I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
13th December has been pencilled in as the date for the boosters programme to be ramped up...On this timetable, it looks unlikely that many under-40s will be able to get a booster before the new year.
Less Dunkirk spirit, more we will get to you after Christmas holidays.
That's 10 days away, if we do 500,000 boosters a day till then that takes us to around 25 million, which is broadly where we were by the end of May. It's OK I think as we're still getting through plenty of over 40s in the next 10 days.
That itself would require a 25% uptick in average daily boosters given. It doesn't sound like we will see that. Given the amount of interactions over Christmas, ideally we would be jabbing left, right and centre from straight away, not another 10 days before going gang busters, which remember you still have to allow another 7-10 days for the effects to kick in.
But that been said the UK is in a much better position than most. So many places boosters programmes are miles behind and / or poor uptake.
Father is jailed for 21 years and his partner for a minimum of 29 years over the torture and killing of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-59522243
How minimum is minimum? I know lots of things get said about our criminal justice system but what is the real situation. I'm more concerned she never be placed in a role of care ever again.
"For some serious violent or sexual offences where the sentence is 7 years or more the offender will be released at the two-thirds point." 29 year sentence: 19 yrs 4 months.
She's 32 now so she'll be at least 51 when released, which is heavily odds against to have another child thankfully.
Should have been a whole life tariff.
If we had it, should have been the death penalty. Thankfully we don't have it, but should be a whole life tariff.
Cases like this, and the Everard murder make me wonder about the death penalty. If the only argument against it is wrongful convictions then cases like this are surely certain enough? Why should these people be allowed another minute of life?
Rather than a state organised death penalty I would rather see a team of rogue special forces financed by someone ridiculously wealthy and a bit left field (Elon Musk…?) extract these murderers and take them off to a secret facility and carry out exactly the same treatment to the murderer over the same time scale ending with their death so that they spend their last days truly feeling the results of their evil for themselves….
Then it’s available on YouTube as a warning to others.
As that’s clearly not possible I desperately don’t want her to be able to kill herself or be killed in prison but would rather she experienced 29 years of fear, beatings, abuse etc so that every day is torture.
No.
Agree very much with Kinabalu on that.
We have in recent decades imo developed quite an unsavoury tilt towards revenge in our legal system.
When the quality of mercy and loss of a vision of rehabilitation are lost, then it risks becoming inhuman also imo.
I relate that to a loss of a Christian vision of humanity underpinning society. Others will differ on that particular, however I think we have lost more of a human vision of prisoners as we have secularised compared to other Western Societies.
Is this because we have not had a holocaust or similar type experience *here in the UK* in *living* memory that we are perhaps somewhat inured to cruelty to the outsider?
One policy would win the Tories the next GE very easily indeed. A ref on you know what..
At heart, I think Boris is more a liberal than a populist. Wasn’t there a quote from him early on in his journalism career where, when asked what he truly believed, his only answer was that he was against the death penalty?
Boris's distinctive USP is that he is in fact a liberal, with libertarian instincts, combined with a populist style.
Brexit is a liberal and libertarian project, though liberals have so forgotten their roots that many are in denial about it (see the Economist passim) and well suited to Boris. Dealing with a pandemic is something that comes more naturally to soviet style Labour people who love telling others what to do, and the illiberal Tory majority who just love banning things; it will never come naturally to Boris, for whom rules are invariably an interesting challenge.
His populism arises out of the fact that he is a performer. Putting together his character and the circumstances of Brexit and the pandemic, which are together an overwhelming mass of contradictory detail, regulation and fudge, has the makings of Fawlty Towers. It is a tribute to him, and us, that we are still standing.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
Yes and no.
Former Labour voters have been voting SNP since before 2007. At what point does their “tactical” vote become a normal vote?
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Surely "key local council by-election" is an oxymoron?
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
13th December has been pencilled in as the date for the boosters programme to be ramped up...On this timetable, it looks unlikely that many under-40s will be able to get a booster before the new year.
Less Dunkirk spirit, more we will get to you after Christmas holidays.
That's 10 days away, if we do 500,000 boosters a day till then that takes us to around 25 million, which is broadly where we were by the end of May. It's OK I think as we're still getting through plenty of over 40s in the next 10 days.
That itself would require a 25% uptick in average daily boosters given. It doesn't sound like we will see that. Given the amount of interactions over Christmas, ideally we would be jabbing left, right and centre from straight away, not another 10 days before going gang busters, which remember you still have to allow another 7-10 days for the effects to kick in.
But that been said the UK is in a much better position than most. So many places boosters programmes are miles behind and / or poor uptake.
There seems to be some indication of an uptick in the rate of boosters - but it is very early days.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
I am at peace with whatever pro Union interpretation of this result HYUFD will apply.
Edit: SNP candidate elected at stage 6 I believe.
I can remember when Fort William was rock-solid Labour territory, and Ardnamurchan rock-solid Lib Dem. Now Labour don’t even bother putting up a candidate, and the Lib Dems are on 10% behind the Greens.
(I am a former SNP candidate for Ardnamurchan, and have knocked many doors in Lochaber.)
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
I'm not a former Labour voter, so that probably already puts me in a minority in Scotland.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The number of confirmed Omicron Covid cases in Scotland has jumped to 29 as Nicola Sturgeon warns the variant is now spreading fast in the community.
The First Minister says cases of the little-understood strain will likely continue to rise in the coming days and the outbreak is no longer linked to single private event on November 20.
Many of the new cases are now being linked to a Steps concert at the Hydro two days later.
Some easy maths to be done here. If Omicron is widely seeded across the UK - as it now seems - with community transmission, there are probably 500 cases (conservatively) in the UK. If Omicron doubles every 4 days (it’s worse in Gauteng), that’s
1000 cases a day by Dec 6
2000 cases by Dec 10
4000 cases by Dec 14
8000 cases by Dec 18
16,000 cases by Dec 22
32,000 cases by Boxing Day
64,000 cases by Dec 30
128,000 cases by Jan 3
256,000 cases by Jan 7
512,000 cases by Jan 11
1,028,000 cases a day by the middle of Jan
Quite some pressure on the NHS there. Let’s hope they’re all ‘mild’
The great thing with that maths is that by the end of Jan everyone in the country would have had it, and we'd be at herd immunity.
Another way of looking at it is in terms of total damage. Let's say current IFR is c.0.2% (pessimistic - based on 150 deaths per day and c.80,000 infections with 50% being recorded in tests). If Omicron increases breakthrough infection but IFR stays the same (which is pessimistic given boosters and new treatments) then the max deaths if 60 million are infected would be 120,000. But of course nowhere near 60m would be infected given pre-existing vax immunity, and IFR will keep going down. So we are into a bad case being probably similar to a bad flu season.
The same sort of tosh-maths that Sean and Henrietta were trying to peddle back when this all started, which turned out to be of no value or accuracy whatsoever
13th December has been pencilled in as the date for the boosters programme to be ramped up...On this timetable, it looks unlikely that many under-40s will be able to get a booster before the new year.
Less Dunkirk spirit, more we will get to you after Christmas holidays.
That's 10 days away, if we do 500,000 boosters a day till then that takes us to around 25 million, which is broadly where we were by the end of May. It's OK I think as we're still getting through plenty of over 40s in the next 10 days.
That itself would require a 25% uptick in average daily boosters given. It doesn't sound like we will see that. Given the amount of interactions over Christmas, ideally we would be jabbing left, right and centre from straight away, not another 10 days before going gang busters, which remember you still have to allow another 7-10 days for the effects to kick in.
But that been said the UK is in a much better position than most. So many places boosters programmes are miles behind and / or poor uptake.
There seems to be some indication of an uptick in the rate of boosters - but it is very early days.
Yes the past few days there has been a clear uptick, but it isn't sufficient enough. I understand that this much wider roll out has caught the government / NHS off guard, as who would have thought the JCVI who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to give boosters to anybody other than very old vulnerable people.
