Not at all, that's garbage. The decision was made in this country to lift all legal restrictions, even face masks etc, which wasn't made in any other nation in the whole of Europe as far as I know. That is making a positive decision.
Its very easy to be a dreadful authoritarian like Jacinda and slamming your country into lockdown the second cases emerge, or to dither and delay dragging on restrictions like Merkel through the summer and the autumn. Actually taking the decision that restrictions will be lifted even if that means cases rise in the short-term, because its the right thing to do . . . thank goodness we had a PM "courageous" enough to make that decision.
Only need to look around the continent to see nations struggling as they head into winter to see what the alternative is. Thank goodness we dodged that bullet.
First, let's not forget how quickly Johnson imposed restrictions this time last year - indeed, the abortive attempts to lift restrictions during the autumn probably made matters worse.
I agree the New Zealand strategy of trying to eliminate all cases was unwise and now they have 80%+ doubly vaccinated, they are re-opening.
The thing the UK, Israel and a few others did right as to start vaccinating quickly and en masse - remember, this time last year no one had been vaccinated outside of trials. The 100 million or so individual vaccinations administered since then represent a triumph for the NHS and the Government.
Other countries were slower to start but have also accomplished their own mass vaccination programmes and they too will be able to ease restrictions as more vaccinations (including boosters) are administered.
With HS2, it should have either been cancelled completely or built completely. Building half of it looks weak.
With the rumoured announcement, it's like someone was asked given the parameters of what we are already building, how can we totally screw it up? Because I don't think they could have made a worse set of "cut backs" and continuations if they tried
An exhausting day for Boris: PMQs and all the prep beforehand, then the Liaison Committee where he is still being grilled by the chairs of Commons’ Committees, then he due to face Conservative MPs at 5pm for the “1922”.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
What evidence do you have that any decision was actually made by Boris "wait until there is only 1 option left on the table" Johnson?
Heck you only have to look back to last December to see how desperate Boris was to avoid making a decision.
Because he actually did make the decision to open up the country in July. Unlike every other country in Europe.
Too damned right the PM should be desperate to avoid putting the country into lockdown! How the heck are you using that as a weakness and not a strength.
Not quite - the decision wasn't so much to open up it was more the natural conclusion of that wave.
Not at all, that's garbage. The decision was made in this country to lift all legal restrictions, even face masks etc, which wasn't made in any other nation in the whole of Europe as far as I know. That is making a positive decision.
Its very easy to be a dreadful authoritarian like Jacinda and slamming your country into lockdown the second cases emerge, or to dither and delay dragging on restrictions like Merkel through the summer and the autumn. Actually taking the decision that restrictions will be lifted even if that means cases rise in the short-term, because its the right thing to do . . . thank goodness we had a PM "courageous" enough to make that decision.
Only need to look around the continent to see nations struggling as they head into winter to see what the alternative is. Thank goodness we dodged that bullet.
Hey, good to see The Clown's no1 fan/apologist is hard at it again today. You are Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf and I claim my £5.
Line for Pensioners now in total freefall - hurrah!
Log chart, so cases in over 65s have now very nearly halved in the last 4 weeks whilst the headline number has bounced around due to irrelevant school kid cases.
England only data, for over 65s.....
Comparing the two would suggest your chart is about to see 3 days of very steep falls unless Alex Selby's forward-cast calculations don't work out in this case.
That would be nice.
One thing that this epidemic has taught me is that a case model plus £2.50 will buy you... a coffee at Starbucks...
Ha quite, although worth noting this isn't really modelling per se, just filling in for late reporting. He's only quoting data up to the 15th, and based on usual trends that data is 90% + complete.
I.e. today in England there were 7,983 new cases for the 16th, 20,449 for the 15th, then only 677 for the 14th and fewer for each day after that. So the scope for a material change on the 15th or earlier is pretty limited.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
Helpful update from @PA: "The Government sought to clarify that it has not lost the minutes of a meeting between Randox and a health minister, only that it cannot find them at the moment."
Does that mean some poor bugger is trying to make them up from scratch ?
See my post at 3pm.
I once won a case because I idly looked at the metadata of a disclosed Word copy of meeting minutes allegedly created 8 months previously. They had been typed up by my oppo that morning. A demand for the notes they had been created from prompted a rapid settlement offer.
Don’t send documents as Word copies kids.
To be fair it takes 8 months sometimes in organisations to get around to writing minutes because (as someone who does it occasionally) they are fkin boring to do
Not that I have ever been in the position of retrospectively writing up minutes, but is the simple answer to PDF the documents? Or print them out and then 'scan' them with microsoft lens? That's what I do anyway so they can't be altered.
This explains why the Chief Whip let Sir Geoffrey Cox remote vote from the BVI.
A dozen Tory MPs including the chief whip cast proxy votes so that they could watch England at a football match during the summer, it has emerged.
Mark Spencer, the Tory chief whip, and Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, were among those who voted by proxy on July 7 while they attended the Euro 2020 semi-final at Wembley.
The system for proxy voting is under scrutiny after revelations that Sir Geoffrey Cox, the Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon, used it to vote while working as a lawyer in the Caribbean.
Four ministers and eight Tory backbenchers went to the England v Denmark semi-final while a vote on the EU settlement scheme was taking place.
As well as Spencer and Wallace, Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, and Nigel Adams, the minister without portfolio, were at the match.
A government official told Politico, which first reported the story, that proxy votes were being used by almost all MPs at the time to maintain social distancing in the Commons.
Most of the MPs who attended, including Spencer and Adams, did so after accepting free tickets sponsored by private companies.
Adams’s ticket to the game was provided by Entain, a gambling company, according to his register of interests, while Spencer’s was paid for by the Football Association.
The rules at the time stated that proxy votes may be used by MPs “who do not wish to vote in person for medical or public health reasons related to the pandemic”....
...The process has relied on “self-certification”, meaning it was taken on good faith that MPs had a valid reason to use a proxy. It was discontinued at the end of July as restrictions were lifted.
Helpful update from @PA: "The Government sought to clarify that it has not lost the minutes of a meeting between Randox and a health minister, only that it cannot find them at the moment."
Does that mean some poor bugger is trying to make them up from scratch ?
See my post at 3pm.
I once won a case because I idly looked at the metadata of a disclosed Word copy of meeting minutes allegedly created 8 months previously. They had been typed up by my oppo that morning. A demand for the notes they had been created from prompted a rapid settlement offer.
Don’t send documents as Word copies kids.
To be fair it takes 8 months sometimes in organisations to get around to writing minutes because (as someone who does it occasionally) they are fkin boring to do
Not that I have ever been in the position of retrospectively writing up minutes, but is the simple answer to PDF the documents? Or print them out and then 'scan' them with microsoft lens? That's what I do anyway so they can't be altered.
PDFs are remarkable easy to edit - the functionality is built into Word.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
Maybe, but the Labour Party is equally to blame. They gave us Corbyn and Corbyn allowed The Clown his chance. A choice between dumb and dumber. The electorate gets the clowns that it deserves perhaps?
Tobias Elwood pointing out that the Tories are gutting the armed forces. Johnson once again disagreeing and once again having the precise numbers from the budget quoted back at him. "Lets take the F35. You promised 138, we've got 48."
Johnson starts ridiculing Elwood - the days of tank battles are over. Its "now or never" for the armed forces, so lets invest. Elwood keeps batting away the rhetoric and quotes that we are CUTTING not investing.
Is there any subject where this clown knows the detail? He waffles on in flowerly language completely contradicting the reality.
If you check the news today, we are down to 47 F35s.
Actually, we are down to 20 - The delivered number was 21, IIRC.
The plan is to keep buying them gradually. The current purchased number is 48. Beyond that, a firm order hasn't been placed. I'm not sure when the deadline for purchasing aircraft beyond 48 will be.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
The counter argument to that one is that there are very few people you can fool all the time, and Boris is rapidly starting to loss the majority of people you can fool some of the time.
Line for Pensioners now in total freefall - hurrah!
Log chart, so cases in over 65s have now very nearly halved in the last 4 weeks whilst the headline number has bounced around due to irrelevant school kid cases.
England only data, for over 65s.....
Comparing the two would suggest your chart is about to see 3 days of very steep falls unless Alex Selby's forward-cast calculations don't work out in this case.
That would be nice.
One thing that this epidemic has taught me is that a case model plus £2.50 will buy you... a coffee at Starbucks...
Ha quite, although worth noting this isn't really modelling per se, just filling in for late reporting. He's only quoting data up to the 15th, and based on usual trends that data is 90% + complete.
