keeping Labour out only to do what Labour do? If you are a Majorite Tory why condone outrageous corruption?
That moment of absolute clarity when you realise the party is beneath you and you walk away is golden. I hope you enjoy it - and the personal cleansing of your own morality - as much as I did.
I am not a Majorite Tory, I am just a Tory.
I have campaigned for Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May and Boris (and briefly met Thatcher once at a reception)
And the rest? You'll back your party regardless of what it does or how it clashes with your own principles because it's your party?
Like a football team in other words.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
It's an interesting moment. To do a 'Blair' again Labour have to do two jobs. The first is being gifted to them - to portray the government as mired in sleaze and all that, and keep it up for the next two years.
The second is to have a broad leadership which exudes competence and clarity, and beyond doubt has better policies on offer on the subjects that are big for the key voters.
These are things like post-Brexit strategy and vision, housing, transport, education, jobs, debt, deficit, interest rates, inflation, tax, NHS, social care, defence, the union, migration, CO2, free speech, taming the extremes of left and right, terrorism and so on.
Because they are so behind in this they still have little chance of winning, and only a even chance of leading the next government. They should be 20 points ahead.
Where are the killer three word slogans?
Make Brexit Work
Keir is sticking to this and needs to have his front bench team hammering it in every interview. We are where we are. The EU is the past, our trading relationship the future. We need to Make Brexit Work to deliver the hope that people have for our future however they voted.
At the moment too much of the message is "Brexit doesn't work and you are stupid". Change it to "Brexit doesn't work, but it could" and its a mirror held up to Tory failure to deliver. More so if we embark on a trade war.
Make Brexit Work'
BREXIT ISN'T WORKING
is a killer slogan. Reminds everyone of the demographic that matters of the crushing Saatchi and Saatchi 1979 poster: Labour isn't working.
It tells it like it is but, as you say, doesn't make out people were stupid in the first place.
The problem is that, in 1979, the voters could simply vote Tory to get rid of Labour. At the next GE Labour will not be offering the voters the opportunity to get rid of Brexit, so you can't campaign on the "Brexit isn't working" slogan.
That's why "Make Brexit Work" is better. Can Labour convince Leave voters to trust them to do so?
They could convince me but they need to explain how
There would need to be a lot done to convince people and, in theory, you should be easier to convince because you voted Remain anyway.
I think the strategy is right, but the implementation is unlikely to convince in time for the next GE.
If I were an MP nowadays, I'd be *very* careful about putting in for even reasonable expenses, leaving me significantly out-of-pocket. And that's unreasonable.
It is the same for councillors. Screaming abuse every time expenses are published. The more obvious the expense (childcare as one example), the worse the abuse. I know quite a few councillors, most claim very little despite spending quite a lot.
Childcare is a great example, because it’s a big expense that most voters have to pay out of their own pocket when they go to work.
But councillors don't get paid a proper salary as far as I know. So claiming it on expenses seems reasonable, unless you think that people with childcare responsibilities shouldn't become councillors.
My understanding was that most councillors were paid ‘allowances’ already. I agree that for unpaid positions, reasonable expenses for a child minder are obviously okay.
Allowances vary wildly around the country (though I believe in Wales the amount is set uniformly, which makes more sense). It is not much in many places, recognising the role is not full time (and those that are more full time in practice get special responsibility allowances). Childcare expenses are only reasonable as part of the cover.
It's an interesting moment. To do a 'Blair' again Labour have to do two jobs. The first is being gifted to them - to portray the government as mired in sleaze and all that, and keep it up for the next two years.
The second is to have a broad leadership which exudes competence and clarity, and beyond doubt has better policies on offer on the subjects that are big for the key voters.
These are things like post-Brexit strategy and vision, housing, transport, education, jobs, debt, deficit, interest rates, inflation, tax, NHS, social care, defence, the union, migration, CO2, free speech, taming the extremes of left and right, terrorism and so on.
Because they are so behind in this they still have little chance of winning, and only a even chance of leading the next government. They should be 20 points ahead.
Where are the killer three word slogans?
Make Brexit Work
Keir is sticking to this and needs to have his front bench team hammering it in every interview. We are where we are. The EU is the past, our trading relationship the future. We need to Make Brexit Work to deliver the hope that people have for our future however they voted.
At the moment too much of the message is "Brexit doesn't work and you are stupid". Change it to "Brexit doesn't work, but it could" and its a mirror held up to Tory failure to deliver. More so if we embark on a trade war.
Make Brexit Work'
BREXIT ISN'T WORKING
is a killer slogan. Reminds everyone of the demographic that matters of the crushing Saatchi and Saatchi 1979 poster: Labour isn't working.
It tells it like it is but, as you say, doesn't make out people were stupid in the first place.
The problem is that, in 1979, the voters could simply vote Tory to get rid of Labour. At the next GE Labour will not be offering the voters the opportunity to get rid of Brexit, so you can't campaign on the "Brexit isn't working" slogan.
That's why "Make Brexit Work" is better. Can Labour convince Leave voters to trust them to do so?
They could convince me but they need to explain how
There would need to be a lot done to convince people and, in theory, you should be easier to convince because you voted Remain anyway.
I think the strategy is right, but the implementation is unlikely to convince in time for the next GE.
I do want to improve brexit but not at the cost of free movement and certainly not at any attempt to rejoin
I will listen very carefully to labour's offering at the next GE
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Interesting point - the field work on this poll was Oct 29 - Nov 4 so much of it was *before* Paterson row dominated headlines (debate was Nov 3, U-turn Nov 4). Next one should be fascinating...
It was mostly taken before Paterson's resignation though
So are you expecting Cons sub 30% at the next sampling?
No, I expect now the issue has faded the Conservatives may rebound a little
Boris is at a hospital in the North East and JRM has gone into hiding with apparently Steve Barclay facing off Starmer
The most interesting part of this afternoon debate is not Starmer's open goal but just how many conservative mps come out and attack the decision to try to keep Paterson in place
I would just suggest to red wall mps, come out and fight for decency and show Boris he is on notice to clean up his act or go
What makes you clain JRM has gone into hiding?. Do you have any evidence bar the fact that he isn't there. ?
Leader of the house on a debate about the discipline procedures within the house. You would expect anyone so closely involved to be attending the debate.
Missing the point again. You claim he has gone into hiding with no evidence to back up your assertion bar the fact that he isn't there. A sort of general smear.
Sort of reverse Jezza: I was not present at debate but I think I was involved.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
It’s not particularly enjoyable to watch PB turn into a slagging match where posters round on each other.
A good swedge is a pb.com highlight. Particularly if it's a tory blue-on-blue.
I would love to see one of them turn into an IRL punch up.
Yep, there's been quite a lot of blue-on-blue discord on here recently. Put Big G, HYUFD and PT in the same room and it would be mayhem.
By contrast, the red-on-red action has been pretty tame - just BJO switching sides. As for the yellows, well, they just don't bother arguing with one another.
I think this is a metaphor for wider issues of party unity.
Remember BigG and PT both voted for Blair though unlike me, if Labour got into government again and the Conservatives went into opposition I could see at least BigG shifting back to Labour or the LDs again
Thank you for proving my point!