But that been said, we are coming up to a crucial time where potential for very large spreading events, every day delaying turbo charging this is crucial, especially as supply isn't the issue.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
I'm not a former Labour voter, so that probably already puts me in a minority in Scotland.
Yes we know you're ex LD - Blimey you SNP Types are really keen on semantics.
Which makes it a bit strange that the concept of "SNP Type" is so difficult for you to understand.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
I'm not a former Labour voter, so that probably already puts me in a minority in Scotland.
Depends on your age class, mind. We've got about, what is it, 15-20 years since the Labour hegemony (and of course muich of that relied on FPTP before 2017 and Holyrood).
Look at the sexual and moral incontinence of the adults in poor Arthur's life.
A mother who has a child, leaves father, shacks up with someone else and kills him. A father who takes up with a woman and cruelly treats and abandons his own son to make this woman happy. A step-mother who has 5 children by 4 different men, who has never worked, who throws herself out of the window and aborts another child while in custody for some offence.
I don't want to come over as some ancient prude. Evil has existed in all sorts of times and places and is no respecter of class or education. But if you look at a lot of these child murder/child abuse cases you see similar patterns: look at Baby P or any of the others over the years.
Might we at some point as a society maybe think about saying a bit more clearly that this sort of sequential rutting and casual creation and abandonment of children is, well, wrong and to be discouraged?
And, no, I don't have an easy answer as to how.
Arthur's late Great Grandfather Kenneth Labinjo was my family GP when I was a child in Wythall near Birmingham, so Olivia Labinjo- Halcrow was no sink estate peasant. There are factors in modern life like alcoholism, drug abuse and feral procreation that are just being brushed under the carpet by Government. Tim Lawton MP was on earlier demanding the lynching (my interpretation) of the social workers. I'm sure that'll help.
I do wonder, in this case, whether the social workers *really wanted to believe* the setup that Arthur had been placed into was a positive one - ie, what may have seemed to them like a stable family environment. And blinded by this bias, they ignored the warning signs.
Clearly, the best situation for the kid was to live with his grandparents. Perhaps that should be a more common solution to these kind of broken home situations.
One of the sentencing remarks is worth bearing in mind. The judge said,
"It is a shocking feature of this case that your children, Tustin, lived a perfectly happy normal life in that household while this appalling cruelty to Arthur was taking place."
Tustin was capable of being a good parent, but chose not to be, and deceived the social workers. This will be quite different to many of the troubled people that social workers deal with routinely.
However, they really should have had another look when Arthur didn't return to school at the end of lockdown. Then it would have been obvious.
Her other children did not live with her but nearby in yet another household.
Two of Tustin's children lived in the house. They slept upstairs in a shared bedroom. This was given as a reason for Arthur sleeping on the floor in the living room.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
- Cases nationally crawling up. Still seeing a gradual fall in the older groups - Hospital admission are still falling, but the rate seems to be slowing. In England a definite uptick in 18-64 and 85+ with 65-84 falls slowing.... - Deaths still falling steadily.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The two parties are not responsible/signed up to all of each other's policies as in an actual coalition. It's an important practical and political distinction.
One policy would win the Tories the next GE very easily indeed. A ref on you know what..
At heart, I think Boris is more a liberal than a populist. Wasn’t there a quote from him early on in his journalism career where, when asked what he truly believed, his only answer was that he was against the death penalty?
Boris's distinctive USP is that he is in fact a liberal, with libertarian instincts, combined with a populist style.
Brexit is a liberal and libertarian project, though liberals have so forgotten their roots that many are in denial about it (see the Economist passim) and well suited to Boris. Dealing with a pandemic is something that comes more naturally to soviet style Labour people who love telling others what to do, and the illiberal Tory majority who just love banning things; it will never come naturally to Boris, for whom rules are invariably an interesting challenge.
His populism arises out of the fact that he is a performer. Putting together his character and the circumstances of Brexit and the pandemic, which are together an overwhelming mass of contradictory detail, regulation and fudge, has the makings of Fawlty Towers. It is a tribute to him, and us, that we are still standing.
If Brexit is a liberal project, that wasn't reflected in who voted for it, and against it, or indeed the prospectus that got it over the line (basically, more immigration restrictions and more spending on state provided healthcare). Also, this whole Boris hates petty rules thing needs putting to bed. He banned drinking booze on the tube. You don't get much more nanny state than that.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The two parties are not responsible/signed up to all of each other's policies as in an actual coalition. It's an important practical and political distinction.
They're both signed up to #indyref2 which is the only policy that really matters in Scotland. Hence-
The next election will have a large amount of tactical voting and the Lib Dems will make a lot of gains IMHO.
Don't forget, nearly all the potential LD-->Lab switchers already are voting Labour (see Canterbury for example). So Labour doesn't have much scope to benefit. The group mostly not yet voting tactically are the Lab-->LD ones. There's a lot of unwinding to do post Coalition, but unlike you I don't think it will win many seats unless the Tories self-destruct.
Not really. As we've just seen, three quarters of LibDem voters in 2019 are willing to switch tactically. Lab->LD switching is already commonplace (I know Labour members who routinely vote LD because of where they live) and will become more so if there's sensible focusing of the kind we're seeing this month. I don't think we can realistically stop candidates from doing their best, but they should get zero support from HQ where appropriate.
Maybe, but are they where it matters? To pick a random letter in the alphabet, in Wolverhampton NE and SW the LDs only had 1000 and 2000 votes at the last election, and under 4000 in Worcester. By contrast Labour had between 6-9000 in Witney, Woking and Wokingham. On the other hand, a few hundred or a thousand extra will help Labour win a seat more often.
13th December has been pencilled in as the date for the boosters programme to be ramped up...On this timetable, it looks unlikely that many under-40s will be able to get a booster before the new year.
Less Dunkirk spirit, more we will get to you after Christmas holidays.
That's 10 days away, if we do 500,000 boosters a day till then that takes us to around 25 million, which is broadly where we were by the end of May. It's OK I think as we're still getting through plenty of over 40s in the next 10 days.
That itself would require a 25% uptick in average daily boosters given. It doesn't sound like we will see that. Given the amount of interactions over Christmas, ideally we would be jabbing left, right and centre from straight away, not another 10 days before going gang busters, which remember you still have to allow another 7-10 days for the effects to kick in.
But that been said the UK is in a much better position than most. So many places boosters programmes are miles behind and / or poor uptake.
The biggest problem at the moment is probably not the raw numbers of third doses, but that ~10% of the oldest age groups haven't had them.
There's too much talk about restrictions and not enough on the importance of the vaccines. That 10% of oldsters are the people who are most at risk of ending up back in hospital if Omicron erodes vaccine-acquired immunity.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The two parties are not responsible/signed up to all of each other's policies as in an actual coalition. It's an important practical and political distinction.
They're both signed up to #indyref2 which is the only policy that really matters in Scotland. Hence-
Coalition of Choas.
If you believe that, someone is trying to sell you a bridge to Ireland ...
I am at peace with whatever pro Union interpretation of this result HYUFD will apply.
Edit: SNP candidate elected at stage 6 I believe.
I can remember when Fort William was rock-solid Labour territory, and Ardnamurchan rock-solid Lib Dem. Now Labour don’t even bother putting up a candidate, and the Lib Dems are on 10% behind the Greens.
(I am a former SNP candidate for Ardnamurchan, and have knocked many doors in Lochaber.)
Must have needed stout walking boots
God yes. And four wheel drive. Used to get absolutely soaked.
Canvassing in rural areas requires a special type of determination. Rough housing estates in Paisley and Perth were like a wee holiday by comparison.
The number of confirmed Omicron Covid cases in Scotland has jumped to 29 as Nicola Sturgeon warns the variant is now spreading fast in the community.
The First Minister says cases of the little-understood strain will likely continue to rise in the coming days and the outbreak is no longer linked to single private event on November 20.
Many of the new cases are now being linked to a Steps concert at the Hydro two days later.