I.e. today in England there were 7,983 new cases for the 16th, 20,449 for the 15th, then only 677 for the 14th and fewer for each day after that. So the scope for a material change on the 15th or earlier is pretty limited.
The problem is that the age breakdown data is only available up to the 12th (at least for England)
The Monday -> Monday comparison looks like it will come in about evens, a few more days of reporting day drops and the specimen date drops will start to show in cases.
I'm now almost certain that we are either at or very close to herd immunity. If we weren't then there would be no chance of this case rise petering out and the R value dropping back to 1.
I hope that you and the other optimists are right. The rolling 7 day average is +35,798 today, vs +34,894 yesterday. We need to get back to day after day of significant and sustained drops before considering if we're all now immune.
You don't understand the dynamics of herd immunity at all, we're not all immune and that scenario is unlikely to ever exist. What's happening is that enough people are immune to enough of a degree that the virus is running into unviable and substandard hosts. Hence cases not taking off as they have across Europe where there are huge pools of naive hosts among unvaccinated people and older people with significantly waning immunity.
This is the end state, cases in England will hover around 25k-35k per day, sometimes it will go below and sometimes it will go above that. This is what an COVID becoming endemic in a country looks like.
I was deploying my usual subtle satire about "are we all immune". I am confused about your last point though. You and others have been cheering on the drop in numbers we saw a few weeks ago because the numbers have to drop and didn't we get the strategy right. Are you now saying that 30k average is going to sustain forever in which case why care whether numbers drop or not?
Because the trajectory matters. We are avoiding the kind of dramatic growth in cases most peer EU countries are now facing going into the winter.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
He had Corbyn on his side last election. OGH has demonstrated through polling evidence that voting against Corbyn was a massive motivator.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
When Major took over he was able to drop the unpopular policy of the poll tax, and that made a big difference. Similarly when Johnson replaced May he was able to offer a way out of the Brexit morass that had trapped May.
Would a new leader be able to offer new solutions to the high cost of providing social care? What is the key weakness of the Johnson premiership that a new leader could fix?
If there is something a new leader can do differently and better then they should do so sooner rather than later. If all they offer is a different set of empty promises and lame excuses then the best they can hope for is to time a honeymoon to coincide with a GE.
There is a major difficulty here coming down the tracks. We are at recent record highs for taxation, and there is little spare capacity to tax more.
If you listen, for example, to Today on R4 for a few days you will collect a massive set of issues where everyone is saying, and no-one contradicting, that huge amounts more need to be spent on X, Y and Z. heading the list is NHS (bottomless pit), education, social care, social security, public sector pay, transport but there are lots of others.
The BBC, and others, give endless time to every extra spending cause without challenge or question. The other sides (how to raise it and who from, should we cut instead) get almost no attention, as at the same time no thought is ever given to spending less, spending better, or giving up public spending at all on A, B or C.
And of course the people directly or indirectly suggesting the massive increases never talk about the actuality of how it shall be found, how much and who from.
Squaring this circle is going to be hard both for Tories and for Labour. And that is while interest rates are keeping government debt cheap.
A better debate should be had, led by the BBC in which the discussion always looks at both sides of the equation.
Helpful update from @PA: "The Government sought to clarify that it has not lost the minutes of a meeting between Randox and a health minister, only that it cannot find them at the moment."
Does that mean some poor bugger is trying to make them up from scratch ?
See my post at 3pm.
I once won a case because I idly looked at the metadata of a disclosed Word copy of meeting minutes allegedly created 8 months previously. They had been typed up by my oppo that morning. A demand for the notes they had been created from prompted a rapid settlement offer.
Don’t send documents as Word copies kids.
To be fair it takes 8 months sometimes in organisations to get around to writing minutes because (as someone who does it occasionally) they are fkin boring to do
Not that I have ever been in the position of retrospectively writing up minutes, but is the simple answer to PDF the documents? Or print them out and then 'scan' them with microsoft lens? That's what I do anyway so they can't be altered.
PDFs are remarkable easy to edit - the functionality is built into Word.
Helpful update from @PA: "The Government sought to clarify that it has not lost the minutes of a meeting between Randox and a health minister, only that it cannot find them at the moment."
Does that mean some poor bugger is trying to make them up from scratch ?
See my post at 3pm.
I once won a case because I idly looked at the metadata of a disclosed Word copy of meeting minutes allegedly created 8 months previously. They had been typed up by my oppo that morning. A demand for the notes they had been created from prompted a rapid settlement offer.
Don’t send documents as Word copies kids.
To be fair it takes 8 months sometimes in organisations to get around to writing minutes because (as someone who does it occasionally) they are fkin boring to do
Not that I have ever been in the position of retrospectively writing up minutes, but is the simple answer to PDF the documents? Or print them out and then 'scan' them with microsoft lens? That's what I do anyway so they can't be altered.
PDFs are remarkable easy to edit - the functionality is built into Word.
Turning it into a pdf "flattens" all the document history and meta data. You can't see how it was put together.
A PDF is, itself, as vulnerable to being edited as any electronic document. Now, if you want electronic documents with digital signatures and verification.....
Line for Pensioners now in total freefall - hurrah!
Log chart, so cases in over 65s have now very nearly halved in the last 4 weeks whilst the headline number has bounced around due to irrelevant school kid cases.
England only data, for over 65s.....
Comparing the two would suggest your chart is about to see 3 days of very steep falls unless Alex Selby's forward-cast calculations don't work out in this case.
That would be nice.
One thing that this epidemic has taught me is that a case model plus £2.50 will buy you... a coffee at Starbucks...
Ha quite, although worth noting this isn't really modelling per se, just filling in for late reporting. He's only quoting data up to the 15th, and based on usual trends that data is 90% + complete.
I.e. today in England there were 7,983 new cases for the 16th, 20,449 for the 15th, then only 677 for the 14th and fewer for each day after that. So the scope for a material change on the 15th or earlier is pretty limited.
The problem is that the age breakdown data is only available up to the 12th (at least for England)
beyond that is a guesstimate.....
Ahh fair point. I suppose the joy of daily update is any revisions are very small steps at a time - certainly nothing noticible so his calcs seem to be doing a reasonable job of apportioning out for the blind period.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
His two moments of glory are not the technical nuts and bolts of his brexit deal, which was a flimsy and leaky charade, which will soon need rebranding, a new coat of paint and materials, and probably a new captain too, but his campaigning for a month before the referendum, and his campaign in the month before the 2019 election.
I'm not sure he could ever campaign in that way again - what new simplistic goody is there to campaign on, and how to deal with voters who now regard your unseriousness as a liability, or indicating shiftiness and dangerousness, rather than winning, provocative, modern, irony ?
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
If the UK is such a bad country why do people risk their lives everyday to leave France to come here?
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
If the UK is such a bad country why do people risk their lives everyday to leave France to come here?
Because France is a failing state and English is the lingua franca of the world.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
He had Corbyn on his side last election. OGH has demonstrated through polling evidence that voting against Corbyn was a massive motivator.
Yeah, yeah, and when he beat Livingston twice in Labour London it was only Ken Livingston. And when he won the Tory leadership he was up against Hunt. And when he won the referendum he was helped by Corbyn's ambiguity and stupidity. Oh, and next time he will "only" be up against SKS.
For all the moaning and vituperation on here every day no one is that lucky. He wins and he will win again next time out.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
If the UK is such a bad country why do people risk their lives everyday to leave France to come here?
To generate bloody silly questions for trolls to ask.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
Agree with this. He is spectacularly effective at campaigning just as he is spectacularly ineffective at governing. So I think it's by no means clear that replacing him will leave the Tories better placed to win the next election, however bad a job he is doing right now.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
If the UK is such a bad country why do people risk their lives everyday to leave France to come here?
It's not a bad country. It's a great country, being run by idiots.
Time for an unexplained wealth order against Prince Andrew.
How DOES Andrew afford his lavish lifestyle? Questions over how royal can live life of luxury with 'NO discernible income' after financier friend gave him £1.5m to pay back a loan from his own bank
Dominic Casciani @BBCDomC NEW CONFIRMED information about Liverpool bomber Emad Al Swealmeen: There was a six year gap between him losing his asylum appeal and then appealing again under a new European-style name. What the Home Office did to remove or manage him is unclear - it won't tell us. Thread:
Helpful update from @PA: "The Government sought to clarify that it has not lost the minutes of a meeting between Randox and a health minister, only that it cannot find them at the moment."