Remember I spent 13 years campaigning and voting for the Conservatives in opposition, eventually the cycle will turn again but I will still be voting for and backing the blues.
Just out of interest how old are you @HYUFD ? That comment puts you over 40 if you could vote in 97. I don't know why but I imagined you as late 20s or early 30s. My guess wasn't actually based on anything really.
I am just under 40, I could not vote in 1997 but I did canvass with a friend's mother who was a local Tory member.
I attended my first campaign rally in 1992 for Major in rural Gravesham when he was on his soapbox and have been involved campaigning for the Conservatives in some capacity in every general election since
Life begins at 40. Ask yourself what your values and principles are, then look at the party you are attached to like a limpet and realise you parted ways morally a long time before.
If you are a Majorite Tory why are you condoning Borisite blue Labour policies that you have opposed all this time? What is the point in you keeping Labour out only to do what Labour do? If you are a Majorite Tory why condone outrageous corruption?
That moment of absolute clarity when you realise the party is beneath you and you walk away is golden. I hope you enjoy it - and the personal cleansing of your own morality - as much as I did.
I am not a Majorite Tory, I am just a Tory.
I have campaigned for Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May and Boris (and briefly met Thatcher once at a reception)
And the rest? You'll back your party regardless of what it does or how it clashes with your own principles because it's your party?
Like a football team in other words.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Good point. I don't feel as if I have any allegiance to one party (a bit like the discussion we had on being British) yet I have always been a Liberal/Lib Dem and for most of that time a member and activity involved, because they have always best reflected my views. I have however declined to vote Liberal on a few occasions, usually it was to avoid voting for a pillock or because I preferred an Indy in a local election.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
Sweden was better on restrictions.
But they cocked up on vaccines of course.
Sweden was better early on, with restrictions, but then they couldn't hold out and had to go into restrictions afterall and kept them much later too, I believe.
Had they come through the pandemic without having to reverse track then yes absolutely they'd have been the best by far, but they didn't, did they?
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
NICE use QALYs - Quality Adjusted Life Years - so a crude measure of years of life saved is not used in other contexts in our health system.
It's reasonable to think in terms of the quality of life, and of how that would be impaired by extraordinary restrictions on daily life.
When we were in an emergency it was appropriate to take emergency measures in response, but it's not reasonable to chase the risk all the way to zero with emergency measures.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Well, Philip, you have said some really dumb things in th emany many hours you spend on here pointlessly defending the pointless, but this one tops the lot in terms of ignorance:
"HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe."
If any other country handled the pandemic better then please name any other country in Europe that was able to drop all legal restrictions before the UK?
If they'd done better, they'd have been able to do so. Who was it?
"Drop restrictions" or "drop restrictions responsibly"? Any fool can do the first, and Johnson did.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Why?
'Most of them would have died anyway'
Why's that a reason why its important?
Everyone dies. Life is a terminal condition, the question is what you do while alive. Imprisoning innocent people in order to save the lives of a few people who are going to die anyway isn't OK.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Well, Philip, you have said some really dumb things in th emany many hours you spend on here pointlessly defending the pointless, but this one tops the lot in terms of ignorance:
"HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe."
If any other country handled the pandemic better then please name any other country in Europe that was able to drop all legal restrictions before the UK?
If they'd done better, they'd have been able to do so. Who was it?
"Drop restrictions" or "drop restrictions responsibly"? Any fool can do the first, and Johnson did.
If you can do the first without reversing it, as the UK did post-vaccines, then it is responsible.
We dropped restrictions too late. I was advocating for restrictions to be lifted months before they were. But better late than never and they were lifted far before anyone else. Who else responsibly or otherwise lifted them first?
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 4m Are we "out of the woods yet"? a) Is there any possibility of the NHS being swamped by people with Covid? - No. b) Is the covid epidemic over (ie is it no longer possible for covid cases to grow exponentially for an extended period)? Yes. So yes, we're out of the woods.
I agree that the emergency is over. So it's time for the emergency powers to go.
Wonder how much longer that will take, across the UK as a whole?
The only justification for emergency powers is when, like during a war, the government needs to take decisions too quickly to consult Parliament. That hasn't applied since March last year, if then. If we had an Opposition worth a damn they would have voted against renewing them. But they didn't.
It’s not particularly enjoyable to watch PB turn into a slagging match where posters round on each other.
A good swedge is a pb.com highlight. Particularly if it's a tory blue-on-blue.
I would love to see one of them turn into an IRL punch up.
Yep, there's been quite a lot of blue-on-blue discord on here recently. Put Big G, HYUFD and PT in the same room and it would be mayhem.
By contrast, the red-on-red action has been pretty tame - just BJO switching sides. As for the yellows, well, they just don't bother arguing with one another.
I think this is a metaphor for wider issues of party unity.
Remember BigG and PT both voted for Blair though unlike me, if Labour got into government again and the Conservatives went into opposition I could see at least BigG shifting back to Labour or the LDs again
Thank you for proving my point!
Remember I spent 13 years campaigning and voting for the Conservatives in opposition, eventually the cycle will turn again but I will still be voting for and backing the blues.
Just out of interest how old are you @HYUFD ? That comment puts you over 40 if you could vote in 97. I don't know why but I imagined you as late 20s or early 30s. My guess wasn't actually based on anything really.
I am just under 40, I could not vote in 1997 but I did canvass with a friend's mother who was a local Tory member.
I attended my first campaign rally in 1992 for Major in rural Gravesham when he was on his soapbox and have been involved campaigning for the Conservatives in some capacity in every general election since
Life begins at 40. Ask yourself what your values and principles are, then look at the party you are attached to like a limpet and realise you parted ways morally a long time before.
If you are a Majorite Tory why are you condoning Borisite blue Labour policies that you have opposed all this time? What is the point in you keeping Labour out only to do what Labour do? If you are a Majorite Tory why condone outrageous corruption?
That moment of absolute clarity when you realise the party is beneath you and you walk away is golden. I hope you enjoy it - and the personal cleansing of your own morality - as much as I did.
I am not a Majorite Tory, I am just a Tory.
I have campaigned for Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May and Boris (and briefly met Thatcher once at a reception)
And the rest? You'll back your party regardless of what it does or how it clashes with your own principles because it's your party?
Like a football team in other words.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Good point. I don't feel as if I have any allegiance to one party (a bit like the discussion we had on being British) yet I have always been a Liberal/Lib Dem and for most of that time a member and activity involved, because they have always best reflected my views. I have however declined to vote Liberal on a few occasions, usually it was to avoid voting for a pillock or because I preferred an Indy in a local election.
Ah, yes, I was only talking about GEs. I've been known to riff around in the locals.
It's an interesting moment. To do a 'Blair' again Labour have to do two jobs. The first is being gifted to them - to portray the government as mired in sleaze and all that, and keep it up for the next two years.
The second is to have a broad leadership which exudes competence and clarity, and beyond doubt has better policies on offer on the subjects that are big for the key voters.
