Will make it close to impossible for winning punters.
An mechanism to gub?
Look at below from the article regarding bookies sharing confidential records:
"Philp said that data watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office’s assessment that the approach could be implemented without violating data protection rules was a major step forward."
Mr. Rabbit, consistency would be the counter-argument.
Hamilton got a 10s time penalty for taking out Verstappen in Silverstone, which saw the Dutchman get 0 points and Hamilton still claim 25.
I don't for a moment think that was vindictive on Hamilton's part but his car was in a fundamentally different place to that when he passed Leclerc at the same track section later in the race.
Omicron: was that the name of the villain in The Three Doctors special of Doctor Who? Edited extra bit: i think it was him or Omega.
His car was 1m from the apex but on course to make the corner.
Fundamentally different place would be if he'd deliberately driven 5m off the side of the track, like, err, Max often does.
Of course, Many a politician has been immersed in worse shit and come up smelling of roses.
Many pundits & commentators thought Thatcher would not survive the Westland affair.
Not merely did she, ... she won the General Election the following year convincingly.
Yes he will just disappear from public life for a few weeks, paternity leave, xmas, new year, then pick a fight with Macron in January which will boost them both and bring back the fan boys into the fold.
I can't see the party junking him unless and until the polls show clearly that he's become a liability (cf a realistic alternative) in the sort of seats where the next GE will be decided. We're miles off that (although it could happen quickly of course) and so although I hope he goes and goes soon, my betting view is this is a good time to back him to still be PM at next years Tory Party conference. 1.5 on that is value imo.
Has anything really changed? Yes some people are rightly angry but are there really people waking up and having an epiphany that Boris, err, lies and err, doesn't give a shit about them? They knew it all along and were happy to go along with it.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
You cannot negotiate with the virus; and no-one has any idea what actions will lead to what level of deaths. All we can say - roughly - is certain actions - e.g. masks, wfh, vax - *reduces* infections and deaths. But we have no ides what the baseline of deaths will be for non-action, especially with Omicron.
Yes I get that but the lost years of restrictions needs to be put into the machine. It is not just stop deaths from Covid with nothing on the other side of the ledger.
If you took all regulations and restrictions away tomorrow I would say there would be around 10-20% mask wearing, for example. I believe the overwhelming majority of people want as normal a life as possible. If this is close to being accurate then a democratically-elected government must create a society that fulfils this desire.
We get n thousand road deaths each year. A tiny amount vs Covid but nevertheless the government has come to an agreement about an acceptable level of road deaths.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
One reference point as to how inured we've become to Covid. The estimated actual global death toll from Covid is around 20m. That would be 2m more than died in World War I - in half the time.
Yes but didn't Spanish flu kill more than that?
50-80m is the estimate. Huge
But there is now a chance that Covid could equal it, if OMICRON THE SCYTHE-WIELDER gets going in the unvaxxed poor
Those oysters aren't going to shuck themselves.
Edit: it would be bloody funny if an oyster you ate killed you stone dead this afternoon.
Obviously not funny at all but at the same time bloody funny.
Mr. Rabbit, consistency would be the counter-argument.
Hamilton got a 10s time penalty for taking out Verstappen in Silverstone, which saw the Dutchman get 0 points and Hamilton still claim 25.
I don't for a moment think that was vindictive on Hamilton's part but his car was in a fundamentally different place to that when he passed Leclerc at the same track section later in the race.
Omicron: was that the name of the villain in The Three Doctors special of Doctor Who? Edited extra bit: i think it was him or Omega.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
One reference point as to how inured we've become to Covid. The estimated actual global death toll from Covid is around 20m. That would be 2m more than died in World War I - in half the time.
Yes but didn't Spanish flu kill more than that?
50-80m is the estimate. Huge
But there is now a chance that Covid could equal it, if OMICRON THE SCYTHE-WIELDER gets going in the unvaxxed poor
Lots more people around now though. When comparing back to ancient deathtolls you get a better picture by using percentages. Eg, if Adam had gone in a fatal accident, that's only one, trivial, but it's also a half of the global population, which is far from trivial. Indeed it's massive.
Will make it close to impossible for winning punters.
If such a clearly anti-competitive measure is to be allowed, there clearly needs to be quid pro quo, like requiring bookies to accept bets from any punter up to an agreed minimum for a price they've advertised.
“Corlett said a change was needed. “Choosing not to tax this huge housing wealth windfall . . . has real consequences, including higher taxes for workers and businesses.”
He’s right. Time to tax property, properly.
It is but at the same time a political graveyard for any party threatened taxes on individual peoples homes
What did they expect?
1) Pour money into the economy. 2) Declare house price inflation the right kind of inflation. 3) Have population rising at the rate of a small city per year. 4) Blocking the construction of homes to keep up with population growth
True. But at the same time, that wealth is illiquid. Taxing it 'properly' would force a lot of people not only out of their homes but out of their localities, just because they happened to be somewhere that 'got lucky' (which undoubtedly wouldn't be how they saw it).
The only 'fair' ways to do it, IMO, are through inheritance tax and property sales taxes - in other words, when residency is changing anyway.
There is an argument for higher, more progressive council tax banding (and updating ratings), and I get that no-one has a right to live in a home they can't afford. But equally, should the govt be effectively actively evicting people? I don't think so.
Oh, also - stick up interest rates. That alone will bring prices down a bit.