Does that mean some poor bugger is trying to make them up from scratch ?
See my post at 3pm.
I once won a case because I idly looked at the metadata of a disclosed Word copy of meeting minutes allegedly created 8 months previously. They had been typed up by my oppo that morning. A demand for the notes they had been created from prompted a rapid settlement offer.
Don’t send documents as Word copies kids.
To be fair it takes 8 months sometimes in organisations to get around to writing minutes because (as someone who does it occasionally) they are fkin boring to do
Not that I have ever been in the position of retrospectively writing up minutes, but is the simple answer to PDF the documents? Or print them out and then 'scan' them with microsoft lens? That's what I do anyway so they can't be altered.
We have software that removes all metadata from email attachments prior to being sent, Word document or otherwise.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
His two moments of glory are not the technical nuts and bolts of his brexit deal, which was a flimsy and leaky charade which will soon need rebranding, a new coat of paint and materials, and a new captain, but his campaigning for a month before the referendum, and his campaign in the month before the 2019 election.
I'm not sure he could ever campaign in that way again - what new simplistic goody is there to campaign on, and how to deal with voters who now regard your unseriousness as a liability, or indicating shiftiness and dangerousness rather than winning, provocative, modern, irony ?
I don't know but that is because I am not nearly as smart as Boris Johnson. His skill is come the hour he frames the debate in a way that is favourable to him. I really wouldn't bet against him doing it again.
Time for an unexplained wealth order against Prince Andrew.
How DOES Andrew afford his lavish lifestyle? Questions over how royal can live life of luxury with 'NO discernible income' after financier friend gave him £1.5m to pay back a loan from his own bank
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
If the UK is such a bad country why do people risk their lives everyday to leave France to come here?
Because France is a failing state and English is the lingua franca of the world.
or see my post below - where it seems Emad Al Swealmeen lost his appeal in 2015 but nothing was done to remove him from the country.
1. Boris Johnson made a good call on lifting covid restrictions over the summer when Starmer and much of Europe were agitating for more.
2. Boris Johnson is a mendacious incompetent clown who has made dogs' breakfasts the national diet and should be removed before he blunders into the next embarrassing crisis.
Both of these statements can be true (indeed both are true).
Time for an unexplained wealth order against Prince Andrew.
How DOES Andrew afford his lavish lifestyle? Questions over how royal can live life of luxury with 'NO discernible income' after financier friend gave him £1.5m to pay back a loan from his own bank
Time for an unexplained wealth order against Prince Andrew.
How DOES Andrew afford his lavish lifestyle? Questions over how royal can live life of luxury with 'NO discernible income' after financier friend gave him £1.5m to pay back a loan from his own bank
"No discernible income"... Didn't he used to get civil list money, and now money from HM?
From press reports he has no income now, the Queen pays his legal bills and his living expenses, so you can't list that as income.
My point is that it's not hard to turn money into more money. He may not have that income now (although I would still argue paying for living expenses is an income), but isn't it likely that he invested the money from before?
With HS2, it should have either been cancelled completely or built completely. Building half of it looks weak.
With the rumoured announcement, it's like someone was asked given the parameters of what we are already building, how can we totally screw it up? Because I don't think they could have made a worse set of "cut backs" and continuations if they tried
Is it too mischievous to wonder if Sunak is deliberately blowing up Johnson over rail plans?
I didn't watch the session to the end but it is very clear that the vast majority of posters were highly critic of Boris, and me included, but the simple truth is that no amount of fury directed at him will be able to remove him, it will be his mps who end his premiership if indeed they do
I noticed for the first time in months the daily mail were praising him on his proposals today, and it will be interesting to see if the conservative papers follow the mail
I would say the next few months are the most dangerous for his premiership
1. Boris Johnson made a good call on lifting covid restrictions over the summer when Starmer and much of Europe were agitating for more.
2. Boris Johnson is a mendacious incompetent clown who has made dogs' breakfasts the national diet and should be removed before he blunders into the next embarrassing crisis.
Both of these statements can be true (indeed both are true).
God knows what will happen if it finally kicks off in Ukraine with Johnson at the helm.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
If the UK is such a bad country why do people risk their lives everyday to leave France to come here?
Ignorance? "The streets of London are paved in shining gold. 18 carat gold."
Time for an unexplained wealth order against Prince Andrew.
How DOES Andrew afford his lavish lifestyle? Questions over how royal can live life of luxury with 'NO discernible income' after financier friend gave him £1.5m to pay back a loan from his own bank
"No discernible income"... Didn't he used to get civil list money, and now money from HM?
From press reports he has no income now, the Queen pays his legal bills and his living expenses, so you can't list that as income.
My point is that it's not hard to turn money into more money. He may not have that income now (although I would still argue paying for living expenses is an income), but isn't it likely that he invested the money from before?
Possibly, but rich people rarely seem to dip into their savings and investments when they can borrow more.
Dominic Casciani @BBCDomC NEW CONFIRMED information about Liverpool bomber Emad Al Swealmeen: There was a six year gap between him losing his asylum appeal and then appealing again under a new European-style name. What the Home Office did to remove or manage him is unclear - it won't tell us. Thread:
The relevant part for present purposes is mentioned in passing in paragraph 4: " However, the appellant’s account of events in Sudan was disbelieved by the immigration judge in his first appeal before the First-tier Tribunal in January 2011."
So more than 10 years after his account was disbelieved he is (a) still here and (b) wasting yet more public money on a legally assisted appeal found to be without merit. Our immigration system simply does not work. And it never has.
1. Boris Johnson made a good call on lifting covid restrictions over the summer when Starmer and much of Europe were agitating for more.
2. Boris Johnson is a mendacious incompetent clown who has made dogs' breakfasts the national diet and should be removed before he blunders into the next embarrassing crisis.
Both of these statements can be true (indeed both are true).
God knows what will happen if it finally kicks off in Ukraine with Johnson at the helm.
Tbf, Boris has played a fairly straight bat on Ukraine. He did tell Europe to choose Russian gas or supporting Ukrainian independence. That's a fair place to be.
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 · 49m BREAKING: The end of elite women's sport has just been announced.
Transgender athletes should not have to lower testosterone to compete, IOC says as it changes guidelines
So there's the trade off:
Keep your tackle and make it to the Olympic semi-final.
Get it chopped off and win a medal.
The International Athletics Federation still have their own testosterone rule that was stricter than the one dropped by the IOC, but I think the IOC are saying you'd need copious formal evidence to exclude even pre-op transgender athletes.
So in your scenario they might not even need to sacrifice the dangly bits.
It has been obvious that as soon as you let transgender male->female athletes compete against naturally born females that it would finish women's sport. They just will not be able to compete. It is a disgrace. There were 3 options and they have picked the worst. May as well just be done with it and no longer have any male/female categories.
The other two options in my view are: 1. No competition for transgender athletes (needs of the many outweighing needs of the few) 2. Creating new categories.
A female sportswoman who doped herself to have the amount of testosterone a transwoman sportsperson is permitted would be banned. But a trans athlete - a male claiming to be a woman - with that amount of testosterone in his body as a result of male puberty can legally compete. How can this possibly be fair? And isn't this discrimination against women?
It is a disgrace. Just as allowing men claiming to be women and convicted of sexual offences against women to be housed in womens' prisons is a disgrace. There was an interesting debate on this in the House of Lords yesterday where Ms Chakrabarti once again showed what an incoherent moron she is.
As I posted a few weeks ago, my goto question about the rights of trans wrt prison and other spaces is simple:
"What is to stop Wayne Couzens (convicted sex murderer) from claiming to self-identify as a woman and asking to be moved to a women's prison?"
Nothing. It is an absurd policy. And wicked. It puts female prisoners at risk. Trans activists say that transwomen prisoners would be at risk if put in a male prison. A curious statement since if they have a male body - and 80% of transwomen still do - they are well able to fight back.
But even if true why should the answer be to put women at risk from them?
It is grotesque that people convicted of sexual offences against women should be put in a space with women where women cannot get away from them. It's like putting a fox in a chicken coop.
As for womens sport - if self-ID goes ahead, womens sport vanishes.
The obvious solution is to have a special transgender wing in prisons and to have a transgender category in sport. For those sports where your physical attributes don't matter (horse riding, ping pong) people can participate in their preferred gender.
1. Boris Johnson made a good call on lifting covid restrictions over the summer when Starmer and much of Europe were agitating for more.