These are things like post-Brexit strategy and vision, housing, transport, education, jobs, debt, deficit, interest rates, inflation, tax, NHS, social care, defence, the union, migration, CO2, free speech, taming the extremes of left and right, terrorism and so on.
Because they are so behind in this they still have little chance of winning, and only a even chance of leading the next government. They should be 20 points ahead.
Where are the killer three word slogans?
Make Brexit Work
Keir is sticking to this and needs to have his front bench team hammering it in every interview. We are where we are. The EU is the past, our trading relationship the future. We need to Make Brexit Work to deliver the hope that people have for our future however they voted.
At the moment too much of the message is "Brexit doesn't work and you are stupid". Change it to "Brexit doesn't work, but it could" and its a mirror held up to Tory failure to deliver. More so if we embark on a trade war.
Make Brexit Work'
BREXIT ISN'T WORKING
is a killer slogan. Reminds everyone of the demographic that matters of the crushing Saatchi and Saatchi 1979 poster: Labour isn't working.
It tells it like it is but, as you say, doesn't make out people were stupid in the first place.
The problem is that, in 1979, the voters could simply vote Tory to get rid of Labour. At the next GE Labour will not be offering the voters the opportunity to get rid of Brexit, so you can't campaign on the "Brexit isn't working" slogan.
That's why "Make Brexit Work" is better. Can Labour convince Leave voters to trust them to do so?
"Make Brexit Work" is a better slogan. It gives Starmer some space to attack Johnson without being seen to throw in his hat with rejoiners. But it's not enough, at best it's serving to defuse an issue rather than itself serving as a reason to vote Labour.
"Tory corruption" also seems to be gaining a bit of resonance. As well it should, after 250 of them decided that the corrupt actions of an individual MP were not worthy of censure.
Portugal has the highest vaccination rate, Sweden has spent less time under draconian restrictions than the UK. The UK's COVID death toll isn't great. I'd have our response to the virus as overall average to good, I don't think we can lay a claim to be "the best" though.
It’s not particularly enjoyable to watch PB turn into a slagging match where posters round on each other.
A good swedge is a pb.com highlight. Particularly if it's a tory blue-on-blue.
I would love to see one of them turn into an IRL punch up.
Yep, there's been quite a lot of blue-on-blue discord on here recently. Put Big G, HYUFD and PT in the same room and it would be mayhem.
By contrast, the red-on-red action has been pretty tame - just BJO switching sides. As for the yellows, well, they just don't bother arguing with one another.
I think this is a metaphor for wider issues of party unity.
Remember BigG and PT both voted for Blair though unlike me, if Labour got into government again and the Conservatives went into opposition I could see at least BigG shifting back to Labour or the LDs again
Thank you for proving my point!
Remember I spent 13 years campaigning and voting for the Conservatives in opposition, eventually the cycle will turn again but I will still be voting for and backing the blues.
Just out of interest how old are you @HYUFD ? That comment puts you over 40 if you could vote in 97. I don't know why but I imagined you as late 20s or early 30s. My guess wasn't actually based on anything really.
I am just under 40, I could not vote in 1997 but I did canvass with a friend's mother who was a local Tory member.
I attended my first campaign rally in 1992 for Major in rural Gravesham when he was on his soapbox and have been involved campaigning for the Conservatives in some capacity in every general election since
Life begins at 40. Ask yourself what your values and principles are, then look at the party you are attached to like a limpet and realise you parted ways morally a long time before.
If you are a Majorite Tory why are you condoning Borisite blue Labour policies that you have opposed all this time? What is the point in you keeping Labour out only to do what Labour do? If you are a Majorite Tory why condone outrageous corruption?
That moment of absolute clarity when you realise the party is beneath you and you walk away is golden. I hope you enjoy it - and the personal cleansing of your own morality - as much as I did.
I am not a Majorite Tory, I am just a Tory.
I have campaigned for Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May and Boris (and briefly met Thatcher once at a reception)
And the rest? You'll back your party regardless of what it does or how it clashes with your own principles because it's your party?
Like a football team in other words.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
But that is the point. However difficult it might be to reach your limit of what you could accept from them, you have a limit, everyone surely does. It will vary, but since parties demonstrably change in significant ways, there could, in theory at least, be a point where the name exists but nothing else, and if that was the case you wouldn't back that presumably.
People just disagree about the point at which a party 'leaves them' in that way.
Britain offers a warning of what happens when a country ignores Covid.
Very interesting. Lots in there to chew over. Perhaps a huge factor is the Brits have relegated it in their minds to just one of those things. Brings to mind the Eddie Izzard sketch about the suspect package. People just incorporate it into their daily routine.
I doubt if you asked 100 people more than five of them would be able to give yesterday's number of cases and deaths.
Portugal has the highest vaccination rate, Sweden has spent less time under draconian restrictions than the UK. The UK's COVID death toll isn't great. I'd have our response to the virus as overall average to good, I don't think we can lay a claim to be "the best" though.
Being the worse is certainly not supported by the data (overall deaths rather than death rate does not count, since places doing very well shown as bad on that if they are a big country), so when people go down that route its easy to ignore. But we don't seem near the top of the pack either, certainly.
Portugal has the highest vaccination rate, Sweden has spent less time under draconian restrictions than the UK. The UK's COVID death toll isn't great. I'd have our response to the virus as overall average to good, I don't think we can lay a claim to be "the best" though.
Definitely middling, absolute cock ups in some areas (e.g., nursing homes), but good elsewhere.
It's an interesting moment. To do a 'Blair' again Labour have to do two jobs. The first is being gifted to them - to portray the government as mired in sleaze and all that, and keep it up for the next two years.
The second is to have a broad leadership which exudes competence and clarity, and beyond doubt has better policies on offer on the subjects that are big for the key voters.
These are things like post-Brexit strategy and vision, housing, transport, education, jobs, debt, deficit, interest rates, inflation, tax, NHS, social care, defence, the union, migration, CO2, free speech, taming the extremes of left and right, terrorism and so on.
Because they are so behind in this they still have little chance of winning, and only a even chance of leading the next government. They should be 20 points ahead.
Where are the killer three word slogans?
Make Brexit Work
Keir is sticking to this and needs to have his front bench team hammering it in every interview. We are where we are. The EU is the past, our trading relationship the future. We need to Make Brexit Work to deliver the hope that people have for our future however they voted.
At the moment too much of the message is "Brexit doesn't work and you are stupid". Change it to "Brexit doesn't work, but it could" and its a mirror held up to Tory failure to deliver. More so if we embark on a trade war.
Make Brexit Work'
BREXIT ISN'T WORKING
is a killer slogan. Reminds everyone of the demographic that matters of the crushing Saatchi and Saatchi 1979 poster: Labour isn't working.
It tells it like it is but, as you say, doesn't make out people were stupid in the first place.
The response to make Brexit work is just how and will that include free movement of labour
Starmer to be fair yesterday ruled out re-joining the EU so he will need a clear policy on how he is to make it work, not just soundbites
Why should he as Leader of the Opposition have a policy on it, Big G, when the government doesn't have one.
Interesting point - the field work on this poll was Oct 29 - Nov 4 so much of it was *before* Paterson row dominated headlines (debate was Nov 3, U-turn Nov 4). Next one should be fascinating...
