I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
It's not about belief.
It's about extrapolating from one persons experience of the health case system.
For example, a GP may well not see many serious cases of any kind of COVID - the serious ones will be heading to hospital, after all.
Back in 1912 the idea of icebergs being dangerous to big ships was laughed at - nearly no-one reported problems with them. Then someone noticed the yearly "surge" in ships vanishing without trace.....
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
Sure, but that doesn’t make the interview invalid.
IMO it does, because the sample size is too small and too self-selecting, which the media are then broadcasting a message that people will be reading as this is definitely less bad. Where are for instance the likes of experts that DW have had on that have looked at the data and very concerned? Why are all major governments advised by their egg heads shitting themselves, Israel totally closing their borders etc.
No it’s one interview among several, it’s valid to carry it. Are you suggesting it shouldn’t have been used?
Wondered when BJO would be back to say Starmer must resign.
Leading in polls and more popular than Johnson, still let's get Corbyn back and give the Tories another landslide
You are in for a terrible realisation after the next GE.
Who said owt about get Corbyn back?
Who would you like instead of Starmer?
I would like Andy Burnham but I suspect SKS will now make it impossible for him to become a by election candidate as he would be such an obvious replacement for SKS if he did.
Wondered when BJO would be back to say Starmer must resign.
Leading in polls and more popular than Johnson, still let's get Corbyn back and give the Tories another landslide
You are in for a terrible realisation after the next GE.
Who said owt about get Corbyn back?
Who would you like instead of Starmer?
I would like Andy Burnham but I suspect SKS will now make it impossible for him to become a by election candidate as he would be such an obvious replacement for SKS if he did.
Did you vote for him first time round when he came 4th?
Yes but again we are ignoring the fact that the next general election will be after 10 years of a Conservative government in power.
Of those such elections since universal suffrage in 1918 ie 1945, 1964 and 1992 and 1997 the Conservatives got 30% of the seats, 48% of the seats, 51% of the seats and 25% of the seats respectively.
In all cases bar 1992 below the 49.5% average number of seats the Conservatives have won at general elections over the last century.
Mmm, true, but the sample is even tinier than Fishing's century of outcomes, and the Consercvatives are notably good at changing leader and pretending it's an exciting new government. These are fun exercises, but they impose a statistical model on a score of very different events. I'm not convinced that looking at the very different Conservative Party against the very different Labour Party in the wildly different circumstances of, say, 1935, tells us anything at all. Virtually all the voters from then are now no longer with us, and issues that excited them like German rearmament are entirely irrelevant now. Do we expect whatever happens in 2023 to be a useful guide to what will happen in 2122?
There are differences of course but it always holds true I think that the longer a party has been in power, the more difficult it is for it to get re elected
JohnsonIan Governments have only been in play for two years, so the longevity clause doesn't apply. What went on before felt very, very different.
Good point but "Johnsonian Governments" - do I not like that phrase. It imbues a gravitas most unmerited.
I think the use of the plural is the more depressing element of that phrase.
There have been two to date. Before and after 12/12/19. I am not hoping for more
I know Wikipedia believes this, but I am not sure this is correct. My understanding and in this the Institute for Government would appear to agree with me, is that an incumbent PM who wins a general election continues to lead the same government. Only if there is a break of service with a different PM do you have 'first and second governments' i.e. only Churchill and Wilson since the war (and there is some dispute about whether Churchill was PM twice or three times).
So there has been one Johnson government.
It's still one too many of course, and doesn't really address the substantive point.
Point of (dis)Order - Think your point re: continuity under same PM is generally valid.
Your caveat re: Churchill is based on fact that he first became PM in 1940 as leader of the wartime coalition including the Labour and Liberal parties, that superseded the previous National government, a Conservative-dominated quasi-coalition at best) under Chamberlain. AND that Churchill remained PM after Labour and Liberals left the coalition in 1945 following the German surrender, as leader for a few weeks of a caretaker administration of Tories (plus a few associated Liberal National and National Labour as pre-1940).
By this reckoning, Churchill's third and final administration began with Conservative victory in 1951 general election, and continued until his resignation and replacement by Eden in 1955.
NOTE that a similar situation occurred during World War I when the Liberal government under Herbert Asquith was superseded in 1915 by the first WWI Liberal-Conservative coalition; Asquith remained PM but the power dynamic had shifted substantially. Clearly these are separate administrations under the same PM.
At the end of 1916, when Asquith was bounced from No. 10, left the govt along with many Liberals, and and replaced by a newly-configured coalition under Lloyd George. In 1918 after the Armistice, Lloyd George was returned at the "Coupon election" as leader of this coalition by a landslide. BUT it's worth noting (at least in passing) that their was some reworking of the coalition, thanks to the relative success of coalition Tories versus coaltion Liberals lucky enough to snag one of the "coupons" representing express recognition as a government-endorsed candidate.
Another example occurred in 1931 when the Labour administration of Ramsey Macdonald was replaced by the National government under Macdonald, supported by most Conservatives and Liberals, but opposed by the majority of Labour ministers, MPs and members. Again, two very different administrations under the same PM. This same basic government last until 1940 under three successive prime ministers - Macdonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain - with little change arguably until the outbreak of WWII in 1939, when Churchill & Eden re-entered the cabinet.
In the case of Churchill (and indeed MacDonald) it is complicated by the fact that he resigned and was reappointed. AIUI Asquith did not.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
It's not about belief.
It's about extrapolating from one persons experience of the health case system.
For example, a GP may well not see many serious cases of any kind of COVID - the serious ones will be heading to hospital, after all.
Back in 1912 the idea of icebergs being dangerous to big ships was laughed at - nearly no-one reported problems with them. Then someone noticed the yearly "surge" in ships vanishing without trace.....
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
Sure, but that doesn’t make the interview invalid.
IMO it does, because the sample size is too small and too self-selecting, which the media are then broadcasting a message that people will be reading as this is definitely less bad. Where are for instance the likes of experts that DW have had on that have looked at the data and very concerned? Why are all major governments advised by their egg heads shitting themselves, Israel totally closing their borders etc.
No it’s one interview among several, it’s valid to carry it. Are you suggesting it shouldn’t have been used?
Basically yes...not without massive caveats, which aren't been provided. You click on the BBC website, Sky, newspapers, the only interview they are carrying front and centre is this one, and you just see the "Its mild" says GP who spotted it.
Remember we got in this mess with the original variant, remember the misreporting of the study that said 90% was "mild illness".....the actual author of the report said they wish they never used that term as people then thought that meant cold, when he used it in the academic work to be a catch all term for not in hospital. It took ages for people to catch on, mild = the full spectrum from a bit of a sore throat to f##k me this is the worst thing I have ever had I thought I was going to die.
I think a lot of posters fail to understand how popular Boris is still with the former Labour red wall voters - He can still do no wrong because of Brexit.He is given the benefit of any doubt on any thing - these voters agree he is a "buffoon" but he's ours buffoon. If Boris is removed from the Conservative party that's when these votes - mine included will be up for grabs The only thing in my opinion that could trip him up is the Channel immigration - these comments by the French interior minister will resonate with many "“It’s better that the British ask themselves why so many migrants want to go to the UK. This is first because the labour market of your country works in part with clandestine immigrants because in your country you can work and even pay taxes without having any identity papers or be in any kind of regular situation."
Yes, I think there's a lot of truth in that post.
Personally I cannot stand Johnson but I do sense that a number of people rate him despite or because of the fact that he's not a 'normal' politician.
Regarding the Channel immigration issue, I agree the black ecomony* is a draw. To be fair though, the Tories have only had 11 years in power to resolve this problem, so I suspect it's all Gordon Brown's fault.
(*About which ironically, which we used to sneer at southern Europeans)
Slightly hard though because, when it comes to the Black Economy, it’s not as simple as “sort it out”
For a start, I suspect many of those employed may work for extended family members and / or relatives of contacts. That makes the “shop an employer” tactic tricky because you are shopping family members / those to whom you have close ties (and who may be in a position to take revenge via extended family networks in a refugee’s home country).
You then have the issue of those who work in someone else’s name who is legitimate and has all their insurance etc. Again, that might be a relative and / or close contact, or part of that network. Even if the employer checks very closely (which many won’t), they open themselves up to accusations of racism / discriminating against non-white workers. Far easier to do nothing.
You either accept we have identity papers and restrict access to benefits, health, housing etc to those who can prove they have a right or you stop them at the border / make immigration a long drawn out process
Yes but again we are ignoring the fact that the next general election will be after 10 years of a Conservative government in power.
Of those such elections since universal suffrage in 1918 ie 1945, 1964 and 1992 and 1997 the Conservatives got 30% of the seats, 48% of the seats, 51% of the seats and 25% of the seats respectively.
In all cases bar 1992 below the 49.5% average number of seats the Conservatives have won at general elections over the last century.
Mmm, true, but the sample is even tinier than Fishing's century of outcomes, and the Consercvatives are notably good at changing leader and pretending it's an exciting new government. These are fun exercises, but they impose a statistical model on a score of very different events. I'm not convinced that looking at the very different Conservative Party against the very different Labour Party in the wildly different circumstances of, say, 1935, tells us anything at all. Virtually all the voters from then are now no longer with us, and issues that excited them like German rearmament are entirely irrelevant now. Do we expect whatever happens in 2023 to be a useful guide to what will happen in 2122?
There are differences of course but it always holds true I think that the longer a party has been in power, the more difficult it is for it to get re elected
JohnsonIan Governments have only been in play for two years, so the longevity clause doesn't apply. What went on before felt very, very different.
Yes, this administration has actively prioritised reversing policies of the 2010-2015 administration. FTPA, Triple Lock, 0.7% GNP for overseas aid etc.
The first two of those I support dumping even if I don't support this Government. The triple lock is simply a bribe to a client vote. The FTPA was always a waste of time anyway. The Overseas Aid changes are unsupportable.
Yes they didn't go nearly far enough. Giving any aid at all through taxes while there are any number of charities that people can give to if they want is unsupportable.
I think the only reasoned answer to that comment is 'Bollocks'.
Not sure you understand what "reasoned" means then. Also note that more than half the people of this country agree with me, not you.
As it currently stands what the majority want matters when we vote either in elections or at referendums. It has no basis in what is right, moral or sensible. Nor should I change my views just because a majority don't agree with me. I don't expect Europhiles to change their views of the EU just because a majority voted to leave. Nor should I have capitulated when for decades a majority wanted to stay.
Your position is morally bankrupt even if it is a view held by the majority.
Richard as you know, you are one of the few Tories who seems to have any sense of an ideology, however much I might disagree with some of it. Hope you are keeping well
Evening CHB. All very well thanks. To be fair I am not really any sort of Tory. I have only voted for them once since the Thatcher days and that was a misguided support for a local MP who was a friend but who turned out to be as fallible (or actually a lot more fallible) than most MPs. None of the Tories either locally or nationally have enthused me since then and most have actively repulsed me. I am content to be in a minority on most issues. I wish it were not so but one has to be realistic.
Well, I think you are to the right of me nonetheless and so despite our ideological differences, I see you have something which you draw from. I am afraid the current Tory Party is bankrupt of such standards.
May I ask how you normally vote?
Just to add I may be significantly to the right of you economically - indeed I am sure I am - but I suspect that socially we hold very similar views. Our main area of difference would probably be regarding the place of the State in people's lives.
One of the reasons I find it so easy to discuss things on PB or with friends from across the political spectrum is the realisation long ago that most people want the same things for their country. It is just the manner in which they think they should be achieved that differs.
I wish this were true, but it is not.
The Woke - and they now constitute the majority of the activist left in the English Speaking World - want entirely different things to everyone else, and they view the human comedy in a much darker, more religiose way
I can find no common ground with them. I hate them and the destruction they have done, and will do
Total bollocks* as usual. You cannot even define "Woke" without entering a conspiracy theory rabbit hole.