Some easy maths to be done here. If Omicron is widely seeded across the UK - as it now seems - with community transmission, there are probably 500 cases (conservatively) in the UK. If Omicron doubles every 4 days (it’s worse in Gauteng), that’s
1000 cases a day by Dec 6
2000 cases by Dec 10
4000 cases by Dec 14
8000 cases by Dec 18
16,000 cases by Dec 22
32,000 cases by Boxing Day
64,000 cases by Dec 30
128,000 cases by Jan 3
256,000 cases by Jan 7
512,000 cases by Jan 11
1,028,000 cases a day by the middle of Jan
Quite some pressure on the NHS there. Let’s hope they’re all ‘mild’
The great thing with that maths is that by the end of Jan everyone in the country would have had it, and we'd be at herd immunity.
Another way of looking at it is in terms of total damage. Let's say current IFR is c.0.2% (pessimistic - based on 150 deaths per day and c.80,000 infections with 50% being recorded in tests). If Omicron increases breakthrough infection but IFR stays the same (which is pessimistic given boosters and new treatments) then the max deaths if 60 million are infected would be 120,000. But of course nowhere near 60m would be infected given pre-existing vax immunity, and IFR will keep going down. So we are into a bad case being probably similar to a bad flu season.
The same sort of tosh-maths that Sean and Henrietta were trying to peddle back when this all started, which turned out to be of no value or accuracy whatsoever
Hey Siri times 2 times 2 and let me know when we get to 70 million
13th December has been pencilled in as the date for the boosters programme to be ramped up...On this timetable, it looks unlikely that many under-40s will be able to get a booster before the new year.
Less Dunkirk spirit, more we will get to you after Christmas holidays.
That's 10 days away, if we do 500,000 boosters a day till then that takes us to around 25 million, which is broadly where we were by the end of May. It's OK I think as we're still getting through plenty of over 40s in the next 10 days.
That itself would require a 25% uptick in average daily boosters given. It doesn't sound like we will see that. Given the amount of interactions over Christmas, ideally we would be jabbing left, right and centre from straight away, not another 10 days before going gang busters, which remember you still have to allow another 7-10 days for the effects to kick in.
But that been said the UK is in a much better position than most. So many places boosters programmes are miles behind and / or poor uptake.
The biggest problem at the moment is probably not the raw numbers of third doses, but that ~10% of the oldest age groups haven't had them.
There's too much talk about restrictions and not enough on the importance of the vaccines. That 10% of oldsters are the people who are most at risk of ending up back in hospital if Omicron erodes vaccine-acquired immunity.
Absolutely. And I believe that is why the likes of the Germans are so concerned, far too many oldies haven't even had 2 doses, let alone the booster.
Look at the sexual and moral incontinence of the adults in poor Arthur's life.
A mother who has a child, leaves father, shacks up with someone else and kills him. A father who takes up with a woman and cruelly treats and abandons his own son to make this woman happy. A step-mother who has 5 children by 4 different men, who has never worked, who throws herself out of the window and aborts another child while in custody for some offence.
I don't want to come over as some ancient prude. Evil has existed in all sorts of times and places and is no respecter of class or education. But if you look at a lot of these child murder/child abuse cases you see similar patterns: look at Baby P or any of the others over the years.
Might we at some point as a society maybe think about saying a bit more clearly that this sort of sequential rutting and casual creation and abandonment of children is, well, wrong and to be discouraged?
And, no, I don't have an easy answer as to how.
Arthur's late Great Grandfather Kenneth Labinjo was my family GP when I was a child in Wythall near Birmingham, so Olivia Labinjo- Halcrow was no sink estate peasant. There are factors in modern life like alcoholism, drug abuse and feral procreation that are just being brushed under the carpet by Government. Tim Lawton MP was on earlier demanding the lynching (my interpretation) of the social workers. I'm sure that'll help.
I do wonder, in this case, whether the social workers *really wanted to believe* the setup that Arthur had been placed into was a positive one - ie, what may have seemed to them like a stable family environment. And blinded by this bias, they ignored the warning signs.
Clearly, the best situation for the kid was to live with his grandparents. Perhaps that should be a more common solution to these kind of broken home situations.
One of the sentencing remarks is worth bearing in mind. The judge said,
"It is a shocking feature of this case that your children, Tustin, lived a perfectly happy normal life in that household while this appalling cruelty to Arthur was taking place."
Tustin was capable of being a good parent, but chose not to be, and deceived the social workers. This will be quite different to many of the troubled people that social workers deal with routinely.
However, they really should have had another look when Arthur didn't return to school at the end of lockdown. Then it would have been obvious.
Her other children did not live with her but nearby in yet another household.
Two of Tustin's children lived in the house. They slept upstairs in a shared bedroom. This was given as a reason for Arthur sleeping on the floor in the living room.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The straightforward lie was the claim that the media was pro-SNP. But your point is also valid.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The straightforward lie was the claim that the media was pro-SNP. But your point is also valid.
The media is biased to SNP Types.
Evidence 1-
Nippy's mug polluting our TV screens for over a year.
13th December has been pencilled in as the date for the boosters programme to be ramped up...On this timetable, it looks unlikely that many under-40s will be able to get a booster before the new year.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
I'm not a former Labour voter, so that probably already puts me in a minority in Scotland.
Depends on your age class, mind. We've got about, what is it, 15-20 years since the Labour hegemony (and of course muich of that relied on FPTP before 2017 and Holyrood).
Good point. I'm in my 40s, I forget that people younger than me haven't lived through such dominant Labour times and therefore the overall population of people who have once voted Labour is steadily falling. I still think it might be an absolute majority of people who have voted, but it's just a hunch.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The straightforward lie was the claim that the media was pro-SNP. But your point is also valid.
The media is biased to SNP Types.
Evidence 1-
Nippy's mug polluting our TV screens for over a year.
On that basis, what does it say about the BBC that they show rather a lot of Messrs Farage, Johnson, Sarwar, and (formerly) Ms Davidson?
The number of confirmed Omicron Covid cases in Scotland has jumped to 29 as Nicola Sturgeon warns the variant is now spreading fast in the community.
The First Minister says cases of the little-understood strain will likely continue to rise in the coming days and the outbreak is no longer linked to single private event on November 20.
Many of the new cases are now being linked to a Steps concert at the Hydro two days later.
Some easy maths to be done here. If Omicron is widely seeded across the UK - as it now seems - with community transmission, there are probably 500 cases (conservatively) in the UK. If Omicron doubles every 4 days (it’s worse in Gauteng), that’s
1000 cases a day by Dec 6
2000 cases by Dec 10
4000 cases by Dec 14
8000 cases by Dec 18
16,000 cases by Dec 22
32,000 cases by Boxing Day
64,000 cases by Dec 30
128,000 cases by Jan 3
256,000 cases by Jan 7
512,000 cases by Jan 11
1,028,000 cases a day by the middle of Jan
Quite some pressure on the NHS there. Let’s hope they’re all ‘mild’
The great thing with that maths is that by the end of Jan everyone in the country would have had it, and we'd be at herd immunity.
Another way of looking at it is in terms of total damage. Let's say current IFR is c.0.2% (pessimistic - based on 150 deaths per day and c.80,000 infections with 50% being recorded in tests). If Omicron increases breakthrough infection but IFR stays the same (which is pessimistic given boosters and new treatments) then the max deaths if 60 million are infected would be 120,000. But of course nowhere near 60m would be infected given pre-existing vax immunity, and IFR will keep going down. So we are into a bad case being probably similar to a bad flu season.
The same sort of tosh-maths that Sean and Henrietta were trying to peddle back when this all started, which turned out to be of no value or accuracy whatsoever
Hey Siri times 2 times 2 and let me know when we get to 70 million
Can you do stuff like 'siri, count to a million'?
I don't use it because I can't see a use case for me, but these things are interesting.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The straightforward lie was the claim that the media was pro-SNP. But your point is also valid.
The media is biased to SNP Types.
Evidence 1-
Nippy's mug polluting our TV screens for over a year.
On that basis, what does it say about the BBC that they show rather a lot of Messrs Farage, Johnson, Sarwar, and (formerly) Ms Davidson?