Proportional property tax with fix Council Tax and Stamp Duty. Plus CGT on main dwellings.
Job done.
Yes. Job done.
Also election lost.
I have an idea...
Take the increase in population each year (estimated). Distribute the numbers around the country - each council is on the hook to produce X new homes - either private development or whatever.
IF they want to be nimbies - they can *buy* house credits for houses built by councils in other areas. Bit like Carbon Credits. So a council that builds above the quota can sell the excess to those below quota.
We've been doing that - the problem is that the estimates forgot the X million eastern Europeans who have live down South.
Consensus is that it's not quite what he said but it is what he meant. A million Covid infections a day, within three weeks.
Is that tenable?
@Chris thought there would be 800,000 at which point I asked if he would care to wager upon it.
He then disappeared from the site - temporarily I hope; we need his brainpower to increase the average intelligence level on here - but I will ask him again when he returns.
Of course, Many a politician has been immersed in worse shit and come up smelling of roses.
Many pundits & commentators thought Thatcher would not survive the Westland affair.
Not merely did she, ... she won the General Election the following year convincingly.
Yes he will just disappear from public life for a few weeks, paternity leave, xmas, new year, then pick a fight with Macron in January which will boost them both and bring back the fan boys into the fold.
I can't see the party junking him unless and until the polls show clearly that he's become a liability (cf a realistic alternative) in the sort of seats where the next GE will be decided. We're miles off that (although it could happen quickly of course) and so although I hope he goes and goes soon, my betting view is this is a good time to back him to still be PM at next years Tory Party conference. 1.5 on that is value imo.
Has anything really changed? Yes some people are rightly angry but are there really people waking up and having an epiphany that Boris, err, lies and err, doesn't give a shit about them? They knew it all along and were happy to go along with it.
To those who follow politics more closely, sure. However what a really damaging political scandal does is move beyond those people and filters out into the general population. I think a lot of 2019 Boris voters know that he has a - strained - relationship with the truth, but if it’s a bit of a white lie here or there or something perceived to be a minor transgression or a Westminster village story, they won’t be too bothered.
From the anecdotal evidence I’m seeing though, this has cut through in a much bigger way. It’s the anger that this has impacted them personally and they’ve made personal sacrifices whilst the government hasn’t followed the rules. It goes beyond the “oh it’s Boris being Boris” mindset.
“Corlett said a change was needed. “Choosing not to tax this huge housing wealth windfall . . . has real consequences, including higher taxes for workers and businesses.”
He’s right. Time to tax property, properly.
It is but at the same time a political graveyard for any party threatened taxes on individual peoples homes
What did they expect?
1) Pour money into the economy. 2) Declare house price inflation the right kind of inflation. 3) Have population rising at the rate of a small city per year. 4) Blocking the construction of homes to keep up with population growth
True. But at the same time, that wealth is illiquid. Taxing it 'properly' would force a lot of people not only out of their homes but out of their localities, just because they happened to be somewhere that 'got lucky' (which undoubtedly wouldn't be how they saw it).
The only 'fair' ways to do it, IMO, are through inheritance tax and property sales taxes - in other words, when residency is changing anyway.
There is an argument for higher, more progressive council tax banding (and updating ratings), and I get that no-one has a right to live in a home they can't afford. But equally, should the govt be effectively actively evicting people? I don't think so.
Oh, also - stick up interest rates. That alone will bring prices down a bit.
Proportional property tax with fix Council Tax and Stamp Duty. Plus CGT on main dwellings.
Job done.
Yes. Job done.
Also election lost.
CGT on main dwellings looks lovely but creates a whole different set of issues.
Simply replacing Council Tax with something else fixes a lot of the issues but a rebranding and revaluation of council tax is such a brave decision the VOA / Treasury are petrified to even suggest it.
If you put CGT on houses, then you would have to create a roll-over relief system to make it work, so if the proceeds are put into another house, the gain is calculated, but not payable until the proceeds are actually converted into cash.
(I saw the Soup Dragon yesterday, so I have some Moon Rabbit soup for lunch today. Complete with the green string they used to trap it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBRyP_I0OOA)
Oh wow. That’s the stuff. Magical. 🥰
Bllllllllllllllllluh (Translated: without packing out Ukrainian with NATO troops, looks like the West have agree to let Putin invade without a fight)
Smokey Joe does seem to be being a little dim. 'No, we won't send our military in', essentially. I thought the idea was to leave them wondering.
Though the forces of Ukraine are a lot bigger and a lot better than they were before. It would be interesting if the Russkies tried and were sent back in underpants and flip-flops.
That’s seriously worrying.
If the Russkis go over the border, threatening to take Ukraine and leave a massive border between Russia and NATO, how are the NATO countries supposed to respond to Ukraine’s cry for help?
Grow a pair, Sleepy Joe. Tell them they can expect to be bombed back to Moscow.
We are not going to get in a shooting war (which could easily go nuclear) with Russia over Ukraine. We are just not. Biden knows it and Putin knows it.
I don’t know why the f*ck anyone thinks NATO will ride to Ukraine’s rescue. As you said, everyone knows it. The only reason Putin didn’t do it earlier is that he thought Trump might be nuts enough to actually do something
Nah. Putin had Trump's measure. And probably his negatives.