*other gender anatomy equally valid.
If forced to be brief on this site, I'd say Woke is a boring, preening, morally narcissistic wanker like, say, you
So there you go. if you need to know what Woke is, it's you. You're welcome!
Matthew Goodwin made a good point on the woke/social justice issue. Around 15% of the population in the UK has a negative view of Britain/it's past etc. They are disproportionately vocal on social media, in universities and generally very censorious in their behaviour. Labour probably needs the support of a lot of them but if they pander to these voters they're doomed.
Yes, that sounds about right. 15% of the country but about 70% of really active Labour members and MPs
This is why they cannot win, at the moment. The Dems are in a similar position in America, and entirely reliant on Trump standing again to have a chance in 2024
The telegraph today has a theory that Biden will send Kamala to SCOTUS so he can have a second go at succession planning.
Is there a SCOTUS vacancy imminent?
As many as he wants prior to mid terms. After that no.
I think increasing the number of SCOTUS judges is a slippery slope step. Effectively it removes the judicial check on the legislative and executive branches when the POTUS and Congress are in the hands of one party, since a few friendly judges could be added every time to tip the balance.
Under normal circumstances I would agree but Trump had no such concerns at gaming that process. GOP will not be satisfied till they have 9-0
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Yes, I’m struggling with that too. My comment above related to the reporting of her testimony on some niche site for cranks called Zero Hedge. I have no problem with her making the testimony nor it being widely used: she is at the frontline.
She's not at the fucking frontline. She is one GP albeit with an honorary position. What's more, she is being serially misquoted by the chronically fearful and nervous, who want to believe everything is AOK
Here's the source article for "everything is mild and fine"
"She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated."
Two Dozen
TWO DOZEN
And then:
"Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said."
Sure, so what exactly is wrong with carrying that interview? Are you suggesting it shouldn’t be used? I simply don’t understand your way of thinking here.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
"Totally anecdotal." Idiot. You think a GP can't tell how many people are how ill cos its not a randomised double blinded prospective study wankathon?
Experts ignoring the rules of science is exactly how we get horse manure instead of facts.
Yes but again we are ignoring the fact that the next general election will be after 10 years of a Conservative government in power.
Of those such elections since universal suffrage in 1918 ie 1945, 1964 and 1992 and 1997 the Conservatives got 30% of the seats, 48% of the seats, 51% of the seats and 25% of the seats respectively.
In all cases bar 1992 below the 49.5% average number of seats the Conservatives have won at general elections over the last century.
Mmm, true, but the sample is even tinier than Fishing's century of outcomes, and the Consercvatives are notably good at changing leader and pretending it's an exciting new government. These are fun exercises, but they impose a statistical model on a score of very different events. I'm not convinced that looking at the very different Conservative Party against the very different Labour Party in the wildly different circumstances of, say, 1935, tells us anything at all. Virtually all the voters from then are now no longer with us, and issues that excited them like German rearmament are entirely irrelevant now. Do we expect whatever happens in 2023 to be a useful guide to what will happen in 2122?
There are differences of course but it always holds true I think that the longer a party has been in power, the more difficult it is for it to get re elected
JohnsonIan Governments have only been in play for two years, so the longevity clause doesn't apply. What went on before felt very, very different.
Yes, this administration has actively prioritised reversing policies of the 2010-2015 administration. FTPA, Triple Lock, 0.7% GNP for overseas aid etc.
The first two of those I support dumping even if I don't support this Government. The triple lock is simply a bribe to a client vote. The FTPA was always a waste of time anyway. The Overseas Aid changes are unsupportable.
Yes they didn't go nearly far enough. Giving any aid at all through taxes while there are any number of charities that people can give to if they want is unsupportable.
I think the only reasoned answer to that comment is 'Bollocks'.
Not sure you understand what "reasoned" means then. Also note that more than half the people of this country agree with me, not you.
As it currently stands what the majority want matters when we vote either in elections or at referendums. It has no basis in what is right, moral or sensible. Nor should I change my views just because a majority don't agree with me. I don't expect Europhiles to change their views of the EU just because a majority voted to leave. Nor should I have capitulated when for decades a majority wanted to stay.
Your position is morally bankrupt even if it is a view held by the majority.
Why is it morally bankrupt to allow people to contribute to foreign aid to the extent that they want to rather than forcing them to do so against their will to meet an arbitrary target, and doing so clearly against their democratic will into the bargain? I would say that that's the morally bankrupt position.
Of course you wouldn't have to change your views, but you can still give voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so.
Giving "aid" to a percentage of GDP instead of based upon need is purely about making us feel good, not about what is productive or not.
If "aid" is productive then it should be invested in based upon need not based upon a proportion of GDP.
Spending money for the sake of spending money instead of it being the right thing to do is never what the State should be doing with our taxes.
And if "charities" want to raise money they should solicit donations not taxes. As it happens, I think every £1 of donations made via charitable donations, and any "gift aid" claimed on top should be netted off the aid budget.
If Britons have already donated 1% of GDP on aid then there's no need for a penny more of taxes to be done on it - and if our taxes are being given out then that should be spent purely on what its meant for and not spent on Sky advertising to solicit further donations.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
Sure, but that doesn’t make the interview invalid.
it is not invalid, but it is entirely wrong - and misleading to sad silly punters - to headline such interviews as "The symptoms of Omicron are mild". Which I have seen in countless places
"Covid-19: Omicron variant results in 'mild illness' - Khaleej Times"
Paging @ydoethur - useless Covid theatre begins to creep back into schools...
COVID-19: Pupils in years 7 and above should wear face masks in communal areas, government tells schools
The advice, which is also in place for visitors and staff at schools and colleges in England, is part of measures to slow the spread of the Omicron variant, according to the Department for Education.
I pointed out earlier that that's already been happening.
Ah OK, I've been away for the last few hours watching TV, doing phone calls, normal stuff.
Mission creep appears to be on the cards now though. Here's what I think we may have coming in December the 18th's instalment (albeit that they might be merciful and delay some measures until immediately after Christmas):
*Gags in classrooms in secondary schools *Table service in hospitality *Gags whenever you're not sat at your table in hospitality *Gags in other indoor venues, e.g. theatres and museums *Yet another revision of the self-isolation rules to make them more stringent in some fashion
Unless something really dramatic happens with the variant plague then I think we'll escape social distancing. That's the point at which (a) a lot of the public will get extremely pissed off at being told whom they can and cannot meet again, and (b) a lot of businesses become unviable due to the capacity constraints, and we're therefore back to furlough schemes, emergency loans and so on. I reckon both Sunak and Javid will resist that unless the situation with the hospitals gets really desperate.
Yes but again we are ignoring the fact that the next general election will be after 10 years of a Conservative government in power.
Of those such elections since universal suffrage in 1918 ie 1945, 1964 and 1992 and 1997 the Conservatives got 30% of the seats, 48% of the seats, 51% of the seats and 25% of the seats respectively.
In all cases bar 1992 below the 49.5% average number of seats the Conservatives have won at general elections over the last century.
Mmm, true, but the sample is even tinier than Fishing's century of outcomes, and the Consercvatives are notably good at changing leader and pretending it's an exciting new government. These are fun exercises, but they impose a statistical model on a score of very different events. I'm not convinced that looking at the very different Conservative Party against the very different Labour Party in the wildly different circumstances of, say, 1935, tells us anything at all. Virtually all the voters from then are now no longer with us, and issues that excited them like German rearmament are entirely irrelevant now. Do we expect whatever happens in 2023 to be a useful guide to what will happen in 2122?
There are differences of course but it always holds true I think that the longer a party has been in power, the more difficult it is for it to get re elected
JohnsonIan Governments have only been in play for two years, so the longevity clause doesn't apply. What went on before felt very, very different.
Good point but "Johnsonian Governments" - do I not like that phrase. It imbues a gravitas most unmerited.
I think the use of the plural is the more depressing element of that phrase.
There have been two to date. Before and after 12/12/19. I am not hoping for more
I know Wikipedia believes this, but I am not sure this is correct. My understanding and in this the Institute for Government would appear to agree with me, is that an incumbent PM who wins a general election continues to lead the same government. Only if there is a break of service with a different PM do you have 'first and second governments' i.e. only Churchill and Wilson since the war (and there is some dispute about whether Churchill was PM twice or three times).
So there has been one Johnson government.
It's still one too many of course, and doesn't really address the substantive point.
Point of (dis)Order - Think your point re: continuity under same PM is generally valid.
Your caveat re: Churchill is based on fact that he first became PM in 1940 as leader of the wartime coalition including the Labour and Liberal parties, that superseded the previous National government, a Conservative-dominated quasi-coalition at best) under Chamberlain. AND that Churchill remained PM after Labour and Liberals left the coalition in 1945 following the German surrender, as leader for a few weeks of a caretaker administration of Tories (plus a few associated Liberal National and National Labour as pre-1940).
By this reckoning, Churchill's third and final administration began with Conservative victory in 1951 general election, and continued until his resignation and replacement by Eden in 1955.
NOTE that a similar situation occurred during World War I when the Liberal government under Herbert Asquith was superseded in 1915 by the first WWI Liberal-Conservative coalition; Asquith remained PM but the power dynamic had shifted substantially. Clearly these are separate administrations under the same PM.
At the end of 1916, when Asquith was bounced from No. 10, left the govt along with many Liberals, and and replaced by a newly-configured coalition under Lloyd George. In 1918 after the Armistice, Lloyd George was returned at the "Coupon election" as leader of this coalition by a landslide. BUT it's worth noting (at least in passing) that their was some reworking of the coalition, thanks to the relative success of coalition Tories versus coaltion Liberals lucky enough to snag one of the "coupons" representing express recognition as a government-endorsed candidate.
Another example occurred in 1931 when the Labour administration of Ramsey Macdonald was replaced by the National government under Macdonald, supported by most Conservatives and Liberals, but opposed by the majority of Labour ministers, MPs and members. Again, two very different administrations under the same PM. This same basic government last until 1940 under three successive prime ministers - Macdonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain - with little change arguably until the outbreak of WWII in 1939, when Churchill & Eden re-entered the cabinet.
Yes and to put it simply when the PM resigns but is asked to form a new administration. Thus Macdonald in 1931 and Churchill in May 1945 for the ‘caretaker’ govt following the resignation of the Labour Ministers.
Matthew Goodwin made a good point on the woke/social justice issue. Around 15% of the population in the UK has a negative view of Britain/it's past etc. They are disproportionately vocal on social media, in universities and generally very censorious in their behaviour. Labour probably needs the support of a lot of them but if they pander to these voters they're doomed.
Yes, that sounds about right. 15% of the country but about 70% of really active Labour members and MPs
This is why they cannot win, at the moment. The Dems are in a similar position in America, and entirely reliant on Trump standing again to have a chance in 2024
The telegraph today has a theory that Biden will send Kamala to SCOTUS so he can have a second go at succession planning.
Is there a SCOTUS vacancy imminent?
As many as he wants prior to mid terms. After that no.
I think increasing the number of SCOTUS judges is a slippery slope step. Effectively it removes the judicial check on the legislative and executive branches when the POTUS and Congress are in the hands of one party, since a few friendly judges could be added every time to tip the balance.
Under normal circumstances I would agree but Trump had no such concerns at gaming that process. GOP will not be satisfied till they have 9-0
Well, the Democrats tried that when Harry Reid ran the Senate. Thought they were being smart by eliminating the filibuster for senior judicial appointments below SCOTUS. Republicans then came in and did the same for SCOTUS nominees. Hence, why Trump got 3 of his nominees in.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
It's not about belief.
It's about extrapolating from one persons experience of the health case system.