2. Boris Johnson is a mendacious incompetent clown who has made dogs' breakfasts the national diet and should be removed before he blunders into the next embarrassing crisis.
Both of these statements can be true (indeed both are true).
Absolutely.
and @Nigel_Foremain and @Scrapheap_as_was are on the money also. It is Labour's fault we are here because they put that anti-semitic, marxist dolt up against the Conservatives so few right-minded people could vote anything other than to keep Corbyn out.
With HS2, it should have either been cancelled completely or built completely. Building half of it looks weak.
With the rumoured announcement, it's like someone was asked given the parameters of what we are already building, how can we totally screw it up? Because I don't think they could have made a worse set of "cut backs" and continuations if they tried
Is it too mischievous to wonder if Sunak is deliberately blowing up Johnson over rail plans?
My suspicion is the other way round. A restrictive budget round imposed, not enough money for a,b,c,d,e so cut the last three. They're all up north but you have no idea how much aggro I'm getting from chappies in our heartlands etc.
There is another more obvious problem with HS2 - naming. I have to assume that we have a mainline - HS2. That runs to Birmingham Interchange and on to Curzon Street. We then have a pair of directional extensions of this - HS2W and HS2E and a connection between them - HS3/NPR.
People look at the "HS2" budget and say its too much - because its almost the entire project now. Had we copied the French and built them as different lines they would be easier to manage.
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 · 49m BREAKING: The end of elite women's sport has just been announced.
Transgender athletes should not have to lower testosterone to compete, IOC says as it changes guidelines
So there's the trade off:
Keep your tackle and make it to the Olympic semi-final.
Get it chopped off and win a medal.
The International Athletics Federation still have their own testosterone rule that was stricter than the one dropped by the IOC, but I think the IOC are saying you'd need copious formal evidence to exclude even pre-op transgender athletes.
So in your scenario they might not even need to sacrifice the dangly bits.
It has been obvious that as soon as you let transgender male->female athletes compete against naturally born females that it would finish women's sport. They just will not be able to compete. It is a disgrace. There were 3 options and they have picked the worst. May as well just be done with it and no longer have any male/female categories.
The other two options in my view are: 1. No competition for transgender athletes (needs of the many outweighing needs of the few) 2. Creating new categories.
A female sportswoman who doped herself to have the amount of testosterone a transwoman sportsperson is permitted would be banned. But a trans athlete - a male claiming to be a woman - with that amount of testosterone in his body as a result of male puberty can legally compete. How can this possibly be fair? And isn't this discrimination against women?
It is a disgrace. Just as allowing men claiming to be women and convicted of sexual offences against women to be housed in womens' prisons is a disgrace. There was an interesting debate on this in the House of Lords yesterday where Ms Chakrabarti once again showed what an incoherent moron she is.
As I posted a few weeks ago, my goto question about the rights of trans wrt prison and other spaces is simple:
"What is to stop Wayne Couzens (convicted sex murderer) from claiming to self-identify as a woman and asking to be moved to a women's prison?"
Nothing. It is an absurd policy. And wicked. It puts female prisoners at risk. Trans activists say that transwomen prisoners would be at risk if put in a male prison. A curious statement since if they have a male body - and 80% of transwomen still do - they are well able to fight back.
But even if true why should the answer be to put women at risk from them?
It is grotesque that people convicted of sexual offences against women should be put in a space with women where women cannot get away from them. It's like putting a fox in a chicken coop.
As for womens sport - if self-ID goes ahead, womens sport vanishes.
The obvious solution is to have a special transgender wing in prisons and to have a transgender category in sport. For those sports where your physical attributes don't matter (horse riding, ping pong) people can participate in their preferred gender.
Well of course that is all common sense, but saying it makes you a raging "transphobe," apparently.
The macro problem for the government is that growth has continued to underwhelm since the GFC.
Given an ageing population, and an overall ambition to control debt-to-GDP, the government has no choice but to increase taxes and cut spending.
Covid has made things worse, in that it’s significantly increased debt-to-GDP, and left a spending hangover in all areas of social spending, chiefly health.
Brexit puts sandbags on the economy generally: 1. Has hit capital investment 2. Reduces immigration. 3. Makes exporting harder
The government has had to prioritise pensioners and the NHS, and has effectively run out of money elsewhere, hence no “levelling up”, continued financial repression of students, universal credit beneficiaries, local government, defence, etc etc.
Yet Boris has made and continues to make a lot of promises.
The only way out of this fix is probably to look again at the Brexit settlement and to borrow more to pay for long overdue investment.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
You could have said the same about Thatcher and compared her with Churchill.
The point was winning three elections didn't save her when she started to look like a liability and that's the point. It's all very well attracting those to the blue camp who had previously never voted blue but once you start repelling larger numbers of previously blue supporters, that's when the trouble starts.
There's been no published hypothetical polling recently showing how a Sunak-led Conservative Party might do - arguably no better and possibly worse and while that remains the case, Johnson is safe.
What did for Thatcher were the polls showing the Conservatives ten points behind Labour with her as leader and level with Heseltine as leader. Backbench MPs in marginal constituencies look at polls like that and it's that kind of data which shifts loyalties.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
Were I Rishi / Liz my plan would be to get Boris through to May / June next year and replace him after what is likely to be a disastrous set of local elections following April's long announced so mostly forgotten tax rises.
This is the thing that infuriates me most about the Tories. They're so good at timing their leadership changes. It doesn't matter how disastrous the previous leader was, they go through such a Dr Who style transformation every time that the electorate seem immediately to treat them as a new party. Same will happen for Rishi.
I agree that turning out Boris now would be a bit early. Too long for things to go wrong before the next election.
While Labour still gets blamed for the Winter of Discontent.
One can only hope it takes the Tories a generation to live down the shame for what they have imposed on our poor country these last few years.
If the UK is such a bad country why do people risk their lives everyday to leave France to come here?
Ignorance? "The streets of London are paved in shining gold. 18 carat gold."
There is a brilliant quote in the Ellis Island museum, one of the great museums of the world, from a Polish immigrant in the early 30s. It is something like "We were told that the streets of New York were paved with gold but they weren't even paved. That was our job.".
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
He had Corbyn on his side last election. OGH has demonstrated through polling evidence that voting against Corbyn was a massive motivator.
Yeah, yeah, and when he beat Livingston twice in Labour London it was only Ken Livingston. And when he won the Tory leadership he was up against Hunt. And when he won the referendum he was helped by Corbyn's ambiguity and stupidity. Oh, and next time he will "only" be up against SKS.
For all the moaning and vituperation on here every day no one is that lucky. He wins and he will win again next time out.
If you hold a coin tossing knockout contest and start with 256 players, you are necessarily going to identify an unbelievably talented tosser who can win 8 tosses in a row.
1. Boris Johnson made a good call on lifting covid restrictions over the summer when Starmer and much of Europe were agitating for more.
2. Boris Johnson is a mendacious incompetent clown who has made dogs' breakfasts the national diet and should be removed before he blunders into the next embarrassing crisis.
Both of these statements can be true (indeed both are true).
God knows what will happen if it finally kicks off in Ukraine with Johnson at the helm.
Troops will be half way there, when they get called back.
Or, they'll be sent off on leave, and then recalled.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
He had Corbyn on his side last election. OGH has demonstrated through polling evidence that voting against Corbyn was a massive motivator.
Yeah, yeah, and when he beat Livingston twice in Labour London it was only Ken Livingston. And when he won the Tory leadership he was up against Hunt. And when he won the referendum he was helped by Corbyn's ambiguity and stupidity. Oh, and next time he will "only" be up against SKS.
For all the moaning and vituperation on here every day no one is that lucky. He wins and he will win again next time out.
If you hold a coin tossing knockout contest and start with 256 players, you are necessarily going to identify an unbelievably talented tosser who can win 8 tosses in a row.
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 · 49m BREAKING: The end of elite women's sport has just been announced.
Transgender athletes should not have to lower testosterone to compete, IOC says as it changes guidelines
So there's the trade off:
Keep your tackle and make it to the Olympic semi-final.
Get it chopped off and win a medal.
The International Athletics Federation still have their own testosterone rule that was stricter than the one dropped by the IOC, but I think the IOC are saying you'd need copious formal evidence to exclude even pre-op transgender athletes.
So in your scenario they might not even need to sacrifice the dangly bits.
It has been obvious that as soon as you let transgender male->female athletes compete against naturally born females that it would finish women's sport. They just will not be able to compete. It is a disgrace. There were 3 options and they have picked the worst. May as well just be done with it and no longer have any male/female categories.