NATO won't ride to Ukraine's rescue as such. There won't be American boots on the ground in Kiev. But there may well be (damn well should be) very strong economic sanctions - including, for example, freezing all Russian assets, private or public, above a low maximum. Obviously, Russia would respond with a boycott of gas sales and the like (hence why it's happening in winter, and why Russia has already been restricting sales, to run down client stocks), but that is a price that should be paid.
What’s Chinas or India’s position? Would they join sanctions? We need to know that. I Putin just signed a deal with Modi.
Wouldn't matter. The Kremlin's dodgy overseas money isn't in India or China.
The West should absolutely be doing everything it can to keep / get India on side though. Frankly, it shouldn't be all that hard, particularly now that Pakistan doesn't matter.
AIUI France has been working hard on India, especially for defence sales and things like 2+2 Minsterial meetings, as we have with Japan.
We still have some colonial hangovers aiui, which is inevitable.
A touch like some French going "Mers el Kebir" therefore you are bastards, and some Irish going "Potato potato" therefore you are bastards, in debate . I've seen both of those used as clinchers in Euro debates online. Cuts all ways.
We should be cultivating English speaking in Francophone Africa.
Consensus is that it's not quite what he said but it is what he meant. A million Covid infections a day, within three weeks.
Is that tenable?
It just leaves us as we were. If his prediction comes true, these measures are utterly irrelevant, and if it doesn't come true, they're utterly unnecessary.
Given it's a figure based on the utterly childish idea that a very small doubling time will be maintained through 8 or 9 doubling cycles without slowing down (more or less the basis for every single laughable failed forecast so far this pandemic) I'd certainly be taking the under if he was taking bets.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
One reference point as to how inured we've become to Covid. The estimated actual global death toll from Covid is around 20m. That would be 2m more than died in World War I - in half the time.
Yes but didn't Spanish flu kill more than that?
50-80m is the estimate. Huge
But there is now a chance that Covid could equal it, if OMICRON THE SCYTHE-WIELDER gets going in the unvaxxed poor
Lots more people around now though. When comparing back to ancient deathtolls you get a better picture by using percentages. Eg, if Adam had gone in a fatal accident, that's only one, trivial, but it's also a half of the global population, which is far from trivial. Indeed it's massive.
I once spent a glorious weekend on the island of Foula, which is arguably the most remote of the British isles, 30 miles off Shetland, with rough seas 99% of the year (and often completely cut off, for that reason)
They don't exactly get many tourists. Despite the epic landscape. The nice lady who put me up told me a story about one tourist season a few years ago, when they had literally two tourist visitors. In a whole year. To make it worse, one of the visitors, a German guy, got blown off Foula's mile high cliffs by a mighty gust and fell to his death.
So that year Foula had a tourist death rate of 50%. Not good for biz. They didn't put it on the posters.
Will make it close to impossible for winning punters.
On one level that is absolutely essential to protect problem gamblers but it's going to open up as you say a complete set of other issues.
Alongside that we do need a rule which says that no one can be barred or have limited stakes imposed (except for protection reasons).
Is this something that Aaron Bell, née @Tissue_Price could take up?
As long as no one is cheating, winning punters should not be restricted by bookmakers as part of the terms of their licence. Paddypower have restricted me to trivial stakes even though I am only modestly a winner on their political bets. It isn't my fault that they mispriced Scottish seats in 2015!
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
One reference point as to how inured we've become to Covid. The estimated actual global death toll from Covid is around 20m. That would be 2m more than died in World War I - in half the time.
Yes but didn't Spanish flu kill more than that?
50-80m is the estimate. Huge
But there is now a chance that Covid could equal it, if OMICRON THE SCYTHE-WIELDER gets going in the unvaxxed poor
Lots more people around now though. When comparing back to ancient deathtolls you get a better picture by using percentages. Eg, if Adam had gone in a fatal accident, that's only one, trivial, but it's also a half of the global population, which is far from trivial. Indeed it's massive.
I once spent a glorious weekend on the island of Foula, which is arguably the most remote of the British isles, 30 miles off Shetland, with rough seas 99% of the year (and often completely cut off, for that reason)
They don't exactly get many tourists. Despite the epic landscape. The nice lady who put me up told me a story about one tourist season a few years ago, when they had literally two tourist visitors. In a whole year. To make it worse, one of the visitors, a German guy, got blown off Foula's mile high cliffs by a mighty gust and fell to his death.
So that year Foula had a tourist death rate of 50%. Not good for biz. They didn't put it on the posters.
Will make it close to impossible for winning punters.
If such a clearly anti-competitive measure is to be allowed, there clearly needs to be quid pro quo, like requiring bookies to accept bets from any punter up to an agreed minimum for a price they've advertised.
Issue is it's anti-competitive but it's also for the greater public good - so I can see the Government going for it (heck they seem to be proposing it) without grasping the extra advantages it gives bookies over competent punters.
Consensus is that it's not quite what he said but it is what he meant. A million Covid infections a day, within three weeks.
Is that tenable?
It just leaves us as we were. If his prediction comes true, these measures are utterly irrelevant, and if it doesn't come true, they're utterly unnecessary.
Given it's a figure based on the utterly childish idea that a very small doubling time will be maintained through 8 or 9 doubling cycles without slowing down (more or less the basis for every single laughable failed forecast so far this pandemic) I'd certainly be taking the under if he was taking bets.