For example, a GP may well not see many serious cases of any kind of COVID - the serious ones will be heading to hospital, after all.
Back in 1912 the idea of icebergs being dangerous to big ships was laughed at - nearly no-one reported problems with them. Then someone noticed the yearly "surge" in ships vanishing without trace.....
And, of course, this famous picture
Do you disregard what @Foxy has to tell us about the current state of medical play because he isn't part of a double blinded randomised trial? I don't. You need all this statistical rigour bollocks to distinguish between minor effects vs not effects at all but people thnk they are, not to know whether people are or aren't getting very ill and dying, vs not.
Thought experiment: you go mushroom foraging with a mate, who cooks one of the mushrooms and goes into convulsions. Do you say Yebbut he wasn't randomly matched with a control group eating mushrooms from Tescos, in a double blinded study, so I am going to ignore this utterly invalid bit of evidence, or do you decide it might be prudent not to eat the mushrooms you've gathered?
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
OMG. ‘The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee at Schiphol has arrested a couple who fled from a quarantine hotel this evening. The arrests took place in a plane that was about to take off. Both persons have been transferred to the GGD (local health authority).’ https://twitter.com/marechaussee/status/1465069419961495553
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Yes, I’m struggling with that too. My comment above related to the reporting of her testimony on some niche site for cranks called Zero Hedge. I have no problem with her making the testimony nor it being widely used: she is at the frontline.
She's not at the fucking frontline. She is one GP albeit with an honorary position. What's more, she is being serially misquoted by the chronically fearful and nervous, who want to believe everything is AOK
Here's the source article for "everything is mild and fine"
"She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated."
Two Dozen
TWO DOZEN
And then:
"Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said."
Sure, so what exactly is wrong with carrying that interview? Are you suggesting it shouldn’t be used? I simply don’t understand your way of thinking here.
D'oh
It is being turned into outrageously misleading headlines and tweets telling the world Look, this is just MIld!
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Yes, I’m struggling with that too. My comment above related to the reporting of her testimony on some niche site for cranks called Zero Hedge. I have no problem with her making the testimony nor it being widely used: she is at the frontline.
She's not at the fucking frontline. She is one GP albeit with an honorary position. What's more, she is being serially misquoted by the chronically fearful and nervous, who want to believe everything is AOK
Here's the source article for "everything is mild and fine"
"She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated."
Two Dozen
TWO DOZEN
And then:
"Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said."
Sure, so what exactly is wrong with carrying that interview? Are you suggesting it shouldn’t be used? I simply don’t understand your way of thinking here.
There is nothing wrong with the interview - it is just that it is a single point of view, with a serious risk of survivor-bias in her experiences.
Not pointing that out creates fake information. In fact the use of such stories out of context is exactly how false information is created.
For example, what does the fact that no white man was convicted of murdering a black man between 1865 and 1965 in Missouri, USA, tell us about race relations?
Wondered when BJO would be back to say Starmer must resign.
Leading in polls and more popular than Johnson, still let's get Corbyn back and give the Tories another landslide
You are in for a terrible realisation after the next GE.
Who said owt about get Corbyn back?
Who would you like instead of Starmer?
I would like Andy Burnham but I suspect SKS will now make it impossible for him to become a by election candidate as he would be such an obvious replacement for SKS if he did.
Did you vote for him first time round when he came 4th?
Is that even relevant. I wasn't a member back then.
I rejoined after EM became leader.
I was intent on voting for him in 2015 until he backed austerity light leaving only Corbyn running on anti austerity.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
I take it you're not a Truss fan.
I look forward to your about-turn when she takes over from Boris 😂
The "woke" might be the loudest but they are not the majority of the left by any way, just as the hang them all crowd on Twitter don't represent the right.
I continue to be of the view that most people sit in the centre, hence why Labour has now recovered
Let us never forget @CorrectHorseBattery that "The Woke" as an entity is entirely a self-serving invention of right-wingers, to give themselves something to rail against.
Sometimes. It's definitely overused as a generic villain. But then other times people go 'Well what's wrong with being woke?' and trot out the textbook definition, thus suggesting it is indeed a thing, and a good thing to boot. So there is some inconsistency there.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
"Totally anecdotal." Idiot. You think a GP can't tell how many people are how ill cos its not a randomised double blinded prospective study wankathon?
Experts ignoring the rules of science is exactly how we get horse manure instead of facts.
Yes, but failure to grasp Bayes' Theorem was his issue. not the same thing.
If you have a plumbing problem and an experienced plumber comes round and says that his advice is to fix this particular problem thusly, do you give him the Yebbut is that based on anything more than mere anecdote treatment, or do you ask him to carry on?
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
For some reason, I am reminded of a speech by Cicero, in which he claimed the mass of Real Romans (TM) loved the oligarchy of the Senate and hated all Populares scum. He made similar claims of homogeneity etc....
What was the time period between us identifying Delta and getting decent data on its transmissibility and CFR?
Unless this is really bad I don't think we'll have a good idea for a few months.
The only figures I'm interested in right now are Boosters per day and ICU beds occupied by anti-vaxxers (as distinct from the unvaccinated). Those are what will become politically relevant.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
Sure, but that doesn’t make the interview invalid.
it is not invalid, but it is entirely wrong - and misleading to sad silly punters - to headline such interviews as "The symptoms of Omicron are mild". Which I have seen in countless places
"Covid-19: Omicron variant results in 'mild illness' - Khaleej Times"
Well yes, hence my critique of the REPORTING of the interview in my OP above!!
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
I take it you're not a Truss fan.
I look forward to your about-turn when she takes over from Boris 😂
No, I would have serious reservations about even voting Conservative under Truss as she is not a conservative. I would be tempted to vote Reform UK for general and Tory for local as she is on record as failing to support key Tory principles like the Monarchy and is an ex LD.
In the end I would probably vote Conservative as usual but she would be the first Tory leader in my lifetime I would have serious doubts about supporting. Indeed given the choice between the liberal Starmer or the liberal Truss you could almost say why not have the real thing in Starmer, who seems to be relatively moral in his personal life at least (although I will not go as far as Justin used to and call Truss a trollop) and rebuild under a real Conservative in opposition.
Paging @ydoethur - useless Covid theatre begins to creep back into schools...
COVID-19: Pupils in years 7 and above should wear face masks in communal areas, government tells schools
The advice, which is also in place for visitors and staff at schools and colleges in England, is part of measures to slow the spread of the Omicron variant, according to the Department for Education.
Now if only we had sodding vaccinated them all during the summer....
By now the vast bulk of secondary school children have had one dose of vaccine, already caught plague, or both - and the overwhelming majority of those who've had Covid will have been asymptomatic or suffered something akin to a cold.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
Nice post, but a red-wall voter is someone who had previously voted Labour without exception (due to family tradition/union aspect) - despite being ideologically small c conservative rather than collectivist - and departed from Labour with a gulp in 2019 to Get Brexit Done.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Yes, I’m struggling with that too. My comment above related to the reporting of her testimony on some niche site for cranks called Zero Hedge. I have no problem with her making the testimony nor it being widely used: she is at the frontline.
She's not at the fucking frontline. She is one GP albeit with an honorary position. What's more, she is being serially misquoted by the chronically fearful and nervous, who want to believe everything is AOK
Here's the source article for "everything is mild and fine"
"She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated."
Two Dozen
TWO DOZEN
And then:
"Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said."
Sure, so what exactly is wrong with carrying that interview? Are you suggesting it shouldn’t be used? I simply don’t understand your way of thinking here.
There is nothing wrong with the interview - it is just that it is a single point of view, with a serious risk of survivor-bias in her experiences.
Not pointing that out creates fake information. In fact the use of such stories out of context is exactly how false information is created.
For example, what does the fact that no white man was convicted of murdering a black man between 1865 and 1965 in Missouri, USA, tell us about race relations?
But the BBC story (and some others) do point out that she is concerned about the virus’ effect on the vulnerable. I agree that some of the reporting of the interview is shite — indeed that was the whole point of my OP!!
I think a lot of posters fail to understand how popular Boris is still with the former Labour red wall voters - He can still do no wrong because of Brexit.He is given the benefit of any doubt on any thing - these voters agree he is a "buffoon" but he's ours buffoon. If Boris is removed from the Conservative party that's when these votes - mine included will be up for grabs The only thing in my opinion that could trip him up is the Channel immigration - these comments by the French interior minister will resonate with many "“It’s better that the British ask themselves why so many migrants want to go to the UK. This is first because the labour market of your country works in part with clandestine immigrants because in your country you can work and even pay taxes without having any identity papers or be in any kind of regular situation."
Yes, I think there's a lot of truth in that post.
Personally I cannot stand Johnson but I do sense that a number of people rate him despite or because of the fact that he's not a 'normal' politician.
Regarding the Channel immigration issue, I agree the black ecomony* is a draw. To be fair though, the Tories have only had 11 years in power to resolve this problem, so I suspect it's all Gordon Brown's fault.
(*About which ironically, which we used to sneer at southern Europeans)
Slightly hard though because, when it comes to the Black Economy, it’s not as simple as “sort it out”
For a start, I suspect many of those employed may work for extended family members and / or relatives of contacts. That makes the “shop an employer” tactic tricky because you are shopping family members / those to whom you have close ties (and who may be in a position to take revenge via extended family networks in a refugee’s home country).
You then have the issue of those who work in someone else’s name who is legitimate and has all their insurance etc. Again, that might be a relative and / or close contact, or part of that network. Even if the employer checks very closely (which many won’t), they open themselves up to accusations of racism / discriminating against non-white workers. Far easier to do nothing.
You either accept we have identity papers and restrict access to benefits, health, housing etc to those who can prove they have a right or you stop them at the border / make immigration a long drawn out process
Point of order, we already do restrict access to benefits to those who have a right to reside and meet the habitual rsidency test; similarly, access to social housing.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
"Totally anecdotal." Idiot. You think a GP can't tell how many people are how ill cos its not a randomised double blinded prospective study wankathon?
Experts ignoring the rules of science is exactly how we get horse manure instead of facts.
Yes, but failure to grasp Bayes' Theorem was his issue. not the same thing.
If you have a plumbing problem and an experienced plumber comes round and says that his advice is to fix this particular problem thusly, do you give him the Yebbut is that based on anything more than mere anecdote treatment, or do you ask him to carry on?
Ignoring how *evidence* is built up is exactly the issue.
Your example is closer to diagnose of a patient - which is based in both cases on a body of knowledge derived both from experience and domain knowledge.
A plumber going "I've never seen this problem before, but it totally looks non-serious" - would that enthuse you?
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
It's not about belief.
It's about extrapolating from one persons experience of the health case system.
For example, a GP may well not see many serious cases of any kind of COVID - the serious ones will be heading to hospital, after all.
Back in 1912 the idea of icebergs being dangerous to big ships was laughed at - nearly no-one reported problems with them. Then someone noticed the yearly "surge" in ships vanishing without trace.....
And, of course, this famous picture
Do you disregard what @Foxy has to tell us about the current state of medical play because he isn't part of a double blinded randomised trial? I don't. You need all this statistical rigour bollocks to distinguish between minor effects vs not effects at all but people thnk they are, not to know whether people are or aren't getting very ill and dying, vs not.
Thought experiment: you go mushroom foraging with a mate, who cooks one of the mushrooms and goes into convulsions. Do you say Yebbut he wasn't randomly matched with a control group eating mushrooms from Tescos, in a double blinded study, so I am going to ignore this utterly invalid bit of evidence, or do you decide it might be prudent not to eat the mushrooms you've gathered?
I do stress that my experience is anecdotal. Numbers of inpatients in my Trust are now down to 85, so pretty similar to national trends. There are 15 or so with other respiratory viruses such as flu too. That may not sound a tremendous number for a population of a million, but is approaching 4 medical wards full. 4 wards that we don't have.