The other two options in my view are: 1. No competition for transgender athletes (needs of the many outweighing needs of the few) 2. Creating new categories.
A female sportswoman who doped herself to have the amount of testosterone a transwoman sportsperson is permitted would be banned. But a trans athlete - a male claiming to be a woman - with that amount of testosterone in his body as a result of male puberty can legally compete. How can this possibly be fair? And isn't this discrimination against women?
It is a disgrace. Just as allowing men claiming to be women and convicted of sexual offences against women to be housed in womens' prisons is a disgrace. There was an interesting debate on this in the House of Lords yesterday where Ms Chakrabarti once again showed what an incoherent moron she is.
As I posted a few weeks ago, my goto question about the rights of trans wrt prison and other spaces is simple:
"What is to stop Wayne Couzens (convicted sex murderer) from claiming to self-identify as a woman and asking to be moved to a women's prison?"
Nothing. It is an absurd policy. And wicked. It puts female prisoners at risk. Trans activists say that transwomen prisoners would be at risk if put in a male prison. A curious statement since if they have a male body - and 80% of transwomen still do - they are well able to fight back.
But even if true why should the answer be to put women at risk from them?
It is grotesque that people convicted of sexual offences against women should be put in a space with women where women cannot get away from them. It's like putting a fox in a chicken coop.
As for womens sport - if self-ID goes ahead, womens sport vanishes.
The obvious solution is to have a special transgender wing in prisons and to have a transgender category in sport. For those sports where your physical attributes don't matter (horse riding, ping pong) people can participate in their preferred gender.
Well of course that is all common sense, but saying it makes you a raging "transphobe," apparently.
And, certainly, no place for you in Nicola's Scotland.
Malcolmg will be seeking political asylum in England before too long.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
When Major took over he was able to drop the unpopular policy of the poll tax, and that made a big difference. Similarly when Johnson replaced May he was able to offer a way out of the Brexit morass that had trapped May.
Would a new leader be able to offer new solutions to the high cost of providing social care? What is the key weakness of the Johnson premiership that a new leader could fix?
If there is something a new leader can do differently and better then they should do so sooner rather than later. If all they offer is a different set of empty promises and lame excuses then the best they can hope for is to time a honeymoon to coincide with a GE.
There is a major difficulty here coming down the tracks. We are at recent record highs for taxation, and there is little spare capacity to tax more.
If you listen, for example, to Today on R4 for a few days you will collect a massive set of issues where everyone is saying, and no-one contradicting, that huge amounts more need to be spent on X, Y and Z. heading the list is NHS (bottomless pit), education, social care, social security, public sector pay, transport but there are lots of others.
The BBC, and others, give endless time to every extra spending cause without challenge or question. The other sides (how to raise it and who from, should we cut instead) get almost no attention, as at the same time no thought is ever given to spending less, spending better, or giving up public spending at all on A, B or C.
And of course the people directly or indirectly suggesting the massive increases never talk about the actuality of how it shall be found, how much and who from.
Squaring this circle is going to be hard both for Tories and for Labour. And that is while interest rates are keeping government debt cheap.
A better debate should be had, led by the BBC in which the discussion always looks at both sides of the equation.
Why is that though? Like, I genuinely don't understand it. Technology is continually improving. We should be able to do more with less. We generally continue to get richer as a country. Why is it that public services and infrastructure appear to be badly funded and yet the tax burden is reaching record highs?
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
When Major took over he was able to drop the unpopular policy of the poll tax, and that made a big difference. Similarly when Johnson replaced May he was able to offer a way out of the Brexit morass that had trapped May.
Would a new leader be able to offer new solutions to the high cost of providing social care? What is the key weakness of the Johnson premiership that a new leader could fix?
If there is something a new leader can do differently and better then they should do so sooner rather than later. If all they offer is a different set of empty promises and lame excuses then the best they can hope for is to time a honeymoon to coincide with a GE.
There is a major difficulty here coming down the tracks. We are at recent record highs for taxation, and there is little spare capacity to tax more.
If you listen, for example, to Today on R4 for a few days you will collect a massive set of issues where everyone is saying, and no-one contradicting, that huge amounts more need to be spent on X, Y and Z. heading the list is NHS (bottomless pit), education, social care, social security, public sector pay, transport but there are lots of others.
The BBC, and others, give endless time to every extra spending cause without challenge or question. The other sides (how to raise it and who from, should we cut instead) get almost no attention, as at the same time no thought is ever given to spending less, spending better, or giving up public spending at all on A, B or C.
And of course the people directly or indirectly suggesting the massive increases never talk about the actuality of how it shall be found, how much and who from.
Squaring this circle is going to be hard both for Tories and for Labour. And that is while interest rates are keeping government debt cheap.
A better debate should be had, led by the BBC in which the discussion always looks at both sides of the equation.
Why is that though? Like, I genuinely don't understand it. Technology is continually improving. We should be able to do more with less. We generally continue to get richer as a country. Why is it that public services and infrastructure appear to be badly funded and yet the tax burden is reaching record highs?
Where is the money going?
Old people. That's literally it, we, as a nation, are shovelling ever more of it to those over 70.
After the total fiasco that was the Paterson affair you'd surely expect him to play things safe.
How he goes from what would have been good headlines during the early days of COP to this endless stream of stupidity baffles me.
He may be daft as a brush, and may look like one too, but he's not this daft. Is there any possible reason why he might want to undermine himself? Maybe he's had enough?
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
Agree with this. He is spectacularly effective at campaigning just as he is spectacularly ineffective at governing. So I think it's by no means clear that replacing him will leave the Tories better placed to win the next election, however bad a job he is doing right now.
The Tories would be mad to replace Johnson as their leader, if they want to retain their seats at the next election. However, I could see that knowledge would make dealing with the day-to-day reality of being Johnson's cannon fodder in Parliament even more frustrating. They need him and yet they hold him in contempt. It must be agonising.
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 · 49m BREAKING: The end of elite women's sport has just been announced.
Transgender athletes should not have to lower testosterone to compete, IOC says as it changes guidelines
So there's the trade off:
Keep your tackle and make it to the Olympic semi-final.
Get it chopped off and win a medal.
The International Athletics Federation still have their own testosterone rule that was stricter than the one dropped by the IOC, but I think the IOC are saying you'd need copious formal evidence to exclude even pre-op transgender athletes.
So in your scenario they might not even need to sacrifice the dangly bits.
It has been obvious that as soon as you let transgender male->female athletes compete against naturally born females that it would finish women's sport. They just will not be able to compete. It is a disgrace. There were 3 options and they have picked the worst. May as well just be done with it and no longer have any male/female categories.
The other two options in my view are: 1. No competition for transgender athletes (needs of the many outweighing needs of the few) 2. Creating new categories.
A female sportswoman who doped herself to have the amount of testosterone a transwoman sportsperson is permitted would be banned. But a trans athlete - a male claiming to be a woman - with that amount of testosterone in his body as a result of male puberty can legally compete. How can this possibly be fair? And isn't this discrimination against women?
It is a disgrace. Just as allowing men claiming to be women and convicted of sexual offences against women to be housed in womens' prisons is a disgrace. There was an interesting debate on this in the House of Lords yesterday where Ms Chakrabarti once again showed what an incoherent moron she is.
As I posted a few weeks ago, my goto question about the rights of trans wrt prison and other spaces is simple:
"What is to stop Wayne Couzens (convicted sex murderer) from claiming to self-identify as a woman and asking to be moved to a women's prison?"
Nothing. It is an absurd policy. And wicked. It puts female prisoners at risk. Trans activists say that transwomen prisoners would be at risk if put in a male prison. A curious statement since if they have a male body - and 80% of transwomen still do - they are well able to fight back.
But even if true why should the answer be to put women at risk from them?
It is grotesque that people convicted of sexual offences against women should be put in a space with women where women cannot get away from them. It's like putting a fox in a chicken coop.
As for womens sport - if self-ID goes ahead, womens sport vanishes.
The obvious solution is to have a special transgender wing in prisons and to have a transgender category in sport. For those sports where your physical attributes don't matter (horse riding, ping pong) people can participate in their preferred gender.
Well of course that is all common sense, but saying it makes you a raging "transphobe," apparently.
Do you know. I don't care. When people talk such obvious nonsense, their so-called insults are not worth bothering about.
People who support a policy of putting male sexual offenders with male bodies in womens' prisons are sexists and misogynists and willing to countenance violence, up to and including rape, against women. Rape enablers, in short.