It was mostly taken before Paterson's resignation though
So are you expecting Cons sub 30% at the next sampling?
No, I expect now the issue has faded the Conservatives may rebound a little
Boris is at a hospital in the North East and JRM has gone into hiding with apparently Steve Barclay facing off Starmer
The most interesting part of this afternoon debate is not Starmer's open goal but just how many conservative mps come out and attack the decision to try to keep Paterson in place
I would just suggest to red wall mps, come out and fight for decency and show Boris he is on notice to clean up his act or go
What makes you clain JRM has gone into hiding?. Do you have any evidence bar the fact that he isn't there. ?
Leader of the house on a debate about the discipline procedures within the house. You would expect anyone so closely involved to be attending the debate.
Missing the point again. You claim he has gone into hiding with no evidence to back up your assertion bar the fact that he isn't there. A sort of general smear.
Sort of reverse Jezza: I was not present at debate but I think I was involved.
It’s not particularly enjoyable to watch PB turn into a slagging match where posters round on each other.
A good swedge is a pb.com highlight. Particularly if it's a tory blue-on-blue.
I would love to see one of them turn into an IRL punch up.
Yep, there's been quite a lot of blue-on-blue discord on here recently. Put Big G, HYUFD and PT in the same room and it would be mayhem.
By contrast, the red-on-red action has been pretty tame - just BJO switching sides. As for the yellows, well, they just don't bother arguing with one another.
I think this is a metaphor for wider issues of party unity.
Remember BigG and PT both voted for Blair though unlike me, if Labour got into government again and the Conservatives went into opposition I could see at least BigG shifting back to Labour or the LDs again
Thank you for proving my point!
Remember I spent 13 years campaigning and voting for the Conservatives in opposition, eventually the cycle will turn again but I will still be voting for and backing the blues.
Just out of interest how old are you @HYUFD ? That comment puts you over 40 if you could vote in 97. I don't know why but I imagined you as late 20s or early 30s. My guess wasn't actually based on anything really.
I am just under 40, I could not vote in 1997 but I did canvass with a friend's mother who was a local Tory member.
I attended my first campaign rally in 1992 for Major in rural Gravesham when he was on his soapbox and have been involved campaigning for the Conservatives in some capacity in every general election since
Life begins at 40. Ask yourself what your values and principles are, then look at the party you are attached to like a limpet and realise you parted ways morally a long time before.
If you are a Majorite Tory why are you condoning Borisite blue Labour policies that you have opposed all this time? What is the point in you keeping Labour out only to do what Labour do? If you are a Majorite Tory why condone outrageous corruption?
That moment of absolute clarity when you realise the party is beneath you and you walk away is golden. I hope you enjoy it - and the personal cleansing of your own morality - as much as I did.
I am not a Majorite Tory, I am just a Tory.
I have campaigned for Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May and Boris (and briefly met Thatcher once at a reception)
And the rest? You'll back your party regardless of what it does or how it clashes with your own principles because it's your party?
Like a football team in other words.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Not even that, as you voted for Corbyn too
Yes, but his demerits were intellect, leadership skills, dogmatism. I saw no charlatan there. He wasn't devoid of integrity. I'm talking about a left wing BoJo equivalent, if one can imagine such a thing. That would probably see me voting LD or Green.
Interesting point - the field work on this poll was Oct 29 - Nov 4 so much of it was *before* Paterson row dominated headlines (debate was Nov 3, U-turn Nov 4). Next one should be fascinating...
It was mostly taken before Paterson's resignation though
So are you expecting Cons sub 30% at the next sampling?
No, I expect now the issue has faded the Conservatives may rebound a little
Boris is at a hospital in the North East and JRM has gone into hiding with apparently Steve Barclay facing off Starmer
The most interesting part of this afternoon debate is not Starmer's open goal but just how many conservative mps come out and attack the decision to try to keep Paterson in place
I would just suggest to red wall mps, come out and fight for decency and show Boris he is on notice to clean up his act or go
What makes you clain JRM has gone into hiding?. Do you have any evidence bar the fact that he isn't there. ?
Leader of the house on a debate about the discipline procedures within the house. You would expect anyone so closely involved to be attending the debate.
He would probably argue that the Leader of the House is not actually the leader of the House in any sense, not responsible for standards. But he is responsible for organising government and commons business, facilitating motions and debates etc, so he is in fact very relevant to what went down.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Yes. It would be absurd and possibly counter-productive at the ballot box for Labour to go for a populist charlatan as leader.
Interesting point - the field work on this poll was Oct 29 - Nov 4 so much of it was *before* Paterson row dominated headlines (debate was Nov 3, U-turn Nov 4). Next one should be fascinating...
It was mostly taken before Paterson's resignation though
So are you expecting Cons sub 30% at the next sampling?
No, I expect now the issue has faded the Conservatives may rebound a little
Boris is at a hospital in the North East and JRM has gone into hiding with apparently Steve Barclay facing off Starmer
The most interesting part of this afternoon debate is not Starmer's open goal but just how many conservative mps come out and attack the decision to try to keep Paterson in place
I would just suggest to red wall mps, come out and fight for decency and show Boris he is on notice to clean up his act or go
What makes you clain JRM has gone into hiding?. Do you have any evidence bar the fact that he isn't there. ?
Leader of the house on a debate about the discipline procedures within the house. You would expect anyone so closely involved to be attending the debate.
Missing the point again. You claim he has gone into hiding with no evidence to back up your assertion bar the fact that he isn't there. A sort of general smear.
Sort of reverse Jezza: I was not present at debate but I think I was involved.
I think most people have struggled to follow Covid-19 trends since the summer. Cases were going up lots, then fell, then went up again, then fell a bit, then went up by quite a lot and people were talking of Plan B, and are now falling again.
All of which while we have had no restrictions in place.
I don't think you can blame ordinary people for not understanding what is happening at any given point in time.
It’s not particularly enjoyable to watch PB turn into a slagging match where posters round on each other.
A good swedge is a pb.com highlight. Particularly if it's a tory blue-on-blue.
I would love to see one of them turn into an IRL punch up.
Yep, there's been quite a lot of blue-on-blue discord on here recently. Put Big G, HYUFD and PT in the same room and it would be mayhem.
By contrast, the red-on-red action has been pretty tame - just BJO switching sides. As for the yellows, well, they just don't bother arguing with one another.
I think this is a metaphor for wider issues of party unity.
Remember BigG and PT both voted for Blair though unlike me, if Labour got into government again and the Conservatives went into opposition I could see at least BigG shifting back to Labour or the LDs again
Thank you for proving my point!
Remember I spent 13 years campaigning and voting for the Conservatives in opposition, eventually the cycle will turn again but I will still be voting for and backing the blues.
Just out of interest how old are you @HYUFD ? That comment puts you over 40 if you could vote in 97. I don't know why but I imagined you as late 20s or early 30s. My guess wasn't actually based on anything really.
I am just under 40, I could not vote in 1997 but I did canvass with a friend's mother who was a local Tory member.