Eh?
Evidence 2-
No mainstream coverage of the SNP Type book deal scandal.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
I'm not a former Labour voter, so that probably already puts me in a minority in Scotland.
Depends on your age class, mind. We've got about, what is it, 15-20 years since the Labour hegemony (and of course muich of that relied on FPTP before 2017 and Holyrood).
Good point. I'm in my 40s, I forget that people younger than me haven't lived through such dominant Labour times and therefore the overall population of people who have once voted Labour is steadily falling. I still think it might be an absolute majority of people who have voted, but it's just a hunch.
I agree with Mike's header - there is definitely some sensible targeting going on.
Labour has won the key Worthing by-election with 50% of the vote (to the Tory 40%) - this shifts the council into NOC (it was always Tory up to now) and gives a good shot at control next May. That was a key priority for SE Region - we were all urged to go there at the regional conference - and is a poster child for us along the southern coast, since up to 1992 Labour never had a single councillor there. Essentially the shift from domination by elderly conservative voters to younger people moving on from Brighton is producing a demographic shift along the coast, analogous to the progress being made by the LibDems inland.
Tactical voting seems to be working for the unofficial Lab/Lib Dem alliance.
Shame we still have not quite got the hang of it in Scotland.
No it isn't. Lab haven't won a single seat yet from tactical voting.
Though there seems to be tactical voting in place in Scotland ... Former Labour voters now tactically vote SNP to keep out the Tories.
If you think people like @Farooq are examples of a normal Scots person then you're just simply wrong.
The election results say otherwise.
If you think people banging on about SNP types are a normal Scots person is look for some evidence of that.
Prof Curtice was on Sky a week after the Holyrood elections and stated that Anti-SNP Type tactical had a role in limiting the coalition of choas's majority.
Wouldn't have said that. No such thing as a coalition then. Or even now with the Greens.
Okay he said anti-SNP tactical voting.
To me SNP = SNP Types
It's in my style guide and isn't a difficult concept.
You quoted him as referring to the 'coalition of chaos'.
I did not put coalition of chaos in scare quotes. I has using the collequial.
But that specxifically refers to a mythical Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster anyway. So not relevant to Holyrood elections.
In Scotland "Coalition of Chaos" refers to SNP Types (SNP + Green)
Not a coalition, so it's a straightforward lie in that context.
The straightforward lie was the claim that the media was pro-SNP. But your point is also valid.
The media is biased to SNP Types.
Evidence 1-
Nippy's mug polluting our TV screens for over a year.
On that basis, what does it say about the BBC that they show rather a lot of Messrs Farage, Johnson, Sarwar, and (formerly) Ms Davidson?
Eh?
Evidence 2-
No mainstream coverage of the SNP Type book deal scandal.
The by-election is yet more evidence of tactical voting between Labour and the Lib Dems, this will be hugely important if repeated at a GE
PMSL the swing to the Opposition was less than average in a by-election.
Despite the Lib Dems losing share, Labour's share rise was very poor for a by-election.
If a GE is repeated based on this I'd expect an increased Tory majority.
I agree that the LAB vote move was very small for a by-election but this seat was never seriously in contention and this was plain for all to see.
N Shropshire should be the same. This is a strong Leave seat where the LDs start in third and where the %age of grads is just about average. So none of the factors that would normally be helpful.
What gives the LDs an edge is having a powerful message in relation to the ex-MP. Whether an intense campaign will be enough I don't know. The message I've been seeing from campaign workers is that there is enough for them to believe they are in with a fighting chance. LD campaigns are able to reach many Tory voters in a way that Labour has never been able to do.
I think that's right: if it hadn't been for the nature of Paterson's offences (and the foolish way he totally avoided giving even a half-hearted apology) then the LDs wouldn't stand a chance. As it is, they're going to be running on a "let 'em know that they can't get away with this stuff with a bloody nose", and it might work.
As I said on the previous thread, I wouldn't be on the LDs at these odds - I think they're chances are more around the 18-20% level, not the 33-40% - but it is far from impossible that they win the by-election. 6-1 shots do, after all, come in one-in-six times.
You’re on to something massive if your 6/1 bets come in one-in-six times
I'm a significantly better than average gambler if my 6-1 bets come in one-in-six times!
13th December has been pencilled in as the date for the boosters programme to be ramped up...On this timetable, it looks unlikely that many under-40s will be able to get a booster before the new year.
Less Dunkirk spirit, more we will get to you after Christmas holidays.
That's 10 days away, if we do 500,000 boosters a day till then that takes us to around 25 million, which is broadly where we were by the end of May. It's OK I think as we're still getting through plenty of over 40s in the next 10 days.
That itself would require a 25% uptick in average daily boosters given. It doesn't sound like we will see that. Given the amount of interactions over Christmas, ideally we would be jabbing left, right and centre from straight away, not another 10 days before going gang busters, which remember you still have to allow another 7-10 days for the effects to kick in.
But that been said the UK is in a much better position than most. So many places boosters programmes are miles behind and / or poor uptake.
There seems to be some indication of an uptick in the rate of boosters - but it is very early days.
Yes the past few days there has been a clear uptick, but it isn't sufficient enough. I understand that this much wider roll out has caught the government / NHS off guard, as who would have thought the JCVI who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to give boosters to anybody other than very old vulnerable people.
But that been said, we are coming up to a crucial time where potential for very large spreading events, every day delaying turbo charging this is crucial, especially as supply isn't the issue.
The number of confirmed Omicron Covid cases in Scotland has jumped to 29 as Nicola Sturgeon warns the variant is now spreading fast in the community.
The First Minister says cases of the little-understood strain will likely continue to rise in the coming days and the outbreak is no longer linked to single private event on November 20.
Many of the new cases are now being linked to a Steps concert at the Hydro two days later.
Some easy maths to be done here. If Omicron is widely seeded across the UK - as it now seems - with community transmission, there are probably 500 cases (conservatively) in the UK. If Omicron doubles every 4 days (it’s worse in Gauteng), that’s
1000 cases a day by Dec 6
2000 cases by Dec 10
4000 cases by Dec 14
8000 cases by Dec 18
16,000 cases by Dec 22
32,000 cases by Boxing Day
64,000 cases by Dec 30
128,000 cases by Jan 3
256,000 cases by Jan 7
512,000 cases by Jan 11
1,028,000 cases a day by the middle of Jan
Quite some pressure on the NHS there. Let’s hope they’re all ‘mild’
The great thing with that maths is that by the end of Jan everyone in the country would have had it, and we'd be at herd immunity.
Another way of looking at it is in terms of total damage. Let's say current IFR is c.0.2% (pessimistic - based on 150 deaths per day and c.80,000 infections with 50% being recorded in tests). If Omicron increases breakthrough infection but IFR stays the same (which is pessimistic given boosters and new treatments) then the max deaths if 60 million are infected would be 120,000. But of course nowhere near 60m would be infected given pre-existing vax immunity, and IFR will keep going down. So we are into a bad case being probably similar to a bad flu season.
The same sort of tosh-maths that Sean and Henrietta were trying to peddle back when this all started, which turned out to be of no value or accuracy whatsoever
Hey Siri times 2 times 2 and let me know when we get to 70 million
Can you do stuff like 'siri, count to a million'?
I don't use it because I can't see a use case for me, but these things are interesting.
It would appear you cannot – I have just tried it on your behalf.
13th December has been pencilled in as the date for the boosters programme to be ramped up...On this timetable, it looks unlikely that many under-40s will be able to get a booster before the new year.
Less Dunkirk spirit, more we will get to you after Christmas holidays.
That's 10 days away, if we do 500,000 boosters a day till then that takes us to around 25 million, which is broadly where we were by the end of May. It's OK I think as we're still getting through plenty of over 40s in the next 10 days.
That itself would require a 25% uptick in average daily boosters given. It doesn't sound like we will see that. Given the amount of interactions over Christmas, ideally we would be jabbing left, right and centre from straight away, not another 10 days before going gang busters, which remember you still have to allow another 7-10 days for the effects to kick in.