Yep, if we get anything near 1m new infections a day, then Plan B is nothing more than a ridiculous, self-harming gesture. Like tattooing your face with the words FUCK OFF, TSUNAMI as you face an actual tsunami
Will make it close to impossible for winning punters.
On one level that is absolutely essential to protect problem gamblers but it's going to open up as you say a complete set of other issues.
Alongside that we do need a rule which says that no one can be barred or have limited stakes imposed (except for protection reasons).
Is this something that Aaron Bell, née @Tissue_Price could take up?
As long as no one is cheating, winning punters should not be restricted by bookmakers as part of the terms of their licence. Paddypower have restricted me to trivial stakes even though I am only modestly a winner on their political bets. It isn't my fault that they mispriced Scottish seats in 2015!
Hopefully, it's something that I'm sure he will quickly grasp in ways few other MPs would.
As I said I can see why the government likes the idea because it solves a big problem for them - but it also creates a different issue and it's a problem the Government doesn't have a clue about.
“Corlett said a change was needed. “Choosing not to tax this huge housing wealth windfall . . . has real consequences, including higher taxes for workers and businesses.”
He’s right. Time to tax property, properly.
It is but at the same time a political graveyard for any party threatened taxes on individual peoples homes
What did they expect?
1) Pour money into the economy. 2) Declare house price inflation the right kind of inflation. 3) Have population rising at the rate of a small city per year. 4) Blocking the construction of homes to keep up with population growth
True. But at the same time, that wealth is illiquid. Taxing it 'properly' would force a lot of people not only out of their homes but out of their localities, just because they happened to be somewhere that 'got lucky' (which undoubtedly wouldn't be how they saw it).
The only 'fair' ways to do it, IMO, are through inheritance tax and property sales taxes - in other words, when residency is changing anyway.
There is an argument for higher, more progressive council tax banding (and updating ratings), and I get that no-one has a right to live in a home they can't afford. But equally, should the govt be effectively actively evicting people? I don't think so.
Oh, also - stick up interest rates. That alone will bring prices down a bit.
Proportional property tax with fix Council Tax and Stamp Duty. Plus CGT on main dwellings.
Job done.
Yes. Job done.
Also election lost.
CGT on main dwellings looks lovely but creates a whole different set of issues.
Simply replacing Council Tax with something else fixes a lot of the issues but a rebranding and revaluation of council tax is such a brave decision the VOA / Treasury are petrified to even suggest it.
If you put CGT on houses, then you would have to create a roll-over relief system to make it work, so if the proceeds are put into another house, the gain is calculated, but not payable until the proceeds are actually converted into cash.
Hello Inheritance tax part 2 (yes I know it also impacts pensioners moving to smaller properties but that's their children's inheritance being taxed away).
Former colleague of mine has just shared with me his email to his newly-elected red wall Tory MP. Points out that as a floating voter who has voted LibDem, Labour and Tory he sees the PM and his government as "Corrupt, guilty of significant cronyism, dishonest, inept, lazy, elitist, populist and amoral." Suggests that he won't be the only first time Tory voter making the same comments so "Its time for Boris and his team to go. Please make it happen".
Remember that my friend is the exact kind of Tory voter and Mark Eastwood the exact kind of Tory MP that HYUFD thinks we should ignore because they aren't proper Tories.
(I saw the Soup Dragon yesterday, so I have some Moon Rabbit soup for lunch today. Complete with the green string they used to trap it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBRyP_I0OOA)
Oh wow. That’s the stuff. Magical. 🥰
Bllllllllllllllllluh (Translated: without packing out Ukrainian with NATO troops, looks like the West have agree to let Putin invade without a fight)
Smokey Joe does seem to be being a little dim. 'No, we won't send our military in', essentially. I thought the idea was to leave them wondering.
Though the forces of Ukraine are a lot bigger and a lot better than they were before. It would be interesting if the Russkies tried and were sent back in underpants and flip-flops.
That’s seriously worrying.
If the Russkis go over the border, threatening to take Ukraine and leave a massive border between Russia and NATO, how are the NATO countries supposed to respond to Ukraine’s cry for help?
Grow a pair, Sleepy Joe. Tell them they can expect to be bombed back to Moscow.
We are not going to get in a shooting war (which could easily go nuclear) with Russia over Ukraine. We are just not. Biden knows it and Putin knows it.
No way should we fight, but by all means supply and finance the Ukranians to do so. Even Putinn should know invading Ukraine in winter is digging a grave for his army.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Of course, Many a politician has been immersed in worse shit and come up smelling of roses.
Many pundits & commentators thought Thatcher would not survive the Westland affair.
Not merely did she, ... she won the General Election the following year convincingly.
Yes he will just disappear from public life for a few weeks, paternity leave, xmas, new year, then pick a fight with Macron in January which will boost them both and bring back the fan boys into the fold.
I can't see the party junking him unless and until the polls show clearly that he's become a liability (cf a realistic alternative) in the sort of seats where the next GE will be decided. We're miles off that (although it could happen quickly of course) and so although I hope he goes and goes soon, my betting view is this is a good time to back him to still be PM at next years Tory Party conference. 1.5 on that is value imo.
Has anything really changed? Yes some people are rightly angry but are there really people waking up and having an epiphany that Boris, err, lies and err, doesn't give a shit about them? They knew it all along and were happy to go along with it.