It's about time we called these people out for what they are.
They are not doing the cause of genuine transwomen or transmen any good at all.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
When Major took over he was able to drop the unpopular policy of the poll tax, and that made a big difference. Similarly when Johnson replaced May he was able to offer a way out of the Brexit morass that had trapped May.
Would a new leader be able to offer new solutions to the high cost of providing social care? What is the key weakness of the Johnson premiership that a new leader could fix?
If there is something a new leader can do differently and better then they should do so sooner rather than later. If all they offer is a different set of empty promises and lame excuses then the best they can hope for is to time a honeymoon to coincide with a GE.
There is a major difficulty here coming down the tracks. We are at recent record highs for taxation, and there is little spare capacity to tax more.
If you listen, for example, to Today on R4 for a few days you will collect a massive set of issues where everyone is saying, and no-one contradicting, that huge amounts more need to be spent on X, Y and Z. heading the list is NHS (bottomless pit), education, social care, social security, public sector pay, transport but there are lots of others.
The BBC, and others, give endless time to every extra spending cause without challenge or question. The other sides (how to raise it and who from, should we cut instead) get almost no attention, as at the same time no thought is ever given to spending less, spending better, or giving up public spending at all on A, B or C.
And of course the people directly or indirectly suggesting the massive increases never talk about the actuality of how it shall be found, how much and who from.
Squaring this circle is going to be hard both for Tories and for Labour. And that is while interest rates are keeping government debt cheap.
A better debate should be had, led by the BBC in which the discussion always looks at both sides of the equation.
Why is that though? Like, I genuinely don't understand it. Technology is continually improving. We should be able to do more with less. We generally continue to get richer as a country. Why is it that public services and infrastructure appear to be badly funded and yet the tax burden is reaching record highs?
Where is the money going?
Essentially, pensions and the NHS (where technology improvement has tended to *increase* costs because new ways have been invented of keeping people alive).
Both costs are also rising due to an ageing population, but hey we also don’t want no filthy immigrants.
Fascinating situation developing with respect to Boris. Now clear to everyone how unsuited he is to be PM in multiple ways. The ideal outcome for the Tories is he leaves next year. New leader new broom. Does as many popular things as can be done under financial constraints and if opinion polls not too bad goes for Autumn 2022 or Spring 2023 GE depending on timing of BJ exit. If opinion polls very bad can delay. Ideally (again from Tory viewpoint) he leaves on some face saving pretext without colossal scandal forcing him out that discredits entire cabinet. Wat could be trigger or pretext? I think there is a fair chance he will look for an exit soon.
One well informed source told the BBC, ‘This is a significant change and greatly reduces the generosity of the scheme to less well off pensioners who need care for a long time.’ The announcement is here https://t.co/k9YnjyeMTf - white paper due before Christmas
Leave Boris to take the pelting with dung that's about to happen? Even with a fresh PM, the next year or two will be tough.
Or remove him before he makes things even worse?
A high-level resignation could bring him down. Rishi? Liz? Over to you.
When Major took over he was able to drop the unpopular policy of the poll tax, and that made a big difference. Similarly when Johnson replaced May he was able to offer a way out of the Brexit morass that had trapped May.
Would a new leader be able to offer new solutions to the high cost of providing social care? What is the key weakness of the Johnson premiership that a new leader could fix?
If there is something a new leader can do differently and better then they should do so sooner rather than later. If all they offer is a different set of empty promises and lame excuses then the best they can hope for is to time a honeymoon to coincide with a GE.
There is a major difficulty here coming down the tracks. We are at recent record highs for taxation, and there is little spare capacity to tax more.
If you listen, for example, to Today on R4 for a few days you will collect a massive set of issues where everyone is saying, and no-one contradicting, that huge amounts more need to be spent on X, Y and Z. heading the list is NHS (bottomless pit), education, social care, social security, public sector pay, transport but there are lots of others.
The BBC, and others, give endless time to every extra spending cause without challenge or question. The other sides (how to raise it and who from, should we cut instead) get almost no attention, as at the same time no thought is ever given to spending less, spending better, or giving up public spending at all on A, B or C.
And of course the people directly or indirectly suggesting the massive increases never talk about the actuality of how it shall be found, how much and who from.
Squaring this circle is going to be hard both for Tories and for Labour. And that is while interest rates are keeping government debt cheap.
A better debate should be had, led by the BBC in which the discussion always looks at both sides of the equation.
Why is that though? Like, I genuinely don't understand it. Technology is continually improving. We should be able to do more with less. We generally continue to get richer as a country. Why is it that public services and infrastructure appear to be badly funded and yet the tax burden is reaching record highs?
Where is the money going?
A hospital, which my wide and I take the children to when they are ill, once had a cost reducing idea.
Instead of buying the "proper" medical drawers for putting bandages and tongue depressors and things of that nature in, they bought some mechanics tool chests - drawers on wheels. For a fraction of the price.
They even got an NHS award for clever thinking.
Some little time later they were gone. And replaced by the "medical" drawers. Apparently the company that made the "medical" drawers wondered what had happened, found out and contacted their local MP....
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
Agree with this. He is spectacularly effective at campaigning just as he is spectacularly ineffective at governing. So I think it's by no means clear that replacing him will leave the Tories better placed to win the next election, however bad a job he is doing right now.
The Tories would be mad to replace Johnson as their leader, if they want to retain their seats at the next election. However, I could see that knowledge would make dealing with the day-to-day reality of being Johnson's cannon fodder in Parliament even more frustrating. They need him and yet they hold him in contempt. It must be agonising.
This is a very tight spot for them now, I think. Sunak may not have the same appeal to red wall voters that Johnson had, and maybe partially still has, but Johnson is repelling other voters at a faster and probably disproptionate rate. That only leaves Truss, who is very untested.
It could be that Brexit was a total one-off, and the Tory coalition will now either break down in the South if Truss is the next leader, or in the north if it's Sunak.
Labour, in turn, might be the ones to have the next one-off, cross-electoral coalition, this time against sleaze, and coming full circle to what they had in the late '90s.
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 · 49m BREAKING: The end of elite women's sport has just been announced.
Transgender athletes should not have to lower testosterone to compete, IOC says as it changes guidelines
So there's the trade off:
Keep your tackle and make it to the Olympic semi-final.
Get it chopped off and win a medal.
The International Athletics Federation still have their own testosterone rule that was stricter than the one dropped by the IOC, but I think the IOC are saying you'd need copious formal evidence to exclude even pre-op transgender athletes.
So in your scenario they might not even need to sacrifice the dangly bits.
It has been obvious that as soon as you let transgender male->female athletes compete against naturally born females that it would finish women's sport. They just will not be able to compete. It is a disgrace. There were 3 options and they have picked the worst. May as well just be done with it and no longer have any male/female categories.
The other two options in my view are: 1. No competition for transgender athletes (needs of the many outweighing needs of the few) 2. Creating new categories.
A female sportswoman who doped herself to have the amount of testosterone a transwoman sportsperson is permitted would be banned. But a trans athlete - a male claiming to be a woman - with that amount of testosterone in his body as a result of male puberty can legally compete. How can this possibly be fair? And isn't this discrimination against women?
It is a disgrace. Just as allowing men claiming to be women and convicted of sexual offences against women to be housed in womens' prisons is a disgrace. There was an interesting debate on this in the House of Lords yesterday where Ms Chakrabarti once again showed what an incoherent moron she is.
As I posted a few weeks ago, my goto question about the rights of trans wrt prison and other spaces is simple:
"What is to stop Wayne Couzens (convicted sex murderer) from claiming to self-identify as a woman and asking to be moved to a women's prison?"
Nothing. It is an absurd policy. And wicked. It puts female prisoners at risk. Trans activists say that transwomen prisoners would be at risk if put in a male prison. A curious statement since if they have a male body - and 80% of transwomen still do - they are well able to fight back.
But even if true why should the answer be to put women at risk from them?
It is grotesque that people convicted of sexual offences against women should be put in a space with women where women cannot get away from them. It's like putting a fox in a chicken coop.
As for womens sport - if self-ID goes ahead, womens sport vanishes.
The obvious solution is to have a special transgender wing in prisons and to have a transgender category in sport. For those sports where your physical attributes don't matter (horse riding, ping pong) people can participate in their preferred gender.
Well of course that is all common sense, but saying it makes you a raging "transphobe," apparently.