But that been said the UK is in a much better position than most. So many places boosters programmes are miles behind and / or poor uptake.
There seems to be some indication of an uptick in the rate of boosters - but it is very early days.
Yes the past few days there has been a clear uptick, but it isn't sufficient enough. I understand that this much wider roll out has caught the government / NHS off guard, as who would have thought the JCVI who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to give boosters to anybody other than very old vulnerable people.
But that been said, we are coming up to a crucial time where potential for very large spreading events, every day delaying turbo charging this is crucial, especially as supply isn't the issue.
The number of confirmed Omicron Covid cases in Scotland has jumped to 29 as Nicola Sturgeon warns the variant is now spreading fast in the community.
The First Minister says cases of the little-understood strain will likely continue to rise in the coming days and the outbreak is no longer linked to single private event on November 20.
Many of the new cases are now being linked to a Steps concert at the Hydro two days later.
Some easy maths to be done here. If Omicron is widely seeded across the UK - as it now seems - with community transmission, there are probably 500 cases (conservatively) in the UK. If Omicron doubles every 4 days (it’s worse in Gauteng), that’s
1000 cases a day by Dec 6
2000 cases by Dec 10
4000 cases by Dec 14
8000 cases by Dec 18
16,000 cases by Dec 22
32,000 cases by Boxing Day
64,000 cases by Dec 30
128,000 cases by Jan 3
256,000 cases by Jan 7
512,000 cases by Jan 11
1,028,000 cases a day by the middle of Jan
Quite some pressure on the NHS there. Let’s hope they’re all ‘mild’
The great thing with that maths is that by the end of Jan everyone in the country would have had it, and we'd be at herd immunity.
Another way of looking at it is in terms of total damage. Let's say current IFR is c.0.2% (pessimistic - based on 150 deaths per day and c.80,000 infections with 50% being recorded in tests). If Omicron increases breakthrough infection but IFR stays the same (which is pessimistic given boosters and new treatments) then the max deaths if 60 million are infected would be 120,000. But of course nowhere near 60m would be infected given pre-existing vax immunity, and IFR will keep going down. So we are into a bad case being probably similar to a bad flu season.
The same sort of tosh-maths that Sean and Henrietta were trying to peddle back when this all started, which turned out to be of no value or accuracy whatsoever
Hey Siri times 2 times 2 and let me know when we get to 70 million
Can you do stuff like 'siri, count to a million'?
I don't use it because I can't see a use case for me, but these things are interesting.
It would appear you cannot – I have just tried it on your behalf.
No it's not, is it? That's a very worrying thread. I have a feeling of deja vu; let's hope that the PM doesn't have to regretfully advise us on Dec 18th not to mix at Xmas again; because of Omicron this time, rather than "Kent" last year.
Meanwhile, over 50,000 new cases, overwhelmingly Delta, recorded again today. PB experts have been telling me for months now that pretty soon the virus is going to run out of people to infect, but that hasn't happened yet. It reminds me of those hill walks where every time you think you've reached the peak, a higher peak comes into view.
Father is jailed for 21 years and his partner for a minimum of 29 years over the torture and killing of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-59522243
How minimum is minimum? I know lots of things get said about our criminal justice system but what is the real situation. I'm more concerned she never be placed in a role of care ever again.
"For some serious violent or sexual offences where the sentence is 7 years or more the offender will be released at the two-thirds point." 29 year sentence: 19 yrs 4 months.
She's 32 now so she'll be at least 51 when released, which is heavily odds against to have another child thankfully.
Should have been a whole life tariff.
If we had it, should have been the death penalty. Thankfully we don't have it, but should be a whole life tariff.
Cases like this, and the Everard murder make me wonder about the death penalty. If the only argument against it is wrongful convictions then cases like this are surely certain enough? Why should these people be allowed another minute of life?
I have some sympathy with that view, in that I share your revulsion at the crime. Wrongful conviction has been the mainstay argument against the death penalty, but there are others.
1. I do not want the State to have the power of life and death over me.
2. Juries will be less willing to convict if they think a death sentence might be imposed. In this case they might only have been willing to convict her for manslaughter rather than murder, and her sentence would then have been much lighter.
On point 2, that is me. I would not under any circumstances convict if death was the penalty. I could not live with the knowledge that my decision led to the death of another person. Especially if it later turned out the the conviction was unsafe. (And yes, i know there is a counter argument, what happens if they are set free and kill again. But that's not my decision).
There's an additional complication here too. They would have to screen out jurors like you and me in a trial where the death penalty is possible. Then you are no longer judged by a jury of your peers, but by a jury of those in favour of the death penalty, which creates all kinds of biases in the administration of justice.
And thinking about it, that opens up a whole can of worms, what other views are unacceptable for a juror? Gender, religion, race...
Anyway, I would just give the required answer.
Presumably you would give the true answer when questioned under oath, or risk going to jail for perjury...
And how would you ensure that the jury for the perjury trial did not contain people who didn't believe in the death penalty? (You would also need to prosecute those people who claimed not to believe in the death penalty so as to avoid the extraordinary inconvenience of being a juror in a long trial.)
No it's not, is it? That's a very worrying thread. I have a feeling of deja vu; let's hope that the PM doesn't have to regretfully advise us on Dec 18th not to mix at Xmas again; because of Omicron this time, rather than "Kent" last year.
Meanwhile, over 50,000 new cases, overwhelmingly Delta, recorded again today. PB experts have been telling me for months now that pretty soon the virus is going to run out of people to infect, but that hasn't happened yet. It reminds me of those hill walks where every time you think you've reached the peak, a higher peak comes into view.
Look at the deaths or hospitalisation data and you'll understand what's happened over the last few months. A lot of people who have been, on average, a loss less badly affected than in previous waves.
No it's not, is it? That's a very worrying thread. I have a feeling of deja vu; let's hope that the PM doesn't have to regretfully advise us on Dec 18th not to mix at Xmas again; because of Omicron this time, rather than "Kent" last year.
Meanwhile, over 50,000 new cases, overwhelmingly Delta, recorded again today. PB experts have been telling me for months now that pretty soon the virus is going to run out of people to infect, but that hasn't happened yet. It reminds me of those hill walks where every time you think you've reached the peak, a higher peak comes into view.
It is possible that endemic means 40k-50k a day cases in winter.
No it's not, is it? That's a very worrying thread. I have a feeling of deja vu; let's hope that the PM doesn't have to regretfully advise us on Dec 18th not to mix at Xmas again; because of Omicron this time, rather than "Kent" last year.
Meanwhile, over 50,000 new cases, overwhelmingly Delta, recorded again today. PB experts have been telling me for months now that pretty soon the virus is going to run out of people to infect, but that hasn't happened yet. It reminds me of those hill walks where every time you think you've reached the peak, a higher peak comes into view.
Look at the deaths or hospitalisation data and you'll understand what's happened over the last few months. A lot of people who have been, on average, a loss less badly affected than in previous waves.
Which in turn is because of
cases are gently falling among the vulnerable. Which leads to
The thing to watch for is the trends in cases among the older groups
No it's not, is it? That's a very worrying thread. I have a feeling of deja vu; let's hope that the PM doesn't have to regretfully advise us on Dec 18th not to mix at Xmas again; because of Omicron this time, rather than "Kent" last year.
Meanwhile, over 50,000 new cases, overwhelmingly Delta, recorded again today. PB experts have been telling me for months now that pretty soon the virus is going to run out of people to infect, but that hasn't happened yet. It reminds me of those hill walks where every time you think you've reached the peak, a higher peak comes into view.
Look at the deaths or hospitalisation data and you'll understand what's happened over the last few months. A lot of people who have been, on average, a loss less badly affected than in previous waves.
Yes, I'm not daft, I know that. Clearly the vaccination programme has been brilliant at reducing hospitalisations and deaths - although approx. 1,000 dead a week is still, to some of us, a disappointment. But I was commenting on the specific point that the pundits on here have been telling me that positive cases are going to go into steep decline "any moment now" since, I'd guess, July. And they haven't. More of a roller-coaster than a slide.