To those who follow politics more closely, sure. However what a really damaging political scandal does is move beyond those people and filters out into the general population. I think a lot of 2019 Boris voters know that he has a - strained - relationship with the truth, but if it’s a bit of a white lie here or there or something perceived to be a minor transgression or a Westminster village story, they won’t be too bothered.
From the anecdotal evidence I’m seeing though, this has cut through in a much bigger way. It’s the anger that this has impacted them personally and they’ve made personal sacrifices whilst the government hasn’t followed the rules. It goes beyond the “oh it’s Boris being Boris” mindset.
When it was Boris running rings round Cameron, or making May's life miserable, it was funny. If he was pulling in the posh totty, half the population half-thought "good on him". Same for his scamming of the Euronegotiations.
When it's Boris having fun when you're the one who was stuck at home, that's different. He's not on your side any more, you're not a voyeur on one posh bloke getting the better of another.
He's getting one over on you, personally. That's different. It's why Mr Barnard Castle cut through as well.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
One reference point as to how inured we've become to Covid. The estimated actual global death toll from Covid is around 20m. That would be 2m more than died in World War I - in half the time.
From a British only perspective, Covid is running at ~1/3rd of battlefield casualties, leaving civilians alone.
I'm sure this makes me a monster, but I feel a much greater sense of loss for 20 year old soldiers than covid deaths with a median age of 82, if we want the full perspective, however.
Omicron Four Times More Transmissable Than Delta December 9, 2021 at 7:45
“The omicron variant of Covid-19 is 4.2 times more transmissible in its early stage than delta, according to a study by a Japanese scientist who advises the country’s health ministry, a finding likely to confirm fears about the new strain’s contagiousness,”
In the first bit She says we take a lesson from Crimea War. It may not register with us where Russians feel their Slav kinsfolk, Eastern Orthodox Russian speakers are under threat of being marginalised, so we have to try to get into the mindset of a patriotic Russian Slav (she doesn’t say how we do do that, and the next bit I can only translate as Pair Ron with his Hammer Out?) and that Ukraine is a bit of a ethno mess from the days of grand Lithuanian empire, that was very Catholic like the poles, its current border with Russia might actually be in wrong place for ongoing peace and happiness.
In the second bit she asks, partition anyone?
Has Malmesbury and Soup Dragon ever been seen in same room together?
Of course, Many a politician has been immersed in worse shit and come up smelling of roses.
Many pundits & commentators thought Thatcher would not survive the Westland affair.
Not merely did she, ... she won the General Election the following year convincingly.
Fair point but this is a very different media environment and an issue of more pressing import to people than helicopters
Hard to know, actually.
Sturgeon clearly survived extensive ... shall we say ... forgetfulness of what happened in the Salmond affair with no great difficulty earlier this year. The public can be surprisingly forgiving.
Whether Boris survives probably comes down to whether he wants to.
There may be more of a question mark as to whether the lazy slob actually wants to, given that he could earn much more as ex-PM
In fact, given that Wanker Clegg earns much more as ex-Deputy PM, it is surprising to me that anyone wants to be in Government for very long anymore.
A few things to note WRT Sturgeon however:
1. The whiff of scandal over the whole Salmond affair was uncomfortable and unpleasant, but it didn’t personally impact people in the same way as the perceived hypocrisy of the Covid rules did. The charge was essentially that there was a bit of a smoky room vibe about trying to “get” a fellow politician. Not edifying by any stretch of the imagination, but not personally impactful to people. It might have had more cut-through if Salmond was a popular king over the water who enjoyed more personal popularity than Sturgeon, but as it was he was seen as yesterday’s man at the time that this all blew up.
2. Sturgeons raison d’etre is independence. She will be backed by a large chunk of the population until she achieves that goal, or encounters a significant failure in trying to bring that about (eg a referendum loss). Boris’ raison d’etre for many was bringing about Brexit. He did. His personal story in some ways is already complete. Unless he can come up with another good reason why he should stick around and why those supporters should continue to vote for him. At the moment that’s fear of nurse in voting for Labour (Labour are currently making inroads in trying to correct that, but there’s more to do) and the levelling up agenda. Which is not going great places at the moment.
Yes, although I don't see Johnson going before the election, neither do I see him as a 10 year PM. To sustain a long premiership you need a vision of what you want to do with it (for the country not yourself) and you need the grip and focus to push that forward and through. Johnson lacks these things entirely. He has no vision and no grip.
“Corlett said a change was needed. “Choosing not to tax this huge housing wealth windfall . . . has real consequences, including higher taxes for workers and businesses.”
He’s right. Time to tax property, properly.
It is but at the same time a political graveyard for any party threatened taxes on individual peoples homes
What did they expect?
1) Pour money into the economy. 2) Declare house price inflation the right kind of inflation. 3) Have population rising at the rate of a small city per year. 4) Blocking the construction of homes to keep up with population growth
True. But at the same time, that wealth is illiquid. Taxing it 'properly' would force a lot of people not only out of their homes but out of their localities, just because they happened to be somewhere that 'got lucky' (which undoubtedly wouldn't be how they saw it).
The only 'fair' ways to do it, IMO, are through inheritance tax and property sales taxes - in other words, when residency is changing anyway.
There is an argument for higher, more progressive council tax banding (and updating ratings), and I get that no-one has a right to live in a home they can't afford. But equally, should the govt be effectively actively evicting people? I don't think so.