I attended my first campaign rally in 1992 for Major in rural Gravesham when he was on his soapbox and have been involved campaigning for the Conservatives in some capacity in every general election since
Life begins at 40. Ask yourself what your values and principles are, then look at the party you are attached to like a limpet and realise you parted ways morally a long time before.
If you are a Majorite Tory why are you condoning Borisite blue Labour policies that you have opposed all this time? What is the point in you keeping Labour out only to do what Labour do? If you are a Majorite Tory why condone outrageous corruption?
That moment of absolute clarity when you realise the party is beneath you and you walk away is golden. I hope you enjoy it - and the personal cleansing of your own morality - as much as I did.
I am not a Majorite Tory, I am just a Tory.
I have campaigned for Major, Hague, IDS, Howard, Cameron, May and Boris (and briefly met Thatcher once at a reception)
And the rest? You'll back your party regardless of what it does or how it clashes with your own principles because it's your party?
Like a football team in other words.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Not even that, as you voted for Corbyn too
Yes, but his demerits were intellect, leadership skills, dogmatism. I saw no charlatan there. He wasn't devoid of integrity. I'm talking about a left wing BoJo equivalent, if one can imagine such a thing. That would probably see me voting LD or Green.
Is claiming to be present but not involved at a meeting of people celebrating the massacre of Jewish athletes at the Olympic Games a teensy bit charlatanish?
Friend is quite an optimistic term for someone you just fleeced - in any case a very good friend to allow you to dial the bet up and down so much. Hope they pay out.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Can I go for a middle ground between 'way down the list in order of importance' and 'really very important'? It's quite important, along with other measures. It's definitely not the only thing of importance - we clearly wouldn't lock down the whole country to prevent 'just one death', so for all of us its a balancing act between health outcomes and impacts. But it's one of the best measures for comparing between countries, as rates of testing etc vary so wildly. Excess deaths is a much better measure than headline deaths from covid, for reasons well rehearsed. Even here though, there will be aspects beyond the ability of different governments to influence in the timescale of a pandemic, like demographic structure, general levels of health, etc, as well as issues like climate and geography which we still don't fully understand the impact of.
By excess deaths, the UK has so far done quite poorly, though many others have done much worse still. Nor has the UK done that well on limiting the impacts on its citizens lives - these things are difficult to compare, because there are so many aspects to restrictions which have been put in place, but we in the UK have been hit pretty hard by restrictions on our lives. However, this isn't over yet - the UK would appear to be, if not out of the woods yet, to have the edge of the woods in sight both in respect of health impacts and restrictions on people's lives. Many other countries, particularly our neighbours in Europe, still have restrictions where we do not (which is both a negative in absolute terms but will have an economic impact too) - so the balance of 'who has done best on restrictions' is tilting back again towards the UK (as I said earlier, who has done 'best' on this measure will rarely be possible to say for sure). Worryingly, it looks like excess deaths are heading upwards on mainland Europe too again, relative to ours.
"The poll was largely conducted before the Owen Paterson sleaze scandal exploded at Westminster."
More troubles to come for the Tories.
The optics of his and Rees-Mogg's absence are terrible again today, just like the "storm in a teacup" yesterday. I'm starting to wonder if Johnson is actually incapable of the kind sober and sombre, "responsibility" course-correction and mood music which would be the default response in this situation for many politicians.
It's almost as if his whole premiership has been predicated on the idea that his brand of trolling, nudge-winking arrogance would always win the day and sail through, and now in these new circumstances he doesn't know quite what to do, or have an alternative gear to choose from.
If so, he could be out and gone much more quickly than some expect.
Fun fact, as the Leader of the Commons is also the Lord President of the Council, a Great Officer of State, there are apparently 9 such officers - the most senior is nominally the Lord High Steward, but this has apparently been vacant since 1421, only filled ad hoc at coronations. And I thought the vestiges of the hereditary peers sticking around for 20 years was bad.
Wiki says that Raab as Lord High Chancellor nominally outranks the PM.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Why?
Because the only valid method (and even this isn't 100% accurate) that can be used to measure deaths will be excess deaths (as there is no consistent definition of what is a Covid death).
Portugal has the highest vaccination rate, Sweden has spent less time under draconian restrictions than the UK. The UK's COVID death toll isn't great. I'd have our response to the virus as overall average to good, I don't think we can lay a claim to be "the best" though.
Definitely middling, absolute cock ups in some areas (e.g., nursing homes), but good elsewhere.
As I noted if there is any justice in the world then Jodie Comer's performance in Help should be enough on its own to bring the government down.
"The poll was largely conducted before the Owen Paterson sleaze scandal exploded at Westminster."
More troubles to come for the Tories.
The optics of his and Rees-Mogg's absence are terrible again today, just like the "storm in a teacup" yesterday. I'm starting to wonder if Johnson is actually incapable of a sober and sombre, "responsibility" course-correction here which would be the obvious move for many politicians.
It's almost as if his whole premiership has been predicated on the idea that his brand of trolling, nudge-winking arrogance would always win the day and sail through, and now he just doesn't have an alternate gear and know quite what to do.
If so, he could be out and gone much more quickly than some expect.
Thing is, just like with the Brillo (non-)interview if he doesn't do it he doesn't do it and everyone moves on without having seen an evisceration. For Boris that was therefore a win. As he no doubt believes this is also.
Portugal has the highest vaccination rate, Sweden has spent less time under draconian restrictions than the UK. The UK's COVID death toll isn't great. I'd have our response to the virus as overall average to good, I don't think we can lay a claim to be "the best" though.
Definitely middling, absolute cock ups in some areas (e.g., nursing homes), but good elsewhere.
As I noted if there is any justice in the world then Jodie Comer's performance in Help should be enough on its own to bring the government down.
It's an interesting moment. To do a 'Blair' again Labour have to do two jobs. The first is being gifted to them - to portray the government as mired in sleaze and all that, and keep it up for the next two years.
The second is to have a broad leadership which exudes competence and clarity, and beyond doubt has better policies on offer on the subjects that are big for the key voters.
These are things like post-Brexit strategy and vision, housing, transport, education, jobs, debt, deficit, interest rates, inflation, tax, NHS, social care, defence, the union, migration, CO2, free speech, taming the extremes of left and right, terrorism and so on.
Because they are so behind in this they still have little chance of winning, and only a even chance of leading the next government. They should be 20 points ahead.
Where are the killer three word slogans?
Make Brexit Work
Keir is sticking to this and needs to have his front bench team hammering it in every interview. We are where we are. The EU is the past, our trading relationship the future. We need to Make Brexit Work to deliver the hope that people have for our future however they voted.
At the moment too much of the message is "Brexit doesn't work and you are stupid". Change it to "Brexit doesn't work, but it could" and its a mirror held up to Tory failure to deliver. More so if we embark on a trade war.
Make Brexit Work'
BREXIT ISN'T WORKING
is a killer slogan. Reminds everyone of the demographic that matters of the crushing Saatchi and Saatchi 1979 poster: Labour isn't working.
It tells it like it is but, as you say, doesn't make out people were stupid in the first place.