Do you know. I don't care. When people talk such obvious nonsense, their so-called insults are not worth bothering about.
People who support a policy of putting male sexual offenders with male bodies in womens' prisons are sexists and misogynists and willing to countenance violence, up to and including rape, against women. Rape enablers, in short.
It's about time we called these people out for what they are.
They are not doing the cause of genuine transwomen or transmen any good at all.
Well, you may not care and I understand why, but just think of us North of the border. We have a Govt which is actually signed up to all this stuff and a First Minister who shouts down anyone who disputes it. Seriously.
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1 · 49m BREAKING: The end of elite women's sport has just been announced.
Transgender athletes should not have to lower testosterone to compete, IOC says as it changes guidelines
So there's the trade off:
Keep your tackle and make it to the Olympic semi-final.
Get it chopped off and win a medal.
The International Athletics Federation still have their own testosterone rule that was stricter than the one dropped by the IOC, but I think the IOC are saying you'd need copious formal evidence to exclude even pre-op transgender athletes.
So in your scenario they might not even need to sacrifice the dangly bits.
It has been obvious that as soon as you let transgender male->female athletes compete against naturally born females that it would finish women's sport. They just will not be able to compete. It is a disgrace. There were 3 options and they have picked the worst. May as well just be done with it and no longer have any male/female categories.
The other two options in my view are: 1. No competition for transgender athletes (needs of the many outweighing needs of the few) 2. Creating new categories.
A female sportswoman who doped herself to have the amount of testosterone a transwoman sportsperson is permitted would be banned. But a trans athlete - a male claiming to be a woman - with that amount of testosterone in his body as a result of male puberty can legally compete. How can this possibly be fair? And isn't this discrimination against women?
It is a disgrace. Just as allowing men claiming to be women and convicted of sexual offences against women to be housed in womens' prisons is a disgrace. There was an interesting debate on this in the House of Lords yesterday where Ms Chakrabarti once again showed what an incoherent moron she is.
As I posted a few weeks ago, my goto question about the rights of trans wrt prison and other spaces is simple:
"What is to stop Wayne Couzens (convicted sex murderer) from claiming to self-identify as a woman and asking to be moved to a women's prison?"
Back in the real world, Wayne Cousins did not need to claim to self-identify as a woman in order to kidnap, rape and murder Sarah Everard.
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
Agree with this. He is spectacularly effective at campaigning just as he is spectacularly ineffective at governing. So I think it's by no means clear that replacing him will leave the Tories better placed to win the next election, however bad a job he is doing right now.
The Tories would be mad to replace Johnson as their leader, if they want to retain their seats at the next election. However, I could see that knowledge would make dealing with the day-to-day reality of being Johnson's cannon fodder in Parliament even more frustrating. They need him and yet they hold him in contempt. It must be agonising.
This is a very tight spo for them now I think. Sunak may not have the same appeal to red wall voters that Johnson had, and maybe partially still has, but Johnson is repelling other voters at a faster and probably disproptionate rate. That only leaves Truss, who is very untested.
Truss is as dry as dust in policy and personality. No match for Rishi.
Ted Verity of the Mail on Sunday comes in as replacement, possibly as a seven day-ish operation. Sounds as if it is not unrelated to a reshuffle of DMGT executives yesterday that put MailOnline staff in charge of media operation. It's Martin Clarke's world now...
1. Boris Johnson made a good call on lifting covid restrictions over the summer when Starmer and much of Europe were agitating for more.
2. Boris Johnson is a mendacious incompetent clown who has made dogs' breakfasts the national diet and should be removed before he blunders into the next embarrassing crisis.
Both of these statements can be true (indeed both are true).
God knows what will happen if it finally kicks off in Ukraine with Johnson at the helm.
Troops will be half way there, when they get called back.
Or, they'll be sent off on leave, and then recalled.
May I suggest that if we are going to be indecisive with our troops and March them there, then down, then half way that we have the perfect man to lead this expeditionary force who clearly needs a job to help his finances - The (not so) Grand Old Duke of York……
Sound like the Tories are whipping against Labour's motion tonight on tightening MPs' code of conduct. Usually opposition debates like this would be loosely whipped or not at all.
One government insider said, "the political mood is not to give the opposition what they want"
The only reason I am voting Tory at the moment is the great job they (Boris) is doing over covid . Most of Europe in the grip still of facemasks (useless ), curfews and rising cases in winter when Boris had the right idea to relax in summer and Autumn and gain herd immunity.Starmer is wrong on covid and has been for a while
Sorry but this argument is a little daft. If you want to keep Starmer out then you should be calling for Johnson's head. Remove Johnson, replace with someone like Sunak and you win the election. Don't and you may lose.
Spot on. Like it or hate it (or him, if you like) Johnson delivered a brexit, and has muddled through a pandemic. He cannot do the day to day job of being PM. The conservatives have an 80 seat majority, with new boundaries coming that favour them even more. Time to get shot of the liability and get someone in who does details, understands a bit more how normal people live, and isn't Johnson.
He is, and remains, their most effective Tory campaigner since Thatcher. Someone who can reach large stretches of the populace that other Tories simply cannot get near. I think the evidence that someone other than Boris would win the next election for the Tories is thin to non existent.
Agree with this. He is spectacularly effective at campaigning just as he is spectacularly ineffective at governing. So I think it's by no means clear that replacing him will leave the Tories better placed to win the next election, however bad a job he is doing right now.
The Tories would be mad to replace Johnson as their leader, if they want to retain their seats at the next election. However, I could see that knowledge would make dealing with the day-to-day reality of being Johnson's cannon fodder in Parliament even more frustrating. They need him and yet they hold him in contempt. It must be agonising.
This is a very tight spo for them now I think. Sunak may not have the same appeal to red wall voters that Johnson had, and maybe partially still has, but Johnson is repelling other voters at a faster and probably disproptionate rate. That only leaves Truss, who is very untested.
Truss is as dry as dust in policy and personality. No match for Rishi.
Both Rishi and Truss are unreconstructed fiscal hawks.
Fascinating situation developing with respect to Boris. Now clear to everyone how unsuited he is to be PM in multiple ways. The ideal outcome for the Tories is he leaves next year. New leader new broom. Does as many popular things as can be done under financial constraints and if opinion polls not too bad goes for Autumn 2022 or Spring 2023 GE depending on timing of BJ exit. If opinion polls very bad can delay. Ideally (again from Tory viewpoint) he leaves on some face saving pretext without colossal scandal forcing him out that discredits entire cabinet. Wat could be trigger or pretext? I think there is a fair chance he will look for an exit soon.
Boris also looks very tired and unusually scruffy, these days. He sometimes looks as old as his dad.
I wonder if being a very old new father is getting to him. Being a new dad ages anyone by 10 years, if you get involved, and he is 58. He also has a 2nd baby due any day....
He must be shattered. The prospect of jacking it all in, putting his feet up, and writing his £20m memoirs must be appealing
Ted Verity of the Mail on Sunday comes in as replacement, possibly as a seven day-ish operation. Sounds as if it is not unrelated to a reshuffle of DMGT executives yesterday that put MailOnline staff in charge of media operation. It's Martin Clarke's world now...
Comments
I agree the New Zealand strategy of trying to eliminate all cases was unwise and now they have 80%+ doubly vaccinated, they are re-opening.
The thing the UK, Israel and a few others did right as to start vaccinating quickly and en masse - remember, this time last year no one had been vaccinated outside of trials. The 100 million or so individual vaccinations administered since then represent a triumph for the NHS and the Government.
Other countries were slower to start but have also accomplished their own mass vaccination programmes and they too will be able to ease restrictions as more vaccinations (including boosters) are administered.
I.e. today in England there were 7,983 new cases for the 16th, 20,449 for the 15th, then only 677 for the 14th and fewer for each day after that. So the scope for a material change on the 15th or earlier is pretty limited.
A dozen Tory MPs including the chief whip cast proxy votes so that they could watch England at a football match during the summer, it has emerged.
Mark Spencer, the Tory chief whip, and Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, were among those who voted by proxy on July 7 while they attended the Euro 2020 semi-final at Wembley.
The system for proxy voting is under scrutiny after revelations that Sir Geoffrey Cox, the Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon, used it to vote while working as a lawyer in the Caribbean.
Four ministers and eight Tory backbenchers went to the England v Denmark semi-final while a vote on the EU settlement scheme was taking place.
As well as Spencer and Wallace, Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, and Nigel Adams, the minister without portfolio, were at the match.