Oh, also - stick up interest rates. That alone will bring prices down a bit.
Proportional property tax with fix Council Tax and Stamp Duty. Plus CGT on main dwellings.
Job done.
Yes. Job done.
Also election lost.
CGT on main dwellings looks lovely but creates a whole different set of issues.
Simply replacing Council Tax with something else fixes a lot of the issues but a rebranding and revaluation of council tax is such a brave decision the VOA / Treasury are petrified to even suggest it.
If you put CGT on houses, then you would have to create a roll-over relief system to make it work, so if the proceeds are put into another house, the gain is calculated, but not payable until the proceeds are actually converted into cash.
Hello Inheritance tax part 2 (yes I know it also impacts pensioners moving to smaller properties but that's their children's inheritance being taxed away).
Agree with the possible lost election, however we have to take the biggest distortions out of the market if this is going to get fixed. And we have to make a start.
And since everyone seems to hate anything being built, we need also to use stock more efficiently. And that means overhwelmingly in the OO sector.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
You cannot negotiate with the virus; and no-one has any idea what actions will lead to what level of deaths. All we can say - roughly - is certain actions - e.g. masks, wfh, vax - *reduces* infections and deaths. But we have no ides what the baseline of deaths will be for non-action, especially with Omicron.
Yes I get that but the lost years of restrictions needs to be put into the machine. It is not just stop deaths from Covid with nothing on the other side of the ledger.
If you took all regulations and restrictions away tomorrow I would say there would be around 10-20% mask wearing, for example. I believe the overwhelming majority of people want as normal a life as possible. If this is close to being accurate then a democratically-elected government must create a society that fulfils this desire.
We get n thousand road deaths each year. A tiny amount vs Covid but nevertheless the government has come to an agreement about an acceptable level of road deaths.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
The point about road deaths is that the government takes lots of measures to attempt to reduce road deaths. It insists that people are properly trained to drive a car and have a licence certifying that. It insists that cars are tested regularly to prove they are roadworthy. It enforces speed limits on roads - despite vocal opposition - seat belts, car design standards, etc. However, all of these interventions are deemed to have little or no damaging impact on people's ability to go about their normal daily business.
The government does not, for example, restrict the number of cars sold, or introduce a scheme whereby only half of cars can be driven on any one day, in an attempt to reduce the number of cars in use and slow down the rate of car deaths, because these measures would have a massive disruptive effect on many people's daily lives.
I'm sure that there is a lot that the government can do to reduce Covid deaths that does not involve interfering with people's daily lives, and my guess is that such measures should be sufficient to keep the NHS functioning over the winter. However, it seems that many voters want the reassurance of being restricted, so that they have a sense that the government is on top of things.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
One reference point as to how inured we've become to Covid. The estimated actual global death toll from Covid is around 20m. That would be 2m more than died in World War I - in half the time.
From a British only perspective, Covid is running at ~1/3rd of battlefield casualties, leaving civilians alone.
I'm sure this makes me a monster, but I feel a much greater sense of loss for 20 year old soldiers than covid deaths with a median age of 82, if we want the full perspective, however.
I think you're mixing up world wars there?
Ahh apologies. Regardless point stands, I really think any comparison between war deaths and covid deaths falls down on the massive disparity in actual years of life lost per death.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
You cannot negotiate with the virus; and no-one has any idea what actions will lead to what level of deaths. All we can say - roughly - is certain actions - e.g. masks, wfh, vax - *reduces* infections and deaths. But we have no ides what the baseline of deaths will be for non-action, especially with Omicron.
Yes I get that but the lost years of restrictions needs to be put into the machine. It is not just stop deaths from Covid with nothing on the other side of the ledger.
If you took all regulations and restrictions away tomorrow I would say there would be around 10-20% mask wearing, for example. I believe the overwhelming majority of people want as normal a life as possible. If this is close to being accurate then a democratically-elected government must create a society that fulfils this desire.
We get n thousand road deaths each year. A tiny amount vs Covid but nevertheless the government has come to an agreement about an acceptable level of road deaths.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
The point about road deaths is that the government takes lots of measures to attempt to reduce road deaths. It insists that people are properly trained to drive a car and have a licence certifying that. It insists that cars are tested regularly to prove they are roadworthy. It enforces speed limits on roads - despite vocal opposition - seat belts, car design standards, etc. However, all of these interventions are deemed to have little or no damaging impact on people's ability to go about their normal daily business.
The government does not, for example, restrict the number of cars sold, or introduce a scheme whereby only half of cars can be driven on any one day, in an attempt to reduce the number of cars in use and slow down the rate of car deaths, because these measures would have a massive disruptive effect on many people's daily lives.
I'm sure that there is a lot that the government can do to reduce Covid deaths that does not involve interfering with people's daily lives, and my guess is that such measures should be sufficient to keep the NHS functioning over the winter. However, it seems that many voters want the reassurance of being restricted, so that they have a sense that the government is on top of things.
Yes I think this is right. It is too sweeping to say that the public has been beaten down to the point whereby resistance is non-existent, but it is certainly the case that people seem to welcome decisions being made for them. If anyone thinks this has been costless in terms of the nation's mental health then they are dreaming.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Good to see you understand as much about Ukraine as about Wales -- a county on which you have repeatedly made disastrous predictions about a LibDem revival on pb.com.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russia will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
One reference point as to how inured we've become to Covid. The estimated actual global death toll from Covid is around 20m. That would be 2m more than died in World War I - in half the time.