The response to make Brexit work is just how and will that include free movement of labour
Starmer to be fair yesterday ruled out re-joining the EU so he will need a clear policy on how he is to make it work, not just soundbites
Why should he as Leader of the Opposition have a policy on it, Big G, when the government doesn't have one.
HMG has a policy of agreeing trade deals and moving on
Of course the opposition has to have a policy on how they would tackle the issues, especially if they want to win over conservative voters
Portugal has the highest vaccination rate, Sweden has spent less time under draconian restrictions than the UK. The UK's COVID death toll isn't great. I'd have our response to the virus as overall average to good, I don't think we can lay a claim to be "the best" though.
Definitely middling, absolute cock ups in some areas (e.g., nursing homes), but good elsewhere.
As I noted if there is any justice in the world then Jodie Comer's performance in Help should be enough on its own to bring the government down.
Apparently the quote is based on dividing current hospital levels by the lowest number since the pandemic began. Which as a basis for the quote and the subsequent reporting is in flat out lie territory.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Why?
Because the only valid method (and even this isn't 100% accurate) that can be used to measure deaths will be excess deaths (as there is no consistent definition of what is a Covid death).
Completely agreed that excess deaths are the only valid measure of measuring deaths.
That wasn't my question though. My question was why deaths is more important than restrictions on life?
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
Some examples might be useful. It might be they are enjoying schadenfreude, rather than taking delight in the suffering of others.
Ms. Heathener, but it implies that the Labour Party will advocate rejoining.
And while that will enthuse some (almost all of whom would vote Labour anyway) it would antagonize more people, both those who wanted us out, and those who are lukewarm either way but do not want to return to a referendum and, potentially, even more negotiating.
They won't, Starmer would largely campaign on closer alignment to the SM and CU in terms of regulations and to appease the SNP and LDs who he would need to become PM. However he would also likely campaign to keep the current points system with maybe a bit more leeway in shortage areas, to win over the Redwall
I think you mean the Red Wall.
Winning over Redwall would require a very different set of priorities. Mostly about being kind of small rodents.
"The poll was largely conducted before the Owen Paterson sleaze scandal exploded at Westminster."
More troubles to come for the Tories.
The optics of his and Rees-Mogg's absence are terrible again today, just like the "storm in a teacup" yesterday. I'm starting to wonder if Johnson is actually incapable of the kind sober and sombre, "responsibility" course-correction and mood music which would be the default response in this situation for many politicians.
It's almost as if his whole premiership has been predicated on the idea that his brand of trolling, nudge-winking arrogance would always win the day and sail through, and now in these new circumstances he doesn't know quite what to do, or have an alternative gear to choose from.
If so, he could be out and gone much more quickly than some expect.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Why?
Because the only valid method (and even this isn't 100% accurate) that can be used to measure deaths will be excess deaths (as there is no consistent definition of what is a Covid death).
Completely agreed that excess deaths are the only valid measure of measuring deaths.
That wasn't my question though. My question was why deaths is more important than restrictions on life?
Death is important, but life is more important.
Ultimately the only deaths count viewpoint is that the restrictions had no real cost. The alternative extreme would be that 6 months in lockdown for 60m people is worth 30m lost years of life.
Given the average age of people who sadly passed away, you don't have to put a very high percentage weight on the cost of restrictions to bring it in to parity with the years of life directly lost.
This was a vitally important issue that required an immediate response from the government, but is also a storm in a teacup that no one important needs to bother themselves with?
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
I've put the bit that shows you don't understand what was done and why in bold. You can't "catch up" when the whole point of what we did — ordering everything, early approval, and stretched dose intervals — was to deliver vaccine to as many people as possible as early as possible.
Apparently the quote is based on dividing current hospital levels by the lowest number since the pandemic began. Which as a basis for the quote and the subsequent reporting is in flat out lie territory.
The problem is a divergence between narrative and fact. In which case the narrative takes precedence over facts.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Why?
Because the only valid method (and even this isn't 100% accurate) that can be used to measure deaths will be excess deaths (as there is no consistent definition of what is a Covid death).
Completely agreed that excess deaths are the only valid measure of measuring deaths.
That wasn't my question though. My question was why deaths is more important than restrictions on life?
Death is important, but life is more important.
Ultimately the only deaths count viewpoint is that the restrictions had no real cost. The alternative extreme would be that 6 months in lockdown for 60m people is worth 30m lost years of life.
Given the average age of people who sadly passed away, you don't have to put a very high percentage weight on the cost of restrictions to bring it in to parity with the years of life directly lost.
Again that isn't a valid measurement. If the lockdown hadn't occurred up to the point that the vaccinations arrive, covid was going to swamp our health service.
And that would have resulted in a lot of people aged 50+ dying because it's possible no medical treatment would have been available.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
I've put the bit that shows you don't understand what was done and why in bold. You can't "catch up" when the whole point of what we did — ordering everything, early approval, and stretched dose intervals — was to deliver vaccine to as many people as possible as early as possible.
Yes, it's either a silly or disingenuous point. Otherwise, to take the extreme example, getting 1% higher than us done, but in 5 years, would be 'surpassing'.
It's great that places have now got even more done, and we should aim to be top in that respect and push even more, but the problem at hand was no one was vaccinated, and our response managed to get a massive number done early. Which given where we were wave wise, is a damn good thing. That isn't changed by others getting .1% more done or whatever.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Yes. It would be absurd and possibly counter-productive at the ballot box for Labour to go for a populist charlatan as leader.
Thankfully they never have. Ditto the Cons until this one. On which topic, charlatans, perhaps it would be useful for people to see my relative Integrity rankings for the PMs in my adult lifetime. Where Integrity = How honest and driven by sense of service to the nation. It goes -
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Well, Philip, you have said some really dumb things in th emany many hours you spend on here pointlessly defending the pointless, but this one tops the lot in terms of ignorance:
"HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe."
If any other country handled the pandemic better then please name any other country in Europe that was able to drop all legal restrictions before the UK?
If they'd done better, they'd have been able to do so. Who was it?
Well, that's just begging the question. Why is dropping all legal restrictions the hallmark of success? Deaths per population seems like a much more obvious number! Or one could look at economic output, or costs of government intervention... lots of different metrics are apparent.
It also seems silly to conflate different sorts of restrictions. Total lockdown is very different from, say, making people where masks on public transport. If a country still has a public transport mask mandate, I'm not going to view them as a failure if they have far fewer cases.
By the way, you remember the War on Drugs? Portugal dropped most legal restrictions on drugs. Does that mean Portugal had the best handling of the War on Drugs?
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Why?
Because the only valid method (and even this isn't 100% accurate) that can be used to measure deaths will be excess deaths (as there is no consistent definition of what is a Covid death).
Completely agreed that excess deaths are the only valid measure of measuring deaths.
That wasn't my question though. My question was why deaths is more important than restrictions on life?
Death is important, but life is more important.
Ultimately the only deaths count viewpoint is that the restrictions had no real cost. The alternative extreme would be that 6 months in lockdown for 60m people is worth 30m lost years of life.