The next election will have a large amount of tactical voting and the Lib Dems will make a lot of gains IMHO.
Don't forget, nearly all the potential LD-->Lab switchers already are voting Labour (see Canterbury for example). So Labour doesn't have much scope to benefit. The group mostly not yet voting tactically are the Lab-->LD ones. There's a lot of unwinding to do post Coalition, but unlike you I don't think it will win many seats unless the Tories self-destruct.
You are correct: ultimately, if half the Labour vote goes LibDem in their target seats, then they pick up... ooohhh...
Perhaps two dozen seats.
At tops.
And that ignores the fact that in many seats, the LibDems are going to be starting from scratch with tactical voting in 2024 because of the boundary changes.
I think they'll pickup eight or nine, and drop two or three, to end up on 17 to 18 seats
Father is jailed for 21 years and his partner for a minimum of 29 years over the torture and killing of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-59522243
How minimum is minimum? I know lots of things get said about our criminal justice system but what is the real situation. I'm more concerned she never be placed in a role of care ever again.
"For some serious violent or sexual offences where the sentence is 7 years or more the offender will be released at the two-thirds point." 29 year sentence: 19 yrs 4 months.
She's 32 now so she'll be at least 51 when released, which is heavily odds against to have another child thankfully.
Should have been a whole life tariff.
If we had it, should have been the death penalty. Thankfully we don't have it, but should be a whole life tariff.
Cases like this, and the Everard murder make me wonder about the death penalty. If the only argument against it is wrongful convictions then cases like this are surely certain enough? Why should these people be allowed another minute of life?
I have some sympathy with that view, in that I share your revulsion at the crime. Wrongful conviction has been the mainstay argument against the death penalty, but there are others.
1. I do not want the State to have the power of life and death over me.
2. Juries will be less willing to convict if they think a death sentence might be imposed. In this case they might only have been willing to convict her for manslaughter rather than murder, and her sentence would then have been much lighter.
On point 2, that is me. I would not under any circumstances convict if death was the penalty. I could not live with the knowledge that my decision led to the death of another person. Especially if it later turned out the the conviction was unsafe. (And yes, i know there is a counter argument, what happens if they are set free and kill again. But that's not my decision).
There's an additional complication here too. They would have to screen out jurors like you and me in a trial where the death penalty is possible. Then you are no longer judged by a jury of your peers, but by a jury of those in favour of the death penalty, which creates all kinds of biases in the administration of justice.
And thinking about it, that opens up a whole can of worms, what other views are unacceptable for a juror? Gender, religion, race...
Anyway, I would just give the required answer.
Presumably you would give the true answer when questioned under oath, or risk going to jail for perjury...
And how would you ensure that the jury for the perjury trial did not contain people who didn't believe in the death penalty? (You would also need to prosecute those people who claimed not to believe in the death penalty so as to avoid the extraordinary inconvenience of being a juror in a long trial.)
How would someone prove/disprove belief? Other than indeed prior postings on PB etc. I'm reminded of conscientious objection in WW2, and how the Quakers got it a lot easier with the authorities. One reason was that the Society of Friends itself got organised and helped its younger members deal with the process and the tribunals. But also, of course, because being a Quaker was seen as prima facie evidence of truly conscientious objection. Much harder for someone who hadn't thought about it till the brown envelope came from the Government to register for conscription.
But IIRC it's illegal to discriminate against people for holding philosophical positions as the MoD discovered when trying to sack a SNP activist because he believes in Scottish independence. So persecuting someone for nopt believing in hanging is itself illegal, no?
No it's not, is it? That's a very worrying thread. I have a feeling of deja vu; let's hope that the PM doesn't have to regretfully advise us on Dec 18th not to mix at Xmas again; because of Omicron this time, rather than "Kent" last year.
Meanwhile, over 50,000 new cases, overwhelmingly Delta, recorded again today. PB experts have been telling me for months now that pretty soon the virus is going to run out of people to infect, but that hasn't happened yet. It reminds me of those hill walks where every time you think you've reached the peak, a higher peak comes into view.
Look at the deaths or hospitalisation data and you'll understand what's happened over the last few months. A lot of people who have been, on average, a loss less badly affected than in previous waves.
Indeed. The severity of outcomes has dropped like a stone. This is far too rarely highlighted by the media. It's nothing like the disease it was at the outset.
It *all* depends on infection severity. Remember, a variant with increased transmissibility and lower infection severity is desirable. Unless we get a vaccine that stops infection or transmission, we're all going to get it at some point.
Five years on, and the bitter sore losers still don't understand why they lost...
We should have bets on whose will be a longer sulk: Scott's or Ted Heath's.
Obviously Farage and co would have gone away quietly if 52-48 had been 48-52 (!)
I would imagine most people would like to think they're better than stooping to Farage's standards.
Not our Scott I suppose.
You voted for Farage, knowingly and lovingly. Denying him thrice before the cock crows (OK after) isn't going to get you off the hook for being a supporter of a crypto-fascist.
I am at peace with whatever pro Union interpretation of this result HYUFD will apply.
Edit: SNP candidate elected at stage 6 I believe.
I can remember when Fort William was rock-solid Labour territory, and Ardnamurchan rock-solid Lib Dem. Now Labour don’t even bother putting up a candidate, and the Lib Dems are on 10% behind the Greens.
(I am a former SNP candidate for Ardnamurchan, and have knocked many doors in Lochaber.)
Must have needed stout walking boots
God yes. And four wheel drive. Used to get absolutely soaked.
Canvassing in rural areas requires a special type of determination. Rough housing estates in Paisley and Perth were like a wee holiday by comparison.
Nice, Ardnamurchan. I remember pulling over when driving towards the lighthouse to watch a male hen harrier quartering the moor. Is there a more beautiful bird?
BTW, the Cons Cllr whose death caused the by-election was the former lighthouse keeper. The last one, I think, before automation.
It *all* depends on infection severity. Remember, a variant with increased transmissibility and lower infection severity is desirable. Unless we get a vaccine that stops infection or transmission, we're all going to get it at some point.
Indeed – which is a glaring omission in that analysis.
The next election will have a large amount of tactical voting and the Lib Dems will make a lot of gains IMHO.
Don't forget, nearly all the potential LD-->Lab switchers already are voting Labour (see Canterbury for example). So Labour doesn't have much scope to benefit. The group mostly not yet voting tactically are the Lab-->LD ones. There's a lot of unwinding to do post Coalition, but unlike you I don't think it will win many seats unless the Tories self-destruct.
You are correct: ultimately, if half the Labour vote goes LibDem in their target seats, then they pick up... ooohhh...
Perhaps two dozen seats.
At tops.
And that ignores the fact that in many seats, the LibDems are going to be starting from scratch with tactical voting in 2024 because of the boundary changes.
I think they'll pickup eight or nine, and drop two or three, to end up on 17 to 18 seats
Spells Con majority. We need them doing better than that.
Father is jailed for 21 years and his partner for a minimum of 29 years over the torture and killing of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-59522243
How minimum is minimum? I know lots of things get said about our criminal justice system but what is the real situation. I'm more concerned she never be placed in a role of care ever again.
"For some serious violent or sexual offences where the sentence is 7 years or more the offender will be released at the two-thirds point." 29 year sentence: 19 yrs 4 months.
She's 32 now so she'll be at least 51 when released, which is heavily odds against to have another child thankfully.
Should have been a whole life tariff.
If we had it, should have been the death penalty. Thankfully we don't have it, but should be a whole life tariff.
Cases like this, and the Everard murder make me wonder about the death penalty. If the only argument against it is wrongful convictions then cases like this are surely certain enough? Why should these people be allowed another minute of life?
I have some sympathy with that view, in that I share your revulsion at the crime. Wrongful conviction has been the mainstay argument against the death penalty, but there are others.
1. I do not want the State to have the power of life and death over me.
2. Juries will be less willing to convict if they think a death sentence might be imposed. In this case they might only have been willing to convict her for manslaughter rather than murder, and her sentence would then have been much lighter.