It is exacerbated by the problems of Social Care and also of staffing. 5 of our staff in theatre recovery handed in their notice this week, so sick are they of being redeployed again to cover covid.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
She has Kim Campbell, Canadian Conservative PM in 1993, written all over her. A leader who led the Canadian Tories from a landslide majority inherited from her predecessor to a landslide defeat by the Canadian Liberals and even being overtaken on the right as the main party of opposition by the populist Canadian Reform Party
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Yes, I’m struggling with that too. My comment above related to the reporting of her testimony on some niche site for cranks called Zero Hedge. I have no problem with her making the testimony nor it being widely used: she is at the frontline.
She's not at the fucking frontline. She is one GP albeit with an honorary position. What's more, she is being serially misquoted by the chronically fearful and nervous, who want to believe everything is AOK
Here's the source article for "everything is mild and fine"
"She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated."
Two Dozen
TWO DOZEN
And then:
"Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said."
Sure, so what exactly is wrong with carrying that interview? Are you suggesting it shouldn’t be used? I simply don’t understand your way of thinking here.
There is nothing wrong with the interview - it is just that it is a single point of view, with a serious risk of survivor-bias in her experiences.
Not pointing that out creates fake information. In fact the use of such stories out of context is exactly how false information is created.
For example, what does the fact that no white man was convicted of murdering a black man between 1865 and 1965 in Missouri, USA, tell us about race relations?
Just wrong about survivor bias, because if people were dying of this and therefore not coming to her attention, they'd be disproportionately likely to be the friends and relations of people she *is* seeing, who would quite likely be mentioning it to her.
This omicron thing is either devastatingly lethal or it isn't, and you don't need a sodding clinical trial to tell the difference. Clinical trials detect small differences, between treatments which help a bit vs treatments which don't help at all. When they bombed Hiroshima, did they detonate a placebo bomb over a similar Japanese city so they could see whether Little Boy worked or not? If not, why not?
What was the time period between us identifying Delta and getting decent data on its transmissibility and CFR?
Unless this is really bad I don't think we'll have a good idea for a few months.
The only figures I'm interested in right now are Boosters per day and ICU beds occupied by anti-vaxxers (as distinct from the unvaccinated). Those are what will become politically relevant.
Quite a long while IIRC. There was a least a couple of months of smart-arses saying things like "silly Indians and their religious festivals" before the world realised that India was dealing with a much more transmissible strain.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
"Totally anecdotal." Idiot. You think a GP can't tell how many people are how ill cos its not a randomised double blinded prospective study wankathon?
Experts ignoring the rules of science is exactly how we get horse manure instead of facts.
Yes, but failure to grasp Bayes' Theorem was his issue. not the same thing.
If you have a plumbing problem and an experienced plumber comes round and says that his advice is to fix this particular problem thusly, do you give him the Yebbut is that based on anything more than mere anecdote treatment, or do you ask him to carry on?
But if I was looking for assessment of the state of the whole UK sewage system, I wouldn't be listening much to the bloke from Pimlico Plumbers because he had fixed a couple of blocked drains in the past week, that weren't too serious.
Yes but again we are ignoring the fact that the next general election will be after 10 years of a Conservative government in power.
Of those such elections since universal suffrage in 1918 ie 1945, 1964 and 1992 and 1997 the Conservatives got 30% of the seats, 48% of the seats, 51% of the seats and 25% of the seats respectively.
In all cases bar 1992 below the 49.5% average number of seats the Conservatives have won at general elections over the last century.
Mmm, true, but the sample is even tinier than Fishing's century of outcomes, and the Consercvatives are notably good at changing leader and pretending it's an exciting new government. These are fun exercises, but they impose a statistical model on a score of very different events. I'm not convinced that looking at the very different Conservative Party against the very different Labour Party in the wildly different circumstances of, say, 1935, tells us anything at all. Virtually all the voters from then are now no longer with us, and issues that excited them like German rearmament are entirely irrelevant now. Do we expect whatever happens in 2023 to be a useful guide to what will happen in 2122?
There are differences of course but it always holds true I think that the longer a party has been in power, the more difficult it is for it to get re elected
JohnsonIan Governments have only been in play for two years, so the longevity clause doesn't apply. What went on before felt very, very different.
Good point but "Johnsonian Governments" - do I not like that phrase. It imbues a gravitas most unmerited.
I think the use of the plural is the more depressing element of that phrase.
There have been two to date. Before and after 12/12/19. I am not hoping for more
I know Wikipedia believes this, but I am not sure this is correct. My understanding and in this the Institute for Government would appear to agree with me, is that an incumbent PM who wins a general election continues to lead the same government. Only if there is a break of service with a different PM do you have 'first and second governments' i.e. only Churchill and Wilson since the war (and there is some dispute about whether Churchill was PM twice or three times).
So there has been one Johnson government.
It's still one too many of course, and doesn't really address the substantive point.
Point of (dis)Order - Think your point re: continuity under same PM is generally valid.
Your caveat re: Churchill is based on fact that he first became PM in 1940 as leader of the wartime coalition including the Labour and Liberal parties, that superseded the previous National government, a Conservative-dominated quasi-coalition at best) under Chamberlain. AND that Churchill remained PM after Labour and Liberals left the coalition in 1945 following the German surrender, as leader for a few weeks of a caretaker administration of Tories (plus a few associated Liberal National and National Labour as pre-1940).
By this reckoning, Churchill's third and final administration began with Conservative victory in 1951 general election, and continued until his resignation and replacement by Eden in 1955.
NOTE that a similar situation occurred during World War I when the Liberal government under Herbert Asquith was superseded in 1915 by the first WWI Liberal-Conservative coalition; Asquith remained PM but the power dynamic had shifted substantially. Clearly these are separate administrations under the same PM.
At the end of 1916, when Asquith was bounced from No. 10, left the govt along with many Liberals, and and replaced by a newly-configured coalition under Lloyd George. In 1918 after the Armistice, Lloyd George was returned at the "Coupon election" as leader of this coalition by a landslide. BUT it's worth noting (at least in passing) that their was some reworking of the coalition, thanks to the relative success of coalition Tories versus coaltion Liberals lucky enough to snag one of the "coupons" representing express recognition as a government-endorsed candidate.
Another example occurred in 1931 when the Labour administration of Ramsey Macdonald was replaced by the National government under Macdonald, supported by most Conservatives and Liberals, but opposed by the majority of Labour ministers, MPs and members. Again, two very different administrations under the same PM. This same basic government last until 1940 under three successive prime ministers - Macdonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain - with little change arguably until the outbreak of WWII in 1939, when Churchill & Eden re-entered the cabinet.
In the case of Churchill (and indeed MacDonald) it is complicated by the fact that he resigned and was reappointed. AIUI Asquith did not.
Also believe that Lloyd George's situation was same (in that respect anyway) as Asquith in 1915.
@bigjohnowls I don’t agree with your characterisation of new red wall Tory voters at all.
They like Boris, sure, but they don’t love him. I also believe polling shows a bigger swing against the Cons in the North than the national average that really goes against your hypothesis.
I know more 2019 Tories who voted Con because of Corbyn than because of Brexit. Brexit was a factor sure but they’re not going to base their 202X vote based on Brexit, they’re going to base it on who they think is going to make their lives better.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
I take it you're not a Truss fan.
I look forward to your about-turn when she takes over from Boris 😂
i don't think she's seen as solid enough to take over from Boris should that be needed. If Boris goes then it's going to have to be safe. Post a 2024 Tory win, then yes, she's all set.
The "woke" might be the loudest but they are not the majority of the left by any way, just as the hang them all crowd on Twitter don't represent the right.
I continue to be of the view that most people sit in the centre, hence why Labour has now recovered
Let us never forget @CorrectHorseBattery that "The Woke" as an entity is entirely a self-serving invention of right-wingers, to give themselves something to rail against.
Sometimes. It's definitely overused as a generic villain. But then other times people go 'Well what's wrong with being woke?' and trot out the textbook definition, thus suggesting it is indeed a thing, and a good thing to boot. So there is some inconsistency there.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
"Hang paedos and fund the NHS" - view from one pollster on what C1 voters in Red Wall want (Sun Times)
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Yes, I’m struggling with that too. My comment above related to the reporting of her testimony on some niche site for cranks called Zero Hedge. I have no problem with her making the testimony nor it being widely used: she is at the frontline.
She's not at the fucking frontline. She is one GP albeit with an honorary position. What's more, she is being serially misquoted by the chronically fearful and nervous, who want to believe everything is AOK
Here's the source article for "everything is mild and fine"
"She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated."
Two Dozen
TWO DOZEN
And then:
"Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said."
Sure, so what exactly is wrong with carrying that interview? Are you suggesting it shouldn’t be used? I simply don’t understand your way of thinking here.
There is nothing wrong with the interview - it is just that it is a single point of view, with a serious risk of survivor-bias in her experiences.
Not pointing that out creates fake information. In fact the use of such stories out of context is exactly how false information is created.
For example, what does the fact that no white man was convicted of murdering a black man between 1865 and 1965 in Missouri, USA, tell us about race relations?
Just wrong about survivor bias, because if people were dying of this and therefore not coming to her attention, they'd be disproportionately likely to be the friends and relations of people she *is* seeing, who would quite likely be mentioning it to her.
This omicron thing is either devastatingly lethal or it isn't, and you don't need a sodding clinical trial to tell the difference. Clinical trials detect small differences, between treatments which help a bit vs treatments which don't help at all. When they bombed Hiroshima, did they detonate a placebo bomb over a similar Japanese city so they could see whether Little Boy worked or not? If not, why not?
Its far too early too tell one way or another. From infection to death, its often a month. That's the whole point. They only found this last week.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
She has Kim Campbell, Canadian Conservative PM in 1993, written all over her. A leader who led the Canadian Tories from a landslide majority inherited from her predecessor to a landslide defeat by the Canadian Liberals and even being overtaken on the right as the main party of opposition by the populist Canadian Reform Party
Balderdash and codswallop.
Its funny how your view of the Red Wall seems to be that Red Wall voters are all your own style of hardcore Essex longstanding Conservative voters. If that's the case, why weren't we all voting Tory for decades already?
Isabel Oakeshott @IsabelOakeshott · 56m And here we have it. Rank hypocrisy right on a plate. Hundreds of maskless teachers gather to congratulate themselves on their brilliant work while preparing to enforce mask wearing on kids. Whole policy undermined at a stroke.
What was the time period between us identifying Delta and getting decent data on its transmissibility and CFR?
Unless this is really bad I don't think we'll have a good idea for a few months.
The only figures I'm interested in right now are Boosters per day and ICU beds occupied by anti-vaxxers (as distinct from the unvaccinated). Those are what will become politically relevant.
Note: the difference between then number of unvaccinated persons and the number of refusers will be near-negligible on a population scale. The vast bulk even of immunocompromised persons aren't so stricken that they can't accept vaccines, even if they might not necessarily be so effective in them as in other people. I am reasonably confident in this assertion. I have two clinically extremely vulnerable people in my close social circle who are both significantly immunocompromised and have both had a full course of Covid jabs.
If you see stats for unvaccinated persons in hospital then that will give you a very close approximation to the numbers of vaccine refusers in hospital.
Of course, this only becomes politically relevant if one party or another proposes relegating refusers to second class healthcare in order to free up hospital capacity for people seriously ill with anything else, and nobody shows any sign of any appetite for doing that. As I said earlier today, all over the world Covid patients are prioritised over absolutely everyone else, regardless of whether their disease is self-inflicted or not.
Yes but again we are ignoring the fact that the next general election will be after 10 years of a Conservative government in power.