The world / European population (heck even the UK population) is a lot higher now then in 1914. So the figures are higher but the percentage of population way lower.
It is (though the UK / European populations haven't grown by *that* much over the last 100 years). Still, I find the comparison pretty striking.
Of course, Many a politician has been immersed in worse shit and come up smelling of roses.
Many pundits & commentators thought Thatcher would not survive the Westland affair.
Not merely did she, ... she won the General Election the following year convincingly.
Yes he will just disappear from public life for a few weeks, paternity leave, xmas, new year, then pick a fight with Macron in January which will boost them both and bring back the fan boys into the fold.
I can't see the party junking him unless and until the polls show clearly that he's become a liability (cf to a realistic alternative) in the sort of seats where the next GE will be decided. We're miles off that (although it could happen quickly of course) and so although I hope he goes and goes soon, my betting view is this is a good time to back him to still be PM at next years Tory Party conference. 1.5 is value imo.
I'd wait for next week's polls.
Yep. But for value you sometimes have to go in while it's foggy. Only done a modest bet though.
PS: Your post the other day about LH and Spoty. I can see that happening. If he wins in a dramatic climax it'll be fresh in the mind for the Spoty vote. My main Peaty play sank without trace (since he failed to set Strictly on fire) but I do have a small amount on Lewis at a very big price. Likely be Emma though. Quite a surprise if not.
Sarah Hurst @Life_Disrupted · 2h People who can't afford wallpaper shouldn't keep having children.
I don’t understand the appeal of wallpaper.
There. Do I win the award for the most inane comment in the history of PB?
It's a high bar. I'm not sure you came close.
It's also an intelligent comment in another sense. A sane and responsible person would have decorated the flat minimally and furnished it plainly - maybe John Lewis but no higher than that (albeit within conservation regs). Not quite private squalor but certainly functional, to contrast with the public grandeur in the rest of the building. Very foolish to do otherwise.
Of course, Many a politician has been immersed in worse shit and come up smelling of roses.
Many pundits & commentators thought Thatcher would not survive the Westland affair.
Not merely did she, ... she won the General Election the following year convincingly.
Fair point but this is a very different media environment and an issue of more pressing import to people than helicopters
Hard to know, actually.
Sturgeon clearly survived extensive ... shall we say ... forgetfulness of what happened in the Salmond affair with no great difficulty earlier this year. The public can be surprisingly forgiving.
Whether Boris survives probably comes down to whether he wants to.
There may be more of a question mark as to whether the lazy slob actually wants to, given that he could earn much more as ex-PM
In fact, given that Wanker Clegg earns much more as ex-Deputy PM, it is surprising to me that anyone wants to be in Government for very long anymore.
A few things to note WRT Sturgeon however:
1. The whiff of scandal over the whole Salmond affair was uncomfortable and unpleasant, but it didn’t personally impact people in the same way as the perceived hypocrisy of the Covid rules did. The charge was essentially that there was a bit of a smoky room vibe about trying to “get” a fellow politician. Not edifying by any stretch of the imagination, but not personally impactful to people. It might have had more cut-through if Salmond was a popular king over the water who enjoyed more personal popularity than Sturgeon, but as it was he was seen as yesterday’s man at the time that this all blew up.
2. Sturgeons raison d’etre is independence. She will be backed by a large chunk of the population until she achieves that goal, or encounters a significant failure in trying to bring that about (eg a referendum loss). Boris’ raison d’etre for many was bringing about Brexit. He did. His personal story in some ways is already complete. Unless he can come up with another good reason why he should stick around and why those supporters should continue to vote for him. At the moment that’s fear of nurse in voting for Labour (Labour are currently making inroads in trying to correct that, but there’s more to do) and the levelling up agenda. Which is not going great places at the moment.
Also WRT Sturgeon, it was spun as Salmond versus Sturgeon. Who do you support/believe?
Therefore it was always going to be a Nicola slam-dunk. Salmond is even more unpopular than Boris in Scotland. That's why Salmond's Alba party, sank in the May elections.
There's obviously the back-story of who knew what when etc., and the general unbelievability of Nicola's claims to know nothing of Salmond's modus operandi until years after everyone else knew, but all that stuff got swept away in the Shakespearian drama.
Can I speak out in support of @Philip_Thompson for a minute. I am hardly his biggest fan and I'm sure its mutual. He is always happy to repeatedly double down with his positions - so often from a place of having minimal experience / knowledge. I assume he would be an amazing poker player with that level of bluffing.
I assume he has been put in at least time out for going all in on misquoting OGH to win a battle with @DougSeal over something irrelevant. He loves his strawmen argument and YES OR NO ultimatums. But despite me finding his "people die so what" argument to be awful he isn't abusive or stupid or dull.
We need him on this site.
I’m more worried about what he’s going to do with his days while he’s banned.
Hope that Max Verstappen wins the F1 championship cleanly this weekend, which will almost certainly settle the SPoTY bet I have with him, in his favour.
Nice deadpan. I've backed Hamilton for SPOTY, and laid him for the F1 win in the amount of the stake. A neatish arbitrage ?
Ish. The worry (from a betting perspective) would be a crash-out “victory” for MV, that leads to a massive outpouring of support for Lewis over the next week.