Given the average age of people who sadly passed away, you don't have to put a very high percentage weight on the cost of restrictions to bring it in to parity with the years of life directly lost.
Again that isn't a valid measurement. If the lockdown hadn't occurred up to the point that the vaccinations arrive, covid was going to swamp our health service.
And that would have resulted in a lot of people aged 50+ dying because it's possible no medical treatment would have been available.
We just don't know that. It seems that there would have been an almighty strain but we don't know about swamped. Going into an extremely mild spring and summer rather than the dead of winter and, as OGH Junior reminds us constantly, people would have modified their behaviour.
So we don't know what it would have done to the health service. Ask the Graun and every winter our health service is swamped.
Meanwhile the corollary of lockdown - the NHS closing for non-Covid conditions - is going to result in tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths from treatment not provided.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Why?
Because the only valid method (and even this isn't 100% accurate) that can be used to measure deaths will be excess deaths (as there is no consistent definition of what is a Covid death).
Completely agreed that excess deaths are the only valid measure of measuring deaths.
That wasn't my question though. My question was why deaths is more important than restrictions on life?
Death is important, but life is more important.
Ultimately the only deaths count viewpoint is that the restrictions had no real cost. The alternative extreme would be that 6 months in lockdown for 60m people is worth 30m lost years of life.
Given the average age of people who sadly passed away, you don't have to put a very high percentage weight on the cost of restrictions to bring it in to parity with the years of life directly lost.
Absolutely agreed.
Restrictions to get us through to vaccinations were arguably justifiable, but only just, for me.
Restrictions post-vaccines are absolutely ridiculous.
The tens of millions of lost years of life due to restrictions need considering far more than has been done so far.
To defend H here since I'm feeling robust and contrarian today. I think it's possible to be a lifelong Tory, come what may, without loss of integrity. Eg if your politics is driven by an aversion to the left you'll always support the only party of the right with a chance of government, ie the Cons. This is me too but in the opposite way. I've supported every iteration of Labour since I first got interested in politics as a teenager. Why? Because they're the only party of the left with a chance of government. I'm Labour like a football team in this sense. Callaghan, yes. Foot, yes. Kinnock, yes. Blair, yes. Brown, yes. Miliband, yes. Corbyn, yes. And now Starmer - Yes. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and I only joined in 2017, but my vote can be counted on. The one and only thing that could stop me voting Labour would be if we went for a populist charlatan as leader.
Yes. It would be absurd and possibly counter-productive at the ballot box for Labour to go for a populist charlatan as leader.
Thankfully they never have. Ditto the Cons until this one. On which topic, charlatans, perhaps it would be useful for people to see my relative Integrity rankings for the PMs in my adult lifetime. Where Integrity = How honest and driven by sense of service to the nation. It goes -
"Flustered Boris Johnson today claimed there is 'nothing more to say' about the Owen Paterson case and refused to apologise as he was monstered for ducking a Commons showdown."
Wow ; I don't think he'll last long, if he continues like this.
Maybe he just has no other gear other than arrogance.
Yes, it's either a silly or disingenuous point. Otherwise, to take the extreme example, getting 1% higher than us done, but in 5 years, would be 'surpassing'.
It's great that places have now got even more done, and we should aim to be top in that respect and push even more, but the problem at hand was no one was vaccinated, and our response managed to get a massive number done early. Which given where we were wave wise, is a damn good thing. That isn't changed by others getting .1% more done or whatever.
Actually I don't think he was being silly or disingenous, he's simply one of the vast majority of people who don't understand what we were doing. It's the difference between speed (how soon you can vaccinate people) and capacity (how many people can you vaccinate). We were focussed on the former. You can't beat what we were trying to do without a time machine.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Double the deaths per capita of Germany, higher than France, Portugal, Spain etc.? Compare us to EU countries, we'd be 18th out of 28 on that metric.
A fair-minded commentator would not exclude that pretty important way of looking at the overall success of our handling of it.
Its way down the list in order of importance.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
Philip, no. The overall death rate is really very important. I'm a little sad that I even need to assert this.
Why?
Because the only valid method (and even this isn't 100% accurate) that can be used to measure deaths will be excess deaths (as there is no consistent definition of what is a Covid death).
Completely agreed that excess deaths are the only valid measure of measuring deaths.
That wasn't my question though. My question was why deaths is more important than restrictions on life?
Death is important, but life is more important.
Dying greatly restricts your ability to live, on a permanent basis. I'm surprised you were unaware of this.
Euro narrative about to switch from worrying about cases, to point out how cases are not really the important factor.
5..4..3..2..
That would neatly mirror the Brexity narrative changing from "cases aren't important" to "look at all those cases!", so...
Why would they change their tune on that? Cases don't matter as long as it isn't leading to a big uptick in hospitalisations/deaths. Calling commentators out on their hypocrisy, however....
A few HAVE been trumpeting the rise in cases in recent days. Delighting in it, even.
Really, people have been delighting in it?
Seems that way to me.
There's no delight in the people of Europe being let down by their politicians being unable to tell the scientists to get fucked. They're in for a pretty tough winter of lockdowns and not being able to see family and friends over Christmas. The fault is with their weak politicians not being able to withstand a few bad headlines over the deaths of vaccine refusers.
Our politicians are of course, absolutely tickety-boo! Silly old foreigners. What they need is a load of Boris Johnsons or Owen Pattersons to show them how strong and principled politicians operate!
He was clearly talking about their response to the current stage of pandemic, rather than in general.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has not exactly been anything to gloat about. And before you say The Vaccine Programme", (which the rest of the developed world has largely caught up and surpassed us), perhaps we should remember Churchill's quote "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes". That ought to be on Johnson's political epitaph.
HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe.
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
Well, Philip, you have said some really dumb things in th emany many hours you spend on here pointlessly defending the pointless, but this one tops the lot in terms of ignorance:
"HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe."
If any other country handled the pandemic better then please name any other country in Europe that was able to drop all legal restrictions before the UK?
If they'd done better, they'd have been able to do so. Who was it?
Well, that's just begging the question. Why is dropping all legal restrictions the hallmark of success? Deaths per population seems like a much more obvious number! Or one could look at economic output, or costs of government intervention... lots of different metrics are apparent.
It also seems silly to conflate different sorts of restrictions. Total lockdown is very different from, say, making people where masks on public transport. If a country still has a public transport mask mandate, I'm not going to view them as a failure if they have far fewer cases.
By the way, you remember the War on Drugs? Portugal dropped most legal restrictions on drugs. Does that mean Portugal had the best handling of the War on Drugs?
Years lost due to excess deaths, and years lost due to restrictions, which is higher?
Every month of restrictions is equivalent to 5.5 million lost years of life. So there'd need to be a shit-tonne more deaths than there have been to justify any restrictions at all.
Yes dropping restrictions is the only thing that matters post-vaccines.
Portugal has the highest vaccination rate, Sweden has spent less time under draconian restrictions than the UK. The UK's COVID death toll isn't great. I'd have our response to the virus as overall average to good, I don't think we can lay a claim to be "the best" though.
Definitely middling, absolute cock ups in some areas (e.g., nursing homes), but good elsewhere.
here's my "well, quite" post of the day.
come back in March 2022 (if not 2023) rather than following daily figures.