Of those such elections since universal suffrage in 1918 ie 1945, 1964 and 1992 and 1997 the Conservatives got 30% of the seats, 48% of the seats, 51% of the seats and 25% of the seats respectively.
In all cases bar 1992 below the 49.5% average number of seats the Conservatives have won at general elections over the last century.
Mmm, true, but the sample is even tinier than Fishing's century of outcomes, and the Consercvatives are notably good at changing leader and pretending it's an exciting new government. These are fun exercises, but they impose a statistical model on a score of very different events. I'm not convinced that looking at the very different Conservative Party against the very different Labour Party in the wildly different circumstances of, say, 1935, tells us anything at all. Virtually all the voters from then are now no longer with us, and issues that excited them like German rearmament are entirely irrelevant now. Do we expect whatever happens in 2023 to be a useful guide to what will happen in 2122?
There are differences of course but it always holds true I think that the longer a party has been in power, the more difficult it is for it to get re elected
JohnsonIan Governments have only been in play for two years, so the longevity clause doesn't apply. What went on before felt very, very different.
Good point but "Johnsonian Governments" - do I not like that phrase. It imbues a gravitas most unmerited.
How should I differentiate the half-wittery post June 2019 and what went before?
My most alarming take away on Johnsonianism is the coach and horses driven through the GFA to furnish Johnson's Brexit. Mrs May's tiptoeing around Northern Irish sensitivities cost her Number 10. And then JohnsonIans have the gaul to contend Brexit was perfect but for the "fact" the GFA was flawed.
Yes, this is where your acute and legendary Benny Hill ref doesn't totally cover things. It really is no joke.
The GFA wasn’t flawed.
But one of the fundamental underpinning assumptions no longer applies. The UK is not part of the EU.
Think of it like a temple built on 4 weight bearing columns. One has been knocked out. Do you frantically scurry around trying to keep the old temple standing, unchanged (albeit unstable and at risk of collapse), or do you look for a new way to glorify your god?
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
She has Kim Campbell, Canadian Conservative PM in 1993, written all over her. A leader who led the Canadian Tories from a landslide majority inherited from her predecessor to a landslide defeat by the Canadian Liberals and even being overtaken on the right as the main party of opposition by the populist Canadian Reform Party
Balderdash and codswallop.
Its funny how your view of the Red Wall seems to be that Red Wall voters are all your own style of hardcore Essex longstanding Conservative voters. If that's the case, why weren't we all voting Tory for decades already?
They voted for Boris to get Brexit done and to beat Corbyn. If Boris goes they will not vote for libertarian Remainer Truss, they will either vote Labour again or go ReformUK
@bigjohnowls I don’t agree with your characterisation of new red wall Tory voters at all.
They like Boris, sure, but they don’t love him. I also believe polling shows a bigger swing against the Cons in the North than the national average that really goes against your hypothesis.
I know more 2019 Tories who voted Con because of Corbyn than because of Brexit. Brexit was a factor sure but they’re not going to base their 202X vote based on Brexit, they’re going to base it on who they think is going to make their lives better.
Who that is, I don’t think we know at present.
All of a sudden politically alert though. The great thing about 2019 is that the voters in some seats made it clear they can for who they like. That's a good thing, party politics aside.
Yes but again we are ignoring the fact that the next general election will be after 10 years of a Conservative government in power.
Of those such elections since universal suffrage in 1918 ie 1945, 1964 and 1992 and 1997 the Conservatives got 30% of the seats, 48% of the seats, 51% of the seats and 25% of the seats respectively.
In all cases bar 1992 below the 49.5% average number of seats the Conservatives have won at general elections over the last century.
Mmm, true, but the sample is even tinier than Fishing's century of outcomes, and the Consercvatives are notably good at changing leader and pretending it's an exciting new government. These are fun exercises, but they impose a statistical model on a score of very different events. I'm not convinced that looking at the very different Conservative Party against the very different Labour Party in the wildly different circumstances of, say, 1935, tells us anything at all. Virtually all the voters from then are now no longer with us, and issues that excited them like German rearmament are entirely irrelevant now. Do we expect whatever happens in 2023 to be a useful guide to what will happen in 2122?
There are differences of course but it always holds true I think that the longer a party has been in power, the more difficult it is for it to get re elected
JohnsonIan Governments have only been in play for two years, so the longevity clause doesn't apply. What went on before felt very, very different.
Good point but "Johnsonian Governments" - do I not like that phrase. It imbues a gravitas most unmerited.
How should I differentiate the half-wittery post June 2019 and what went before?
My most alarming take away on Johnsonianism is the coach and horses driven through the GFA to furnish Johnson's Brexit. Mrs May's tiptoeing around Northern Irish sensitivities cost her Number 10. And then JohnsonIans have the gaul to contend Brexit was perfect but for the "fact" the GFA was flawed.
Yes, this is where your acute and legendary Benny Hill ref doesn't totally cover things. It really is no joke.
The GFA wasn’t flawed.
But one of the fundamental underpinning assumptions no longer applies. The UK is not part of the EU.
Think of it like a temple built on 4 weight bearing columns. One has been knocked out. Do you frantically scurry around trying to keep the old temple standing, unchanged (albeit unstable and at risk of collapse), or do you look for a new way to glorify your god?
What was the time period between us identifying Delta and getting decent data on its transmissibility and CFR?
Unless this is really bad I don't think we'll have a good idea for a few months.
The only figures I'm interested in right now are Boosters per day and ICU beds occupied by anti-vaxxers (as distinct from the unvaccinated). Those are what will become politically relevant.
Quite a long while IIRC. There was a least a couple of months of smart-arses saying things like "silly Indians and their religious festivals" before the world realised that India was dealing with a much more transmissible strain.
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu and it will only really be the oldies who die from flu every year.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
"Totally anecdotal." Idiot. You think a GP can't tell how many people are how ill cos its not a randomised double blinded prospective study wankathon?
Experts ignoring the rules of science is exactly how we get horse manure instead of facts.
Yes, but failure to grasp Bayes' Theorem was his issue. not the same thing.
If you have a plumbing problem and an experienced plumber comes round and says that his advice is to fix this particular problem thusly, do you give him the Yebbut is that based on anything more than mere anecdote treatment, or do you ask him to carry on?
But if I was looking for assessment of the state of the whole UK sewage system, I wouldn't be listening much to the bloke from Pimlico Plumbers because he had fixed a couple of blocked drains in the past week, that weren't too serious.
Feeble analogy. If omicron is a problem it is purely because it's a big multiple of individual instances of blocked drains. There isn't a macro equivalent of whether Bazalgette's tunnel will be up to the throughput of the 2040s or whatever.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
She has Kim Campbell, Canadian Conservative PM in 1993, written all over her. A leader who led the Canadian Tories from a landslide majority inherited from her predecessor to a landslide defeat by the Canadian Liberals and even being overtaken on the right as the main party of opposition by the populist Canadian Reform Party
Balderdash and codswallop.
Its funny how your view of the Red Wall seems to be that Red Wall voters are all your own style of hardcore Essex longstanding Conservative voters. If that's the case, why weren't we all voting Tory for decades already?
They voted for Boris to get Brexit done and to beat Corbyn. If Boris goes they will not vote for libertarian Remainer Truss, they will either vote Labour again or go ReformUK
Why did they vote for Boris?
Boris is upbeat and speaks the language of opportunity. He spoke about building up and levelling up communities and seeking opportunities post-Brexit.
Truss does the same thing. Thatcher and Cameron did the same thing.
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu.
Kent covid started I think with the council blaming locals for their poor behaviour.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
She has Kim Campbell, Canadian Conservative PM in 1993, written all over her. A leader who led the Canadian Tories from a landslide majority inherited from her predecessor to a landslide defeat by the Canadian Liberals and even being overtaken on the right as the main party of opposition by the populist Canadian Reform Party
Balderdash and codswallop.
Its funny how your view of the Red Wall seems to be that Red Wall voters are all your own style of hardcore Essex longstanding Conservative voters. If that's the case, why weren't we all voting Tory for decades already?
They voted for Boris to get Brexit done and to beat Corbyn. If Boris goes they will not vote for libertarian Remainer Truss, they will either vote Labour again or go ReformUK
Why did they vote for Boris?
Boris is upbeat and speaks the language of opportunity. He spoke about building up and levelling up communities and seeking opportunities post-Brexit.
Truss does the same thing. Thatcher and Cameron did the same thing.
Its what good leaders do and Truss has it.
They voted for Boris because they wanted snotty southern kids to inherit their parents’ million pound houses Philip. Come on this is basic stuff.
Think of it like a temple built on 4 weight bearing columns. One has been knocked out. Do you frantically scurry around trying to keep the old temple standing, unchanged (albeit unstable and at risk of collapse), or do you look for a new way to glorify your god?
If the Temple was the thing keeping the warring tribes from killing each other, you try and keep it standing
What was the time period between us identifying Delta and getting decent data on its transmissibility and CFR?
Unless this is really bad I don't think we'll have a good idea for a few months.
The only figures I'm interested in right now are Boosters per day and ICU beds occupied by anti-vaxxers (as distinct from the unvaccinated). Those are what will become politically relevant.
Quite a long while IIRC. There was a least a couple of months of smart-arses saying things like "silly Indians and their religious festivals" before the world realised that India was dealing with a much more transmissible strain.
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu and it will only really be the oldies who die from flu every year.
Where did you come across an analysis of that level of imbecility, and why do you spend time there?
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
If you are ever in the Nottingham area I will take you down my allotment where at least 5 of my close neighbours are former Labour voters - now they vote Ashfield Independents in the locals and Boris in the nationals - why? Brexit
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Yes, I’m struggling with that too. My comment above related to the reporting of her testimony on some niche site for cranks called Zero Hedge. I have no problem with her making the testimony nor it being widely used: she is at the frontline.
She's not at the fucking frontline. She is one GP albeit with an honorary position. What's more, she is being serially misquoted by the chronically fearful and nervous, who want to believe everything is AOK
Here's the source article for "everything is mild and fine"
"She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated."
Two Dozen
TWO DOZEN
And then:
"Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said."
Sure, so what exactly is wrong with carrying that interview? Are you suggesting it shouldn’t be used? I simply don’t understand your way of thinking here.
There is nothing wrong with the interview - it is just that it is a single point of view, with a serious risk of survivor-bias in her experiences.
Not pointing that out creates fake information. In fact the use of such stories out of context is exactly how false information is created.
For example, what does the fact that no white man was convicted of murdering a black man between 1865 and 1965 in Missouri, USA, tell us about race relations?
Just wrong about survivor bias, because if people were dying of this and therefore not coming to her attention, they'd be disproportionately likely to be the friends and relations of people she *is* seeing, who would quite likely be mentioning it to her.
This omicron thing is either devastatingly lethal or it isn't, and you don't need a sodding clinical trial to tell the difference. Clinical trials detect small differences, between treatments which help a bit vs treatments which don't help at all. When they bombed Hiroshima, did they detonate a placebo bomb over a similar Japanese city so they could see whether Little Boy worked or not? If not, why not?
Ah - making ass-umptions about the lack of biases in the sample.
One of the handy things about not burning Kyoto to the ground was that, after the war, the scientists got to measure the exact properties of Japanese civil and domestic structures.
And discovered that while strangely resistant to thermal pulse & shock waves*, they were very transparent to gamma, neutrinos and x-rays.
Which explained why people had died from prompt radiation from the bomb - the previous calculations had suggested that if you were close enough to get a fatal radiation dose, you would be incinerated a millisecond later anyway.....
*They burned and fell down, but acted as sacrificial shields.
The "woke" might be the loudest but they are not the majority of the left by any way, just as the hang them all crowd on Twitter don't represent the right.
I continue to be of the view that most people sit in the centre, hence why Labour has now recovered
Let us never forget @CorrectHorseBattery that "The Woke" as an entity is entirely a self-serving invention of right-wingers, to give themselves something to rail against.