A government official told Politico, which first reported the story, that proxy votes were being used by almost all MPs at the time to maintain social distancing in the Commons.
Most of the MPs who attended, including Spencer and Adams, did so after accepting free tickets sponsored by private companies.
Adams’s ticket to the game was provided by Entain, a gambling company, according to his register of interests, while Spencer’s was paid for by the Football Association.
The rules at the time stated that proxy votes may be used by MPs “who do not wish to vote in person for medical or public health reasons related to the pandemic”....
...The process has relied on “self-certification”, meaning it was taken on good faith that MPs had a valid reason to use a proxy. It was discontinued at the end of July as restrictions were lifted.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mps-voted-by-proxy-while-at-euro-2020-match-khn9sgsn6
The plan is to keep buying them gradually. The current purchased number is 48. Beyond that, a firm order hasn't been placed. I'm not sure when the deadline for purchasing aircraft beyond 48 will be.
The original plan was for a total of 138.
beyond that is a guesstimate.....
If you listen, for example, to Today on R4 for a few days you will collect a massive set of issues where everyone is saying, and no-one contradicting, that huge amounts more need to be spent on X, Y and Z. heading the list is NHS (bottomless pit), education, social care, social security, public sector pay, transport but there are lots of others.
The BBC, and others, give endless time to every extra spending cause without challenge or question. The other sides (how to raise it and who from, should we cut instead) get almost no attention, as at the same time no thought is ever given to spending less, spending better, or giving up public spending at all on A, B or C.
And of course the people directly or indirectly suggesting the massive increases never talk about the actuality of how it shall be found, how much and who from.
Squaring this circle is going to be hard both for Tories and for Labour. And that is while interest rates are keeping government debt cheap.
A better debate should be had, led by the BBC in which the discussion always looks at both sides of the equation.
A PDF is, itself, as vulnerable to being edited as any electronic document. Now, if you want electronic documents with digital signatures and verification.....
I'm not sure he could ever campaign in that way again - what new simplistic goody is there to campaign on, and how to deal with voters who now regard your unseriousness as a liability, or indicating shiftiness and dangerousness, rather than winning, provocative, modern, irony ?
For all the moaning and vituperation on here every day no one is that lucky. He wins and he will win again next time out.
How DOES Andrew afford his lavish lifestyle? Questions over how royal can live life of luxury with 'NO discernible income' after financier friend gave him £1.5m to pay back a loan from his own bank
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10212461/How-DOES-Andrew-afford-lavish-lifestyle.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
Dominic Casciani
@BBCDomC
NEW CONFIRMED information about Liverpool bomber Emad Al Swealmeen: There was a six year gap between him losing his asylum appeal and then appealing again under a new European-style name. What the Home Office did to remove or manage him is unclear - it won't tell us. Thread:
https://twitter.com/BBCDomC/status/1461021043821264896
Boris *really* doesn’t like that.
2. Boris Johnson is a mendacious incompetent clown who has made dogs' breakfasts the national diet and should be removed before he blunders into the next embarrassing crisis.
Both of these statements can be true (indeed both are true).
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-021-03401-w/index.html
I noticed for the first time in months the daily mail were praising him on his proposals today, and it will be interesting to see if the conservative papers follow the mail
I would say the next few months are the most dangerous for his premiership
Don't blame us though, we didn't campaign for Boris.... just were against Corbyn.
The relevant part for present purposes is mentioned in passing in paragraph 4: " However, the appellant’s
account of events in Sudan was disbelieved by the immigration judge in his first appeal
before the First-tier Tribunal in January 2011."
So more than 10 years after his account was disbelieved he is (a) still here and (b) wasting yet more public money on a legally assisted appeal found to be without merit. Our immigration system simply does not work. And it never has.
But even if true why should the answer be to put women at risk from them?
It is grotesque that people convicted of sexual offences against women should be put in a space with women where women cannot get away from them. It's like putting a fox in a chicken coop.
As for womens sport - if self-ID goes ahead, womens sport vanishes.
The obvious solution is to have a special transgender wing in prisons and to have a transgender category in sport. For those sports where your physical attributes don't matter (horse riding, ping pong) people can participate in their preferred gender.
and @Nigel_Foremain and @Scrapheap_as_was are on the money also. It is Labour's fault we are here because they put that anti-semitic, marxist dolt up against the Conservatives so few right-minded people could vote anything other than to keep Corbyn out.
There is another more obvious problem with HS2 - naming. I have to assume that we have a mainline - HS2. That runs to Birmingham Interchange and on to Curzon Street. We then have a pair of directional extensions of this - HS2W and HS2E and a connection between them - HS3/NPR.
People look at the "HS2" budget and say its too much - because its almost the entire project now. Had we copied the French and built them as different lines they would be easier to manage.
(But yes, the gravy train aspect has been there for years, and leaders haven't wanted to clean up the dunghill. After all, if you clean up a dunghill, there's nothing left. © Sir Humphrey Appleby.)
Can someone not hold up a screen-grab of supportive comments from PB Tories behind him?
Given an ageing population, and an overall ambition to control debt-to-GDP, the government has no choice but to increase taxes and cut spending.
Covid has made things worse, in that it’s significantly increased debt-to-GDP, and left a spending hangover in all areas of social spending, chiefly health.
Brexit puts sandbags on the economy generally:
1. Has hit capital investment
2. Reduces immigration.
3. Makes exporting harder
The government has had to prioritise pensioners and the NHS, and has effectively run out of money elsewhere, hence no “levelling up”, continued financial repression of students, universal credit beneficiaries, local government, defence, etc etc.
Yet Boris has made and continues to make a lot of promises.
The only way out of this fix is probably to look again at the Brexit settlement and to borrow more to pay for long overdue investment.
The point was winning three elections didn't save her when she started to look like a liability and that's the point. It's all very well attracting those to the blue camp who had previously never voted blue but once you start repelling larger numbers of previously blue supporters, that's when the trouble starts.
There's been no published hypothetical polling recently showing how a Sunak-led Conservative Party might do - arguably no better and possibly worse and while that remains the case, Johnson is safe.
What did for Thatcher were the polls showing the Conservatives ten points behind Labour with her as leader and level with Heseltine as leader. Backbench MPs in marginal constituencies look at polls like that and it's that kind of data which shifts loyalties.
The other trouble is, you'd need to persuade bookmakers to quote him.
Or, they'll be sent off on leave, and then recalled.
Malcolmg will be seeking political asylum in England before too long.
Where is the money going?
Big mistakes one after the other.
After the total fiasco that was the Paterson affair you'd surely expect him to play things safe.
How he goes from what would have been good headlines during the early days of COP to this endless stream of stupidity baffles me.
He may be daft as a brush, and may look like one too, but he's not this daft. Is there any possible reason why he might want to undermine himself? Maybe he's had enough?
People who support a policy of putting male sexual offenders with male bodies in womens' prisons are sexists and misogynists and willing to countenance violence, up to and including rape, against women. Rape enablers, in short.
It's about time we called these people out for what they are.
They are not doing the cause of genuine transwomen or transmen any good at all.
Both costs are also rising due to an ageing population, but hey we also don’t want no filthy immigrants.
Instead of buying the "proper" medical drawers for putting bandages and tongue depressors and things of that nature in, they bought some mechanics tool chests - drawers on wheels. For a fraction of the price.
They even got an NHS award for clever thinking.
Some little time later they were gone. And replaced by the "medical" drawers. Apparently the company that made the "medical" drawers wondered what had happened, found out and contacted their local MP....
Saving money is not what is wanted.....
But do we really know that?
It could be that Brexit was a total one-off, and the Tory coalition will now either break down in the South if Truss is the next leader, or in the north if it's Sunak.
Labour, in turn, might be the ones to have the next one-off, cross-electoral coalition, this time against sleaze, and coming full circle to what they had in the late '90s.
Ted Verity of the Mail on Sunday comes in as replacement, possibly as a seven day-ish operation. Sounds as if it is not unrelated to a reshuffle of DMGT executives yesterday that put MailOnline staff in charge of media operation. It's Martin Clarke's world now...
https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1461028047105179649
One government insider said, "the political mood is not to give the opposition what they want"
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1461031689044566023
Still miss him.
I wonder if being a very old new father is getting to him. Being a new dad ages anyone by 10 years, if you get involved, and he is 58. He also has a 2nd baby due any day....
He must be shattered. The prospect of jacking it all in, putting his feet up, and writing his £20m memoirs must be appealing
Though that doesn't seem to bother a lot of people.