On point 2, that is me. I would not under any circumstances convict if death was the penalty. I could not live with the knowledge that my decision led to the death of another person. Especially if it later turned out the the conviction was unsafe. (And yes, i know there is a counter argument, what happens if they are set free and kill again. But that's not my decision).
There's an additional complication here too. They would have to screen out jurors like you and me in a trial where the death penalty is possible. Then you are no longer judged by a jury of your peers, but by a jury of those in favour of the death penalty, which creates all kinds of biases in the administration of justice.
And thinking about it, that opens up a whole can of worms, what other views are unacceptable for a juror? Gender, religion, race...
Anyway, I would just give the required answer.
Presumably you would give the true answer when questioned under oath, or risk going to jail for perjury...
And how would you ensure that the jury for the perjury trial did not contain people who didn't believe in the death penalty? (You would also need to prosecute those people who claimed not to believe in the death penalty so as to avoid the extraordinary inconvenience of being a juror in a long trial.)
There are numerous democracies that have both trial by jury and the death penalty and make it work. But I agree that it’s not practical to implement such a change with only a 52-48 majority. What was striking to me when living in Asia was that even when talking to otherwise highly liberal internationalised Gen X-ers and Millennials, it was almost impossible to find anyone who didn’t full throatedly support the death penalty for at least some crimes.
Five years on, and the bitter sore losers still don't understand why they lost...
We should have bets on whose will be a longer sulk: Scott's or Ted Heath's.
Obviously Farage and co would have gone away quietly if 52-48 had been 48-52 (!)
I would imagine most people would like to think they're better than stooping to Farage's standards.
Not our Scott I suppose.
You voted for Farage, knowingly and lovingly. Denying him thrice before the cock crows (OK after) isn't going to get you off the hook for being a supporter of a crypto-fascist.
More than half the confirmed cases of the new Omicron variant in the UK have occurred following at least two vaccination doses, health officials have said.
A new technical briefing from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says 12 of the 22 known cases up to 30 November had been fully vaccinated.
Another two people infected had been given their first dose at least four weeks earlier.
Six were unvaccinated, with no data available on two of the cases.
So if we are 69% double vacced you would expect 15 cases if vacc had no effect whatever. In fact 12 cases, and the 2 unknowns are probably " x vacced too (because 69% are), suggesting that 2 x vacc has pretty much no effect whatever on infection.
Five years on, and the bitter sore losers still don't understand why they lost...
We should have bets on whose will be a longer sulk: Scott's or Ted Heath's.
Obviously Farage and co would have gone away quietly if 52-48 had been 48-52 (!)
I would imagine most people would like to think they're better than stooping to Farage's standards.
Not our Scott I suppose.
You voted for Farage, knowingly and lovingly. Denying him thrice before the cock crows (OK after) isn't going to get you off the hook for being a supporter of a crypto-fascist.
More than half the confirmed cases of the new Omicron variant in the UK have occurred following at least two vaccination doses, health officials have said.
A new technical briefing from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says 12 of the 22 known cases up to 30 November had been fully vaccinated.
Another two people infected had been given their first dose at least four weeks earlier.
Six were unvaccinated, with no data available on two of the cases.
More than half the confirmed cases of the new Omicron variant in the UK have occurred following at least two vaccination doses, health officials have said.
A new technical briefing from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says 12 of the 22 known cases up to 30 November had been fully vaccinated.
Another two people infected had been given their first dose at least four weeks earlier.
Six were unvaccinated, with no data available on two of the cases.
Five years on, and the bitter sore losers still don't understand why they lost...
We should have bets on whose will be a longer sulk: Scott's or Ted Heath's.
Obviously Farage and co would have gone away quietly if 52-48 had been 48-52 (!)
I would imagine most people would like to think they're better than stooping to Farage's standards.
Not our Scott I suppose.
You voted for Farage, knowingly and lovingly. Denying him thrice before the cock crows (OK after) isn't going to get you off the hook for being a supporter of a crypto-fascist.
Bullshit. That is a lie.
Did you vote for UKIP or Brexit Party?
...the answer is taking a long time. If I remember correctly, Philip voted Brexit Party, that was, very clearly, a vehicle to advance the opinions of Nigel Farage, and therefore endorsed him as an individual. Therefore Philip pretends to dislike Farage, but at the same time votes for a party that is more associated with its party leader than any I can think of in my lifetime.
Five years on, and the bitter sore losers still don't understand why they lost...
We should have bets on whose will be a longer sulk: Scott's or Ted Heath's.
Obviously Farage and co would have gone away quietly if 52-48 had been 48-52 (!)
I would imagine most people would like to think they're better than stooping to Farage's standards.
Not our Scott I suppose.
Maybe. Personally, I am deeply bored of Brexit but nearly every day something* crops up to remind me what a piss-poor decision the country took.
(*in the real world, not just on PB!)
Try to spot some positive Brexit things. There are many, as the negatives. If you're not spotting them then you haven't let go to the debate. Perhaps there are more negatives than positives - I don't know. However if you entirely fail to see any positives then you're making a mistake.
More than half the confirmed cases of the new Omicron variant in the UK have occurred following at least two vaccination doses, health officials have said.
A new technical briefing from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says 12 of the 22 known cases up to 30 November had been fully vaccinated.
Another two people infected had been given their first dose at least four weeks earlier.
Six were unvaccinated, with no data available on two of the cases.
Crunching the numbers that's not bad news at all, given the extremely high rates of vaccination in the population as a whole.
See edit:
So if we are 69% double vacced you would expect 15 cases if vacc had no effect whatever. In fact 12 cases, and the 2 unknowns are probably " x vacced too (because 69% are), suggesting that 2 x vacc has pretty much no effect whatever on infection.
More than half the confirmed cases of the new Omicron variant in the UK have occurred following at least two vaccination doses, health officials have said.
A new technical briefing from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says 12 of the 22 known cases up to 30 November had been fully vaccinated.
Another two people infected had been given their first dose at least four weeks earlier.
Six were unvaccinated, with no data available on two of the cases.
Crunching the numbers that's not bad news at all, given the extremely high rates of vaccination in the population as a whole.
See edit:
So if we are 69% double vacced you would expect 15 cases if vacc had no effect whatever. In fact 12 cases, and the 2 unknowns are probably " x vacced too (because 69% are), suggesting that 2 x vacc has pretty much no effect whatever on infection.
Of course, we're also in the 'beware of extrapolation from small datasets' space.
Five years on, and the bitter sore losers still don't understand why they lost...
We should have bets on whose will be a longer sulk: Scott's or Ted Heath's.
Obviously Farage and co would have gone away quietly if 52-48 had been 48-52 (!)
I would imagine most people would like to think they're better than stooping to Farage's standards.
Not our Scott I suppose.
You voted for Farage, knowingly and lovingly. Denying him thrice before the cock crows (OK after) isn't going to get you off the hook for being a supporter of a crypto-fascist.
Bullshit. That is a lie.
Did you vote for UKIP or Brexit Party?
Not at a General Election, no.
At a bullshit European Parliament election I begrudgingly cast a protest vote, as a last resort, when my own party was mired in failure led by a racist xenophobe who told immigrants to GO HOME.
But you've already told me before you have no issues with sending vans into minority areas saying GO HOME. So I'll take no lectures from one as blind as you.
Five years on, and the bitter sore losers still don't understand why they lost...
We should have bets on whose will be a longer sulk: Scott's or Ted Heath's.
Obviously Farage and co would have gone away quietly if 52-48 had been 48-52 (!)
I would imagine most people would like to think they're better than stooping to Farage's standards.
Not our Scott I suppose.
Maybe. Personally, I am deeply bored of Brexit but nearly every day something* crops up to remind me what a piss-poor decision the country took.
(*in the real world, not just on PB!)
Try to spot some positive Brexit things. There are many, as the negatives. If you're not spotting them then you haven't let go to the debate. Perhaps there are more negatives than positives - I don't know. However if you entirely fail to see any positives then you're making a mistake.