Sometimes. It's definitely overused as a generic villain. But then other times people go 'Well what's wrong with being woke?' and trot out the textbook definition, thus suggesting it is indeed a thing, and a good thing to boot. So there is some inconsistency there.
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Yes, I’m struggling with that too. My comment above related to the reporting of her testimony on some niche site for cranks called Zero Hedge. I have no problem with her making the testimony nor it being widely used: she is at the frontline.
She's not at the fucking frontline. She is one GP albeit with an honorary position. What's more, she is being serially misquoted by the chronically fearful and nervous, who want to believe everything is AOK
Here's the source article for "everything is mild and fine"
"She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated."
Two Dozen
TWO DOZEN
And then:
"Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said."
Sure, so what exactly is wrong with carrying that interview? Are you suggesting it shouldn’t be used? I simply don’t understand your way of thinking here.
There is nothing wrong with the interview - it is just that it is a single point of view, with a serious risk of survivor-bias in her experiences.
Not pointing that out creates fake information. In fact the use of such stories out of context is exactly how false information is created.
For example, what does the fact that no white man was convicted of murdering a black man between 1865 and 1965 in Missouri, USA, tell us about race relations?
Just wrong about survivor bias, because if people were dying of this and therefore not coming to her attention, they'd be disproportionately likely to be the friends and relations of people she *is* seeing, who would quite likely be mentioning it to her.
This omicron thing is either devastatingly lethal or it isn't, and you don't need a sodding clinical trial to tell the difference. Clinical trials detect small differences, between treatments which help a bit vs treatments which don't help at all. When they bombed Hiroshima, did they detonate a placebo bomb over a similar Japanese city so they could see whether Little Boy worked or not? If not, why not?
Its far too early too tell one way or another. From infection to death, its often a month. That's the whole point. They only found this last week.
And that implies it has only been there since last week?
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
She has Kim Campbell, Canadian Conservative PM in 1993, written all over her. A leader who led the Canadian Tories from a landslide majority inherited from her predecessor to a landslide defeat by the Canadian Liberals and even being overtaken on the right as the main party of opposition by the populist Canadian Reform Party
Balderdash and codswallop.
Its funny how your view of the Red Wall seems to be that Red Wall voters are all your own style of hardcore Essex longstanding Conservative voters. If that's the case, why weren't we all voting Tory for decades already?
They voted for Boris to get Brexit done and to beat Corbyn. If Boris goes they will not vote for libertarian Remainer Truss, they will either vote Labour again or go ReformUK
Why did they vote for Boris?
Boris is upbeat and speaks the language of opportunity. He spoke about building up and levelling up communities and seeking opportunities post-Brexit.
Truss does the same thing. Thatcher and Cameron did the same thing.
Its what good leaders do and Truss has it.
They voted for Boris because they wanted snotty southern kids to inherit their parents’ million pound houses Philip. Come on this is basic stuff.
LOL!
Its funny that those who are from the Red Wall in @HYUFD worldview all just happen to want exactly what he wants too.
Its especially funny since he's a Remain voting Southerner who has always voted Tory for his entire life and not a Leave voting Red Wall first time Tory.
The "woke" might be the loudest but they are not the majority of the left by any way, just as the hang them all crowd on Twitter don't represent the right.
I continue to be of the view that most people sit in the centre, hence why Labour has now recovered
Let us never forget @CorrectHorseBattery that "The Woke" as an entity is entirely a self-serving invention of right-wingers, to give themselves something to rail against.
Sometimes. It's definitely overused as a generic villain. But then other times people go 'Well what's wrong with being woke?' and trot out the textbook definition, thus suggesting it is indeed a thing, and a good thing to boot. So there is some inconsistency there.
I’m woke as fuck me
I keep trying to read the dreary philosophising of the alleged "woke". But I keep falling asleep. Does that make me anti-woke?
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu.
Kent covid started I think with the council blaming locals for their poor behaviour.
The thing that struck me is just how reactive basically every major government has been, immediately, in lock step. We haven't seen that. There is clearly many many different independent sets of scientific advisors telling their governments this has the potential to be really really bad.
Other variant have been yeah yeah we see it, its under investigation, we might react to it when we get some more info, weeks pass...some countries get put on some travel ban list, other countries don't, there are debates in the media about why a German can go here, but British can't or vice versa.
Now everybody might have totally over reacted, but we haven't see this with Beta and the Brazilian equivalent, which were quickly seen to have vaccine escape and re-infection abilities.
Yes but again we are ignoring the fact that the next general election will be after 10 years of a Conservative government in power.
Of those such elections since universal suffrage in 1918 ie 1945, 1964 and 1992 and 1997 the Conservatives got 30% of the seats, 48% of the seats, 51% of the seats and 25% of the seats respectively.
In all cases bar 1992 below the 49.5% average number of seats the Conservatives have won at general elections over the last century.
Mmm, true, but the sample is even tinier than Fishing's century of outcomes, and the Consercvatives are notably good at changing leader and pretending it's an exciting new government. These are fun exercises, but they impose a statistical model on a score of very different events. I'm not convinced that looking at the very different Conservative Party against the very different Labour Party in the wildly different circumstances of, say, 1935, tells us anything at all. Virtually all the voters from then are now no longer with us, and issues that excited them like German rearmament are entirely irrelevant now. Do we expect whatever happens in 2023 to be a useful guide to what will happen in 2122?
There are differences of course but it always holds true I think that the longer a party has been in power, the more difficult it is for it to get re elected
JohnsonIan Governments have only been in play for two years, so the longevity clause doesn't apply. What went on before felt very, very different.
Yes, this administration has actively prioritised reversing policies of the 2010-2015 administration. FTPA, Triple Lock, 0.7% GNP for overseas aid etc.
The first two of those I support dumping even if I don't support this Government. The triple lock is simply a bribe to a client vote. The FTPA was always a waste of time anyway. The Overseas Aid changes are unsupportable.
Yes they didn't go nearly far enough. Giving any aid at all through taxes while there are any number of charities that people can give to if they want is unsupportable.
That’s very shortsighted my friend
Overseas aid isn’t charity, it’s geopolitics.
The best way to reduce migration from Africa to Europe, for example, is to invest in the Sahel. Limit the supply of desperate people trying to come to squat on your doorstep as it were
Yes, I see that migration from North Africa has fallen noticeably since we started giving 0.7% of GDP ten years ago.
If we want to stop migration that 0.7% would be much better spent on speeding up the asylum system and better border enforcement.
It’s a long term project. And shouldn’t be an either or. But it really helped reduce radicalism in Ethiopia for example
I actually disagree with 0.7% because it’s the wrong mindset. We should spend the appropriate amount of money.
I think a lot of posters fail to understand how popular Boris is still with the former Labour red wall voters - He can still do no wrong because of Brexit.He is given the benefit of any doubt on any thing - these voters agree he is a "buffoon" but he's ours buffoon. If Boris is removed from the Conservative party that's when these votes - mine included will be up for grabs The only thing in my opinion that could trip him up is the Channel immigration - these comments by the French interior minister will resonate with many "“It’s better that the British ask themselves why so many migrants want to go to the UK. This is first because the labour market of your country works in part with clandestine immigrants because in your country you can work and even pay taxes without having any identity papers or be in any kind of regular situation."
Yes, I think there's a lot of truth in that post.
Personally I cannot stand Johnson but I do sense that a number of people rate him despite or because of the fact that he's not a 'normal' politician.
Regarding the Channel immigration issue, I agree the black ecomony* is a draw. To be fair though, the Tories have only had 11 years in power to resolve this problem, so I suspect it's all Gordon Brown's fault.
(*About which ironically, which we used to sneer at southern Europeans)
Slightly hard though because, when it comes to the Black Economy, it’s not as simple as “sort it out”
For a start, I suspect many of those employed may work for extended family members and / or relatives of contacts. That makes the “shop an employer” tactic tricky because you are shopping family members / those to whom you have close ties (and who may be in a position to take revenge via extended family networks in a refugee’s home country).
You then have the issue of those who work in someone else’s name who is legitimate and has all their insurance etc. Again, that might be a relative and / or close contact, or part of that network. Even if the employer checks very closely (which many won’t), they open themselves up to accusations of racism / discriminating against non-white workers. Far easier to do nothing.
You either accept we have identity papers and restrict access to benefits, health, housing etc to those who can prove they have a right or you stop them at the border / make immigration a long drawn out process
Point of order, we already do restrict access to benefits to those who have a right to reside and meet the habitual rsidency test; similarly, access to social housing.
But (1) that’s not the point and (2) that restriction is not as strict as you imply.
Those who want to work in the black economy have access routes via family and friends. So when people say they want to come to the U.K. because family are there, it’s not just a “I wish I can see my relatives” thing. There is an established network on the ground that can help them get money quickly.
Re the benefits part, the Government, councils etc can’t let people starve, be homeless etc hence why they put them in accommodation rather than dump them in the streets. And of course you then have the refugee groups (as today) bemoaning that refugees are in hotel accommodation and they need proper residency etc etc
The idea that we have effective safeguards against anyone turning up is laughable.
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
If you are ever in the Nottingham area I will take you down my allotment where at least 5 of my close neighbours are former Labour voters - now they vote Ashfield Independents in the locals and Boris in the nationals - why? Brexit
How long do you think Brexit will continue to drive your fellow allotment holders' voting for?
What was the time period between us identifying Delta and getting decent data on its transmissibility and CFR?
Unless this is really bad I don't think we'll have a good idea for a few months.
The only figures I'm interested in right now are Boosters per day and ICU beds occupied by anti-vaxxers (as distinct from the unvaccinated). Those are what will become politically relevant.
Quite a long while IIRC. There was a least a couple of months of smart-arses saying things like "silly Indians and their religious festivals" before the world realised that India was dealing with a much more transmissible strain.
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu and it will only really be the oldies who die from flu every year.
Where did you come across an analysis of that level of imbecility, and why do you spend time there?
The same media who are now giving the South African GP a megaphone.
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
Nice post, but a red-wall voter is someone who had previously voted Labour without exception (due to family tradition/union aspect) - despite being ideologically small c conservative rather than collectivist - and departed from Labour with a gulp in 2019 to Get Brexit Done.
That’s a very specific voter you’re describing, and this is where the scepticism comes in. Are we really to believe that a. all those new Tory voters in the North in 2019 will swing in a predictable bloc next time, or are motivated by the same things? Or b. That the so called red wall will be the key swing voter group in 2023/4, or indeed c. that they all switched in order to get Brexit done (which it isn’t, by any stretch) rather than because Labour was led by a far left nutcase?
I know from the heterogeneity of views even on my small inner London street where by popular supposition everyone must be a woke-remainer-elitist-Corbynista that people are mysterious creatures when it comes to political beliefs.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
She has Kim Campbell, Canadian Conservative PM in 1993, written all over her. A leader who led the Canadian Tories from a landslide majority inherited from her predecessor to a landslide defeat by the Canadian Liberals and even being overtaken on the right as the main party of opposition by the populist Canadian Reform Party
Balderdash and codswallop.
Its funny how your view of the Red Wall seems to be that Red Wall voters are all your own style of hardcore Essex longstanding Conservative voters. If that's the case, why weren't we all voting Tory for decades already?
They voted for Boris to get Brexit done and to beat Corbyn. If Boris goes they will not vote for libertarian Remainer Truss, they will either vote Labour again or go ReformUK
Why did they vote for Boris?
Boris is upbeat and speaks the language of opportunity. He spoke about building up and levelling up communities and seeking opportunities post-Brexit.
Truss does the same thing. Thatcher and Cameron did the same thing.
Its what good leaders do and Truss has it.