Comments
Nice one.
Starmer to be fair yesterday ruled out re-joining the EU so he will need a clear policy on how he is to make it work, not just soundbites
We've been able to be out of restrictions for five months and counting now, while almost no other nation in Europe has been. We've got herd immunity with zero restrictions and are going into the winter able to live our lives while other countries are now contemplating lockdown.
The two biggest issues of the pandemic have been the vaccines and when to drop restrictions. The UK has got both of those big calls right; facilitated by the vaccine rollout being able to drop all restrictions in the summer and having our exit wave over and done with before winter flu hits was absolutely the right call.
They were just rather hoping the British public wouldn't twig. Now they have.
Only Remoaner Quislings bother learning the meaning of furrin words.
Definition of schadenfreude
: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others
"HMG's handling of the pandemic has been the best in Europe."
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
But not with any substantive points, because even you know I'm right.
That's why "Make Brexit Work" is better. Can Labour convince Leave voters to trust them to do so?
And while that will enthuse some (almost all of whom would vote Labour anyway) it would antagonize more people, both those who wanted us out, and those who are lukewarm either way but do not want to return to a referendum and, potentially, even more negotiating.
If they'd done better, they'd have been able to do so. Who was it?
"The poll was largely conducted before the Owen Paterson sleaze scandal exploded at Westminster."
Leaving it there.
It's about overt and subliminal messaging. If you hammer home what most everyone now realises, namely that Brexit isn't working, Boris Johnson goes down with it.
Life is more important than death. How many months have they wasted under legal restrictions? How many lives equivalent is that?
I think the strategy is right, but the implementation is unlikely to convince in time for the next GE.
I will listen very carefully to labour's offering at the next GE
But they cocked up on vaccines of course.
Had they come through the pandemic without having to reverse track then yes absolutely they'd have been the best by far, but they didn't, did they?
It's reasonable to think in terms of the quality of life, and of how that would be impaired by extraordinary restrictions on daily life.
When we were in an emergency it was appropriate to take emergency measures in response, but it's not reasonable to chase the risk all the way to zero with emergency measures.
Everyone dies. Life is a terminal condition, the question is what you do while alive. Imprisoning innocent people in order to save the lives of a few people who are going to die anyway isn't OK.
We dropped restrictions too late. I was advocating for restrictions to be lifted months before they were. But better late than never and they were lifted far before anyone else. Who else responsibly or otherwise lifted them first?
"Tory corruption" also seems to be gaining a bit of resonance. As well it should, after 250 of them decided that the corrupt actions of an individual MP were not worthy of censure.
More pithy slogans are needed though.
I'd have our response to the virus as overall average to good, I don't think we can lay a claim to be "the best" though.
People just disagree about the point at which a party 'leaves them' in that way.
I doubt if you asked 100 people more than five of them would be able to give yesterday's number of cases and deaths.
And the bet was with a friend of mine.
All of which while we have had no restrictions in place.
I don't think you can blame ordinary people for not understanding what is happening at any given point in time.
Even here though, there will be aspects beyond the ability of different governments to influence in the timescale of a pandemic, like demographic structure, general levels of health, etc, as well as issues like climate and geography which we still don't fully understand the impact of.
By excess deaths, the UK has so far done quite poorly, though many others have done much worse still. Nor has the UK done that well on limiting the impacts on its citizens lives - these things are difficult to compare, because there are so many aspects to restrictions which have been put in place, but we in the UK have been hit pretty hard by restrictions on our lives.
However, this isn't over yet - the UK would appear to be, if not out of the woods yet, to have the edge of the woods in sight both in respect of health impacts and restrictions on people's lives. Many other countries, particularly our neighbours in Europe, still have restrictions where we do not (which is both a negative in absolute terms but will have an economic impact too) - so the balance of 'who has done best on restrictions' is tilting back again towards the UK (as I said earlier, who has done 'best' on this measure will rarely be possible to say for sure). Worryingly, it looks like excess deaths are heading upwards on mainland Europe too again, relative to ours.
The optics of his and Rees-Mogg's absence are terrible again today, just like the "storm in a teacup" yesterday. I'm starting to wonder if Johnson is actually incapable of the kind sober and sombre, "responsibility" course-correction and mood music which would be the default response in this situation for many politicians.
It's almost as if his whole premiership has been predicated on the idea that his brand of trolling, nudge-winking arrogance would always win the day and sail through, and now in these new circumstances he doesn't know quite what to do, or have an alternative gear to choose from.
If so, he could be out and gone much more quickly than some expect.
Wiki says that Raab as Lord High Chancellor nominally outranks the PM.
Of course the opposition has to have a policy on how they would tackle the issues, especially if they want to win over conservative voters
Apparently the quote is based on dividing current hospital levels by the lowest number since the pandemic began. Which as a basis for the quote and the subsequent reporting is in flat out lie territory.
That wasn't my question though. My question was why deaths is more important than restrictions on life?
Death is important, but life is more important.
Am I missing a subtle point here?
Winning over Redwall would require a very different set of priorities. Mostly about being kind of small rodents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwall
Given the average age of people who sadly passed away, you don't have to put a very high percentage weight on the cost of restrictions to bring it in to parity with the years of life directly lost.
And that would have resulted in a lot of people aged 50+ dying because it's possible no medical treatment would have been available.
It's great that places have now got even more done, and we should aim to be top in that respect and push even more, but the problem at hand was no one was vaccinated, and our response managed to get a massive number done early. Which given where we were wave wise, is a damn good thing. That isn't changed by others getting .1% more done or whatever.
Thatcher
Brown
May
Major
Blair
Cameron
Johnson.
It also seems silly to conflate different sorts of restrictions. Total lockdown is very different from, say, making people where masks on public transport. If a country still has a public transport mask mandate, I'm not going to view them as a failure if they have far fewer cases.
By the way, you remember the War on Drugs? Portugal dropped most legal restrictions on drugs. Does that mean Portugal had the best handling of the War on Drugs?
So we don't know what it would have done to the health service. Ask the Graun and every winter our health service is swamped.
Meanwhile the corollary of lockdown - the NHS closing for non-Covid conditions - is going to result in tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths from treatment not provided.
Restrictions to get us through to vaccinations were arguably justifiable, but only just, for me.
Restrictions post-vaccines are absolutely ridiculous.
The tens of millions of lost years of life due to restrictions need considering far more than has been done so far.
Wow ; I don't think he'll last long, if he continues like this.
Maybe he just has no other gear other than arrogance.
Actually I don't think he was being silly or disingenous, he's simply one of the vast majority of people who don't understand what we were doing. It's the difference between speed (how soon you can vaccinate people) and capacity (how many people can you vaccinate). We were focussed on the former. You can't beat what we were trying to do without a time machine.
Every month of restrictions is equivalent to 5.5 million lost years of life. So there'd need to be a shit-tonne more deaths than there have been to justify any restrictions at all.
Yes dropping restrictions is the only thing that matters post-vaccines.
come back in March 2022 (if not 2023) rather than following daily figures.