Please list some. I would love to know some that are not as easy to shoot down as a very large floating (Col.) blimp.
Father is jailed for 21 years and his partner for a minimum of 29 years over the torture and killing of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-59522243
How minimum is minimum? I know lots of things get said about our criminal justice system but what is the real situation. I'm more concerned she never be placed in a role of care ever again.
"For some serious violent or sexual offences where the sentence is 7 years or more the offender will be released at the two-thirds point." 29 year sentence: 19 yrs 4 months.
She's 32 now so she'll be at least 51 when released, which is heavily odds against to have another child thankfully.
Should have been a whole life tariff.
If we had it, should have been the death penalty. Thankfully we don't have it, but should be a whole life tariff.
Cases like this, and the Everard murder make me wonder about the death penalty. If the only argument against it is wrongful convictions then cases like this are surely certain enough? Why should these people be allowed another minute of life?
I have some sympathy with that view, in that I share your revulsion at the crime. Wrongful conviction has been the mainstay argument against the death penalty, but there are others.
1. I do not want the State to have the power of life and death over me.
2. Juries will be less willing to convict if they think a death sentence might be imposed. In this case they might only have been willing to convict her for manslaughter rather than murder, and her sentence would then have been much lighter.
On point 2, that is me. I would not under any circumstances convict if death was the penalty. I could not live with the knowledge that my decision led to the death of another person. Especially if it later turned out the the conviction was unsafe. (And yes, i know there is a counter argument, what happens if they are set free and kill again. But that's not my decision).
There's an additional complication here too. They would have to screen out jurors like you and me in a trial where the death penalty is possible. Then you are no longer judged by a jury of your peers, but by a jury of those in favour of the death penalty, which creates all kinds of biases in the administration of justice.
And thinking about it, that opens up a whole can of worms, what other views are unacceptable for a juror? Gender, religion, race...
Anyway, I would just give the required answer.
Presumably you would give the true answer when questioned under oath, or risk going to jail for perjury...
And how would you ensure that the jury for the perjury trial did not contain people who didn't believe in the death penalty? (You would also need to prosecute those people who claimed not to believe in the death penalty so as to avoid the extraordinary inconvenience of being a juror in a long trial.)
There are numerous democracies that have both trial by jury and the death penalty and make it work. But I agree that it’s not practical to implement such a change with only a 52-48 majority. What was striking to me when living in Asia was that even when talking to otherwise highly liberal internationalised Gen X-ers and Millennials, it was almost impossible to find anyone who didn’t full throatedly support the death penalty for at least some crimes.
Comments
That's strong words.
But that been said the UK is in a much better position than most. So many places boosters programmes are miles behind and / or poor uptake.
We have in recent decades imo developed quite an unsavoury tilt towards revenge in our legal system.
When the quality of mercy and loss of a vision of rehabilitation are lost, then it risks becoming inhuman also imo.
I relate that to a loss of a Christian vision of humanity underpinning society. Others will differ on that particular, however I think we have lost more of a human vision of prisoners as we have secularised compared to other Western Societies.
Is this because we have not had a holocaust or similar type experience *here in the UK* in *living* memory that we are perhaps somewhat inured to cruelty to the outsider?
(Yes I am being provocative)
Brexit is a liberal and libertarian project, though liberals have so forgotten their roots that many are in denial about it (see the Economist passim) and well suited to Boris. Dealing with a pandemic is something that comes more naturally to soviet style Labour people who love telling others what to do, and the illiberal Tory majority who just love banning things; it will never come naturally to Boris, for whom rules are invariably an interesting challenge.
His populism arises out of the fact that he is a performer. Putting together his character and the circumstances of Brexit and the pandemic, which are together an overwhelming mass of contradictory detail, regulation and fudge, has the makings of Fawlty Towers. It is a tribute to him, and us, that we are still standing.
Former Labour voters have been voting SNP since before 2007. At what point does their “tactical” vote become a normal vote?
What do they offer? Davey is really lacklustre.
The Greens are becoming far better too, so I see them taking over the protest party gig.
If I was a slightly left sort of a voter I'd see Starmer as a far better leader than Davey, and far less likely to just be daft.
But that been said, we are coming up to a crucial time where potential for very large spreading events, every day delaying turbo charging this is crucial, especially as supply isn't the issue.
That chinese doctor that died from it was very unlucky indeed.
Which makes it a bit strange that the concept of "SNP Type" is so difficult for you to understand.
Also, this whole Boris hates petty rules thing needs putting to bed. He banned drinking booze on the tube. You don't get much more nanny state than that.
PB is full of bad-faith posters. Some, like Sean, are 8 out of 10. You’re a 1. Just pathetic.
Coalition of Choas.
There's too much talk about restrictions and not enough on the importance of the vaccines. That 10% of oldsters are the people who are most at risk of ending up back in hospital if Omicron erodes vaccine-acquired immunity.
Red Red squarestatus assigned to evasion of
- Infection acquired immunity
- Vaccine acquired immunity
- Therapeutic effectivenss
But LOW confidence to ALL, due to lack of laboratory and real-world data
Amber Yellow squarestatus given to transmissibility
https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1466807250618662922?s=20
Bad faith poster?
Canvassing in rural areas requires a special type of determination. Rough housing estates in Paisley and Perth were like a wee holiday by comparison.
Evidence 1-
Nippy's mug polluting our TV screens for over a year.
You won!
Suck it up...
I still think it might be an absolute majority of people who have voted, but it's just a hunch.
I don't use it because I can't see a use case for me, but these things are interesting.
Evidence 2-
No mainstream coverage of the SNP Type book deal scandal.
I've had enough of PB SNP Types for one day.
Laters.
Meanwhile, over 50,000 new cases, overwhelmingly Delta, recorded again today. PB experts have been telling me for months now that pretty soon the virus is going to run out of people to infect, but that hasn't happened yet. It reminds me of those hill walks where every time you think you've reached the peak, a higher peak comes into view.
Not our Scott I suppose.
cases are gently falling among the vulnerable. Which leads to
The thing to watch for is the trends in cases among the older groups
I'm remaining optimistic.
• less intrinsically transmissible than Delta
• more immune escape and reinfection than Delta
• 40-50% less severe than Delta
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1466536817419644933?s=20
Perhaps two dozen seats.
At tops.
And that ignores the fact that in many seats, the LibDems are going to be starting from scratch with tactical voting in 2024 because of the boundary changes.
I think they'll pickup eight or nine, and drop two or three, to end up on 17 to 18 seats
But IIRC it's illegal to discriminate against people for holding philosophical positions as the MoD discovered when trying to sack a SNP activist because he believes in Scottish independence. So persecuting someone for nopt believing in hanging is itself illegal, no?
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/how-the-government-is-handling-the-issue-of-brexit-in-the-uk
(*in the real world, not just on PB!)
BTW, the Cons Cllr whose death caused the by-election was the former lighthouse keeper. The last one, I think, before automation.
A new technical briefing from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says 12 of the 22 known cases up to 30 November had been fully vaccinated.
Another two people infected had been given their first dose at least four weeks earlier.
Six were unvaccinated, with no data available on two of the cases.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-over-half-of-uk-omicron-cases-happened-after-two-jabs-as-ukhsa-releases-risk-assessment-12485607
So if we are 69% double vacced you would expect 15 cases if vacc had no effect whatever. In fact 12 cases, and the 2 unknowns are probably " x vacced too (because 69% are), suggesting that 2 x vacc has pretty much no effect whatever on infection.
So if we are 69% double vacced you would expect 15 cases if vacc had no effect whatever. In fact 12 cases, and the 2 unknowns are probably " x vacced too (because 69% are), suggesting that 2 x vacc has pretty much no effect whatever on infection.
At a bullshit European Parliament election I begrudgingly cast a protest vote, as a last resort, when my own party was mired in failure led by a racist xenophobe who told immigrants to GO HOME.
But you've already told me before you have no issues with sending vans into minority areas saying GO HOME. So I'll take no lectures from one as blind as you.