Rubbish, they voted for Boris as he was a Leaver who they knew would get Brexit done.
Red Wallers also tend to be economically big state but socially conservative. hence Boris needed to promise big spending and an end to austerity to win them as well as to deliver Brexit. Remember most of them did not vote for Cameron or even Thatcher let alone May, Boris was the first Tory leader they ever voted for.
Red Wallers will not vote for an economically small state, socially liberal ex Remainer like Truss. They will either go back to Labour or vote ReformUK
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
"Totally anecdotal." Idiot. You think a GP can't tell how many people are how ill cos its not a randomised double blinded prospective study wankathon?
Experts ignoring the rules of science is exactly how we get horse manure instead of facts.
Yes, but failure to grasp Bayes' Theorem was his issue. not the same thing.
If you have a plumbing problem and an experienced plumber comes round and says that his advice is to fix this particular problem thusly, do you give him the Yebbut is that based on anything more than mere anecdote treatment, or do you ask him to carry on?
But if I was looking for assessment of the state of the whole UK sewage system, I wouldn't be listening much to the bloke from Pimlico Plumbers because he had fixed a couple of blocked drains in the past week, that weren't too serious.
Feeble analogy. If omicron is a problem it is purely because it's a big multiple of individual instances of blocked drains. There isn't a macro equivalent of whether Bazalgette's tunnel will be up to the throughput of the 2040s or whatever.
The "woke" might be the loudest but they are not the majority of the left by any way, just as the hang them all crowd on Twitter don't represent the right.
I continue to be of the view that most people sit in the centre, hence why Labour has now recovered
Let us never forget @CorrectHorseBattery that "The Woke" as an entity is entirely a self-serving invention of right-wingers, to give themselves something to rail against.
It’s not. Just look at the mess at the American School for example
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu.
Kent covid started I think with the council blaming locals for their poor behaviour.
The thing that struck me is just how reactive basically every major government has been, immediately, in lock step. We haven't seen that. There is clearly many many different independent sets of scientific advisors telling their governments this has the potential to be really really bad.
Other variant have been yeah yeah we see it, its under investigation, we might react to it when we get some more info, weeks pass...some countries get put on some travel ban list, other countries don't, there are debates in the media about why a German can go here, but British can't or vice versa.
Now everybody might have totally over reacted, but we haven't see this with Beta and the Brazilian equivalent, which were quickly seen to have vaccine escape and re-infection abilities.
My hunch is that modellers have already examined many different scenarios for future mutations and unfortunately Omicron went straight over some red-line.
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu.
Kent covid started I think with the council blaming locals for their poor behaviour.
The thing that struck me is just how reactive basically every major government has been, immediately, in lock step. We haven't seen that. There is clearly many many different independent sets of scientific advisors telling their governments this has the potential to be really really bad.
Other variant have been yeah yeah we see it, its under investigation, we might react to it when we get some more info, weeks pass...some countries get put on some travel ban list, other countries don't, there are debates in the media about why a German can go here, but British can't or vice versa.
Now everybody might have totally over reacted, but we haven't see this with Beta and the Brazilian equivalent, which were quickly seen to have vaccine escape and re-infection abilities.
My hunch is that modellers have already examined many different scenarios for future mutations and unfortunately Omicron went straight over some red-line.
This is basically what the expert DW News have had on has been saying. This has on paper all the best properties from all the other variants, plus some new ones.
There is a lot of work at the moment in ML / AI world looking at this kind of thing (not just COVID), I am not up to date with it, but wouldn't surprise me if they have been running research along these lines specifically for COVID.
Now, as Max PB has said, there is also the theory that a virus can basically mutate itself too much, such that it becomes a bit useless. There is a sweet spot between infectiousness and how lethal it is. We can all hope this one has done the world a favour and become too infectious, while neutering its ability to kill.
But the governments of the world are definitely treating this one differently to the others.
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
If you are ever in the Nottingham area I will take you down my allotment where at least 5 of my close neighbours are former Labour voters - now they vote Ashfield Independents in the locals and Boris in the nationals - why? Brexit
How long do you think Brexit will continue to drive your fellow allotment holders' voting for?
I'm struggling to understand why we are not allowed to believe the South African GP story. As a source on how many people are how ill in the country I'd put a practising GP pretty fcuking high on the credibility list.
Because it is totally anecdotal based on her experience of 20 patients.
"Totally anecdotal." Idiot. You think a GP can't tell how many people are how ill cos its not a randomised double blinded prospective study wankathon?
Experts ignoring the rules of science is exactly how we get horse manure instead of facts.
Yes, but failure to grasp Bayes' Theorem was his issue. not the same thing.
If you have a plumbing problem and an experienced plumber comes round and says that his advice is to fix this particular problem thusly, do you give him the Yebbut is that based on anything more than mere anecdote treatment, or do you ask him to carry on?
But if I was looking for assessment of the state of the whole UK sewage system, I wouldn't be listening much to the bloke from Pimlico Plumbers because he had fixed a couple of blocked drains in the past week, that weren't too serious.
Feeble analogy. If omicron is a problem it is purely because it's a big multiple of individual instances of blocked drains. There isn't a macro equivalent of whether Bazalgette's tunnel will be up to the throughput of the 2040s or whatever.
Are you saying it's a shit argument?
Indeed. Bazalgette's work wasn't based on asking a couple of plumbers. It was based on taking a survey of the entire existing drainage system of London, complete with flow rates, excessive capacity etc. Then working out how to get from "here" (Thames as a sewer) to "there".
The evidence based calculations and concepts were one of the tour-de-forces of Victorian scientific planning - with a zillion pages of copper plate figures.....
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu.
Kent covid started I think with the council blaming locals for their poor behaviour.
The thing that struck me is just how reactive basically every major government has been, immediately, in lock step. We haven't seen that. There is clearly many many different independent sets of scientific advisors telling their governments this has the potential to be really really bad.
Other variant have been yeah yeah we see it, its under investigation, we might react to it when we get some more info, weeks pass...some countries get put on some travel ban list, other countries don't, there are debates in the media about why a German can go here, but British can't or vice versa.
Now everybody might have totally over reacted, but we haven't see this with Beta and the Brazilian equivalent, which were quickly seen to have vaccine escape and re-infection abilities.
My hunch is that modellers have already examined many different scenarios for future mutations and unfortunately Omicron went straight over some red-line.
Particularly noticeable was the reaction of the Israeli government, which specifically war-gamed an ultra infectious, vax-evasive mutant strain, in the Omega Games
Two weeks after the games, they have enacted all those plans, in toto, including closure of all borders and a quasi State of Emergency.
The "woke" might be the loudest but they are not the majority of the left by any way, just as the hang them all crowd on Twitter don't represent the right.
I continue to be of the view that most people sit in the centre, hence why Labour has now recovered
Let us never forget @CorrectHorseBattery that "The Woke" as an entity is entirely a self-serving invention of right-wingers, to give themselves something to rail against.
It’s not. Just look at the mess at the American School for example
I’m very happy with @Benpointer’s view. The more the left clings to the view is that wokeness is a made up concept, the more they will get hammered at the next elections both in the U.K. and US
The "woke" might be the loudest but they are not the majority of the left by any way, just as the hang them all crowd on Twitter don't represent the right.
I continue to be of the view that most people sit in the centre, hence why Labour has now recovered
Let us never forget @CorrectHorseBattery that "The Woke" as an entity is entirely a self-serving invention of right-wingers, to give themselves something to rail against.
It’s not. Just look at the mess at the American School for example
How does that prove the existence of The Woke as an entitity?
'Head teacher of exclusive private school implementing some crazy ideas and forced to resign' is hardly the end of civilisation as we know it.
I remember the original take on Wuhan....its a crowded city with bad air quality, where everybody is a heavy smoker and poor diet....90% only get "mild illness", therefore us fit and healthy non-smoking types in the west, it going to be like 99% just get flu.
Kent covid started I think with the council blaming locals for their poor behaviour.
The thing that struck me is just how reactive basically every major government has been, immediately, in lock step. We haven't seen that. There is clearly many many different independent sets of scientific advisors telling their governments this has the potential to be really really bad.
Other variant have been yeah yeah we see it, its under investigation, we might react to it when we get some more info, weeks pass...some countries get put on some travel ban list, other countries don't, there are debates in the media about why a German can go here, but British can't or vice versa.
Now everybody might have totally over reacted, but we haven't see this with Beta and the Brazilian equivalent, which were quickly seen to have vaccine escape and re-infection abilities.
My hunch is that modellers have already examined many different scenarios for future mutations and unfortunately Omicron went straight over some red-line.
Particularly noticeable was the reaction of the Israeli government, which specifically war-gamed an ultra infectious, vax-evasive mutant strain, in the Omega Games
Two weeks after the games, they have enacted all those plans, in toto, including closure of all borders and a quasi State of Emergency.
This is not a rehearsal
The thing about the Israelis, highly technically advanced in medicine and computer science....I would put a lot more faith on them than the plonkers from Warwick University or Professor Pantsdown with their models using massively outdated ML.
Wondered when BJO would be back to say Starmer must resign.
Leading in polls and more popular than Johnson, still let's get Corbyn back and give the Tories another landslide
You are in for a terrible realisation after the next GE.
Who said owt about get Corbyn back?
Who would you like instead of Starmer?
I would like Andy Burnham but I suspect SKS will now make it impossible for him to become a by election candidate as he would be such an obvious replacement for SKS if he did.
BJO, I thought Burnham has pledged to be GM Mayor throughout his term. Which doesn't give the malevolent Machiavellian Starmer much direct opportunity to stifle Burnham's Prime Ministerial ambitions.
If the Tories want to hand the RedWall back to Starmer on a plate then a libertarian, ex LD, ex Remainer, ex republican like Truss is the way to do it.
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
Speaking as someone who lives in the RedWall and whose vote is up for grabs next time, I think the like of Truss could go down well here.
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
She has Kim Campbell, Canadian Conservative PM in 1993, written all over her. A leader who led the Canadian Tories from a landslide majority inherited from her predecessor to a landslide defeat by the Canadian Liberals and even being overtaken on the right as the main party of opposition by the populist Canadian Reform Party
Balderdash and codswallop.
Its funny how your view of the Red Wall seems to be that Red Wall voters are all your own style of hardcore Essex longstanding Conservative voters. If that's the case, why weren't we all voting Tory for decades already?
They voted for Boris to get Brexit done and to beat Corbyn. If Boris goes they will not vote for libertarian Remainer Truss, they will either vote Labour again or go ReformUK
Why did they vote for Boris?
Boris is upbeat and speaks the language of opportunity. He spoke about building up and levelling up communities and seeking opportunities post-Brexit.
Truss does the same thing. Thatcher and Cameron did the same thing.
Its what good leaders do and Truss has it.
Rubbish, they voted for Boris as he was a Leaver who they knew would get Brexit done.
Red Wallers also tend to be economically big state but socially conservative. hence Boris needed to promise big spending and an end to austerity to win them as well as to deliver Brexit. Remember most of them did not vote for Cameron or even Thatcher let alone May, Boris was the first Tory leader they ever voted for.
Red Wallers will not vote for an economically small state, socially liberal ex Remainer like Truss. They will either go back to Labour or vote ReformUK
I’m going to agree with @HYUFD here, I don’t think Truss is going to appeal to them, she comes across as the sort of Conservative leader who would backslide on Brexit by saying how important it is to sign trade deals with Europe. She also comes across as a middle class “I know what’s best” type which also wouldn’t go down well.
That’s just the same story from the lady who was on Marr this morning, albeit with an absolutely bizarre conspiracy theory edge to the reporting.
I can only assume ‘Zero Hedge’ is a bit of a plum.
Zerohedge is funded by the Russians to spread misinformation to the credulous
Them Russians and their funding..
Well, we will keep giving them money for gas.
Talking of funding, OneWeb are dropping ArianeSpace (who are, in turn using the Russians for cheap launch) in favour of the next generation Indian launchers...
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
If you are ever in the Nottingham area I will take you down my allotment where at least 5 of my close neighbours are former Labour voters - now they vote Ashfield Independents in the locals and Boris in the nationals - why? Brexit
How long do you think Brexit will continue to drive your fellow allotment holders' voting for?
As long as Boris is there - he can do no wrong
Well the polling says otherwise, never mind your sample size of 5.
Comments
Remember we got in this mess with the original variant, remember the misreporting of the study that said 90% was "mild illness".....the actual author of the report said they wish they never used that term as people then thought that meant cold, when he used it in the academic work to be a catch all term for not in hospital. It took ages for people to catch on, mild = the full spectrum from a bit of a sore throat to f##k me this is the worst thing I have ever had I thought I was going to die.
For a start, I suspect many of those employed may work for extended family members and / or relatives of contacts. That makes the “shop an employer” tactic tricky because you are shopping family members / those to whom you have close ties (and who may be in a position to take revenge via extended family networks in a refugee’s home country).
You then have the issue of those who work in someone else’s name who is legitimate and has all their insurance etc. Again, that might be a relative and / or close contact, or part of that network. Even if the employer checks very closely (which many won’t), they open themselves up to accusations of racism / discriminating against non-white workers. Far easier to do nothing.
You either accept we have identity papers and restrict access to benefits, health, housing etc to those who can prove they have a right or you stop them at the border / make immigration a long drawn out process
So there you go. if you need to know what Woke is, it's you. You're welcome!
See this chap - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Meadow
If "aid" is productive then it should be invested in based upon need not based upon a proportion of GDP.
Spending money for the sake of spending money instead of it being the right thing to do is never what the State should be doing with our taxes.
And if "charities" want to raise money they should solicit donations not taxes. As it happens, I think every £1 of donations made via charitable donations, and any "gift aid" claimed on top should be netted off the aid budget.
If Britons have already donated 1% of GDP on aid then there's no need for a penny more of taxes to be done on it - and if our taxes are being given out then that should be spent purely on what its meant for and not spent on Sky advertising to solicit further donations.
"Covid-19: Omicron variant results in 'mild illness' - Khaleej Times"
Mission creep appears to be on the cards now though. Here's what I think we may have coming in December the 18th's instalment (albeit that they might be merciful and delay some measures until immediately after Christmas):
*Gags in classrooms in secondary schools
*Table service in hospitality
*Gags whenever you're not sat at your table in hospitality
*Gags in other indoor venues, e.g. theatres and museums
*Yet another revision of the self-isolation rules to make them more stringent in some fashion
Unless something really dramatic happens with the variant plague then I think we'll escape social distancing. That's the point at which (a) a lot of the public will get extremely pissed off at being told whom they can and cannot meet again, and (b) a lot of businesses become unviable due to the capacity constraints, and we're therefore back to furlough schemes, emergency loans and so on. I reckon both Sunak and Javid will resist that unless the situation with the hospitals gets really desperate.
You reap what you sow.
Thought experiment: you go mushroom foraging with a mate, who cooks one of the mushrooms and goes into convulsions. Do you say Yebbut he wasn't randomly matched with a control group eating mushrooms from Tescos, in a double blinded study, so I am going to ignore this utterly invalid bit of evidence, or do you decide it might be prudent not to eat the mushrooms you've gathered?
Not happening and indeed it would lead to large scale movement of traditional Conservatives to ReformUK too if Truss did become Tory leader
It is being turned into outrageously misleading headlines and tweets telling the world Look, this is just MIld!
Not pointing that out creates fake information. In fact the use of such stories out of context is exactly how false information is created.
For example, what does the fact that no white man was convicted of murdering a black man between 1865 and 1965 in Missouri, USA, tell us about race relations?
I rejoined after EM became leader.
I was intent on voting for him in 2015 until he backed austerity light leaving only Corbyn running on anti austerity.
I look forward to your about-turn when she takes over from Boris 😂
If you have a plumbing problem and an experienced plumber comes round and says that his advice is to fix this particular problem thusly, do you give him the Yebbut is that based on anything more than mere anecdote treatment, or do you ask him to carry on?
Unless this is really bad I don't think we'll have a good idea for a few months.
The only figures I'm interested in right now are Boosters per day and ICU beds occupied by anti-vaxxers (as distinct from the unvaccinated). Those are what will become politically relevant.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/28/kamala-harris-looking-unelectable-democrats-considering-nuclear/
In the end I would probably vote Conservative as usual but she would be the first Tory leader in my lifetime I would have serious doubts about supporting. Indeed given the choice between the liberal Starmer or the liberal Truss you could almost say why not have the real thing in Starmer, who seems to be relatively moral in his personal life at least (although I will not go as far as Justin used to and call Truss a trollop) and rebuild under a real Conservative in opposition.
None of this matters. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE™
What would not go down well is Conservatives banging on about how important inheriting a million pounds is in Essex.
Your example is closer to diagnose of a patient - which is based in both cases on a body of knowledge derived both from experience and domain knowledge.
A plumber going "I've never seen this problem before, but it totally looks non-serious" - would that enthuse you?
It is exacerbated by the problems of Social Care and also of staffing. 5 of our staff in theatre recovery handed in their notice this week, so sick are they of being redeployed again to cover covid.
This omicron thing is either devastatingly lethal or it isn't, and you don't need a sodding clinical trial to tell the difference. Clinical trials detect small differences, between treatments which help a bit vs treatments which don't help at all. When they bombed Hiroshima, did they detonate a placebo bomb over a similar Japanese city so they could see whether Little Boy worked or not? If not, why not?
They like Boris, sure, but they don’t love him. I also believe polling shows a bigger swing against the Cons in the North than the national average that really goes against your hypothesis.
I know more 2019 Tories who voted Con because of Corbyn than because of Brexit. Brexit was a factor sure but they’re not going to base their 202X vote based on Brexit, they’re going to base it on who they think is going to make their lives better.
Who that is, I don’t think we know at present.
Its funny how your view of the Red Wall seems to be that Red Wall voters are all your own style of hardcore Essex longstanding Conservative voters. If that's the case, why weren't we all voting Tory for decades already?
Isabel Oakeshott
@IsabelOakeshott
·
56m
And here we have it. Rank hypocrisy right on a plate. Hundreds of maskless teachers gather to congratulate themselves on their brilliant work while preparing to enforce mask wearing on kids. Whole policy undermined at a stroke.
If you see stats for unvaccinated persons in hospital then that will give you a very close approximation to the numbers of vaccine refusers in hospital.
Of course, this only becomes politically relevant if one party or another proposes relegating refusers to second class healthcare in order to free up hospital capacity for people seriously ill with anything else, and nobody shows any sign of any appetite for doing that. As I said earlier today, all over the world Covid patients are prioritised over absolutely everyone else, regardless of whether their disease is self-inflicted or not.
But one of the fundamental underpinning assumptions no longer applies. The UK is not part of the EU.
Think of it like a temple built on 4 weight bearing columns. One has been knocked out. Do you frantically scurry around trying to keep the old temple standing, unchanged (albeit unstable and at risk of collapse), or do you look for a new way to glorify your god?
Boris is upbeat and speaks the language of opportunity. He spoke about building up and levelling up communities and seeking opportunities post-Brexit.
Truss does the same thing. Thatcher and Cameron did the same thing.
Its what good leaders do and Truss has it.
Marwan Riach
@KingRiach
I somehow doubt that Piers Corbyn's new song is going to make number 1...
https://twitter.com/KingRiach/status/1465064600521658383
I’d like to meet one of these legendary salt-of-the-earth red wall voters some day. They appear to have very well known and homogenous views on all current political issues, despite their varied ages, socio-economic levels and prior voting records.
If you are ever in the Nottingham area I will take you down my allotment where at least 5 of my close neighbours are former Labour voters - now they vote Ashfield Independents in the locals and Boris in the nationals - why? Brexit
One of the handy things about not burning Kyoto to the ground was that, after the war, the scientists got to measure the exact properties of Japanese civil and domestic structures.
And discovered that while strangely resistant to thermal pulse & shock waves*, they were very transparent to gamma, neutrinos and x-rays.
Which explained why people had died from prompt radiation from the bomb - the previous calculations had suggested that if you were close enough to get a fatal radiation dose, you would be incinerated a millisecond later anyway.....
*They burned and fell down, but acted as sacrificial shields.
But 'The Woke' as used by @Leon and others is a very different thing. It's a construct which doesn't exist as a real entity.
The McCarthyist's 'Reds under the Bed' is a very apt parallel.
https://twitter.com/politicsforali/status/1465071934245322762?s=21
Its funny that those who are from the Red Wall in @HYUFD worldview all just happen to want exactly what he wants too.
Its especially funny since he's a Remain voting Southerner who has always voted Tory for his entire life and not a Leave voting Red Wall first time Tory.
Other variant have been yeah yeah we see it, its under investigation, we might react to it when we get some more info, weeks pass...some countries get put on some travel ban list, other countries don't, there are debates in the media about why a German can go here, but British can't or vice versa.
Now everybody might have totally over reacted, but we haven't see this with Beta and the Brazilian equivalent, which were quickly seen to have vaccine escape and re-infection abilities.
I actually disagree with 0.7% because it’s the wrong mindset. We should spend the appropriate amount of money.
Those who want to work in the black economy have access routes via family and friends. So when people say they want to come to the U.K. because family are there, it’s not just a “I wish I can see my relatives” thing. There is an established network on the ground that can help them get money quickly.
Re the benefits part, the Government, councils etc can’t let people starve, be homeless etc hence why they put them in accommodation rather than dump them in the streets. And of course you then have the refugee groups (as today) bemoaning that refugees are in hotel accommodation and they need proper residency etc etc
The idea that we have effective safeguards against anyone turning up is laughable.
I know from the heterogeneity of views even on my small inner London street where by popular supposition everyone must be a woke-remainer-elitist-Corbynista that people are mysterious creatures when it comes to political beliefs.
Red Wallers also tend to be economically big state but socially conservative. hence Boris needed to promise big spending and an end to austerity to win them as well as to deliver Brexit. Remember most of them did not vote for Cameron or even Thatcher let alone May, Boris was the first Tory leader they ever voted for.
Red Wallers will not vote for an economically small state, socially liberal ex Remainer like Truss. They will either go back to Labour or vote ReformUK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwUkFly-xQU&list=PLS_gQd8UB-hLgW28JScimD5RMz1gECwFK
Esp. like "this so-called Al-go-rithm" and Ted Cruz bitching about "Ted Cruz Sucks" memes.
She's exactly the sort of swivel eyed loon that I thought he'd drool over.
There is a lot of work at the moment in ML / AI world looking at this kind of thing (not just COVID), I am not up to date with it, but wouldn't surprise me if they have been running research along these lines specifically for COVID.
Now, as Max PB has said, there is also the theory that a virus can basically mutate itself too much, such that it becomes a bit useless. There is a sweet spot between infectiousness and how lethal it is. We can all hope this one has done the world a favour and become too infectious, while neutering its ability to kill.
But the governments of the world are definitely treating this one differently to the others.
The evidence based calculations and concepts were one of the tour-de-forces of Victorian scientific planning - with a zillion pages of copper plate figures.....
Two weeks after the games, they have enacted all those plans, in toto, including closure of all borders and a quasi State of Emergency.
This is not a rehearsal
'Head teacher of exclusive private school implementing some crazy ideas and forced to resign' is hardly the end of civilisation as we know it.
https://www.capacitymedia.com/articles/3829832/oneweb-looks-to-indias-launch-company-to-replace-arianespace
Mr Rogozin, your trampoline awaits....