What happens, points-wise, if they take each other out?
MV wins the championship, as he has one more win than LH - the race that never was, in Belgium.
The worry is, that MV now has an incentive to do just that.
Not quite
"Formula 1 race director Michael Masi has reminded teams and drivers that any unsporting conduct at the Abu Dhabi season finale could result in a championship points deduction."
Welcome to PB, but forgive my lack of trust in the FIA to actually switch the championship winner with a penalty, if push came to shove, came to crash.
Sounds like this could end up with Court of Arbitration for Sport sometime in 2022......
Yep! Companies like Daimler don’t invest billions in an F1 programme, expecting it to turn into WWE wrestling, where “The Show” becomes more important than the sporting integrity of the competition.
“Corlett said a change was needed. “Choosing not to tax this huge housing wealth windfall . . . has real consequences, including higher taxes for workers and businesses.”
He’s right. Time to tax property, properly.
It is but at the same time a political graveyard for any party threatened taxes on individual peoples homes
What did they expect?
1) Pour money into the economy. 2) Declare house price inflation the right kind of inflation. 3) Have population rising at the rate of a small city per year. 4) Blocking the construction of homes to keep up with population growth
True. But at the same time, that wealth is illiquid. Taxing it 'properly' would force a lot of people not only out of their homes but out of their localities, just because they happened to be somewhere that 'got lucky' (which undoubtedly wouldn't be how they saw it).
The only 'fair' ways to do it, IMO, are through inheritance tax and property sales taxes - in other words, when residency is changing anyway.
There is an argument for higher, more progressive council tax banding (and updating ratings), and I get that no-one has a right to live in a home they can't afford. But equally, should the govt be effectively actively evicting people? I don't think so.
Oh, also - stick up interest rates. That alone will bring prices down a bit.
Proportional property tax with fix Council Tax and Stamp Duty. Plus CGT on main dwellings.
Job done.
Yes. Job done.
Also election lost.
I have an idea...
Take the increase in population each year (estimated). Distribute the numbers around the country - each council is on the hook to produce X new homes - either private development or whatever.
IF they want to be nimbies - they can *buy* house credits for houses built by councils in other areas. Bit like Carbon Credits. So a council that builds above the quota can sell the excess to those below quota.
We've been doing that - the problem is that the estimates forgot the X million eastern Europeans who have live down South.
I'm talking about an enforced system - which we definitely haven't been doing.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Good to see you understand as much about Ukraine as about Wales -- a county on which you have repeatedly made disastrous predictions about a LibDem revival on pb.com.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russian will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
I don't think this is that straightforward.
In the last 100 years Russian / Soviet governments have on several occasions arranged the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Plus all forced relocations of populations, imposition of new minorities (a strategy also used by China).
I don't see Ukraine caving easily. And I wonder whether in the end the Russian population would choose to be in advanced, rich democracy rather than Putin's penumbra of failed states around Russia?
Are there similar examples in countries further down the road eg the Baltics?
I'd posit certain similarities to the China / Taiwan situation. Ukraine needs to be impossible for Russia to invade, ultimately.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
Former colleague of mine has just shared with me his email to his newly-elected red wall Tory MP. Points out that as a floating voter who has voted LibDem, Labour and Tory he sees the PM and his government as "Corrupt, guilty of significant cronyism, dishonest, inept, lazy, elitist, populist and amoral." Suggests that he won't be the only first time Tory voter making the same comments so "Its time for Boris and his team to go. Please make it happen".
Remember that my friend is the exact kind of Tory voter and Mark Eastwood the exact kind of Tory MP that HYUFD thinks we should ignore because they aren't proper Tories.
Mr. Rabbit, consistency would be the counter-argument.
Hamilton got a 10s time penalty for taking out Verstappen in Silverstone, which saw the Dutchman get 0 points and Hamilton still claim 25.
I don't for a moment think that was vindictive on Hamilton's part but his car was in a fundamentally different place to that when he passed Leclerc at the same track section later in the race.
Omicron: was that the name of the villain in The Three Doctors special of Doctor Who? Edited extra bit: i think it was him or Omega.
Look at the massive inconsistency between the Silverstone incident, and the Brazil incident where the man on the inside went all the way off the track.
“Corlett said a change was needed. “Choosing not to tax this huge housing wealth windfall . . . has real consequences, including higher taxes for workers and businesses.”
He’s right. Time to tax property, properly.
It is but at the same time a political graveyard for any party threatened taxes on individual peoples homes
What did they expect?
1) Pour money into the economy. 2) Declare house price inflation the right kind of inflation. 3) Have population rising at the rate of a small city per year. 4) Blocking the construction of homes to keep up with population growth
True. But at the same time, that wealth is illiquid. Taxing it 'properly' would force a lot of people not only out of their homes but out of their localities, just because they happened to be somewhere that 'got lucky' (which undoubtedly wouldn't be how they saw it).
The only 'fair' ways to do it, IMO, are through inheritance tax and property sales taxes - in other words, when residency is changing anyway.
There is an argument for higher, more progressive council tax banding (and updating ratings), and I get that no-one has a right to live in a home they can't afford. But equally, should the govt be effectively actively evicting people? I don't think so.
Oh, also - stick up interest rates. That alone will bring prices down a bit.
Proportional property tax with fix Council Tax and Stamp Duty. Plus CGT on main dwellings.
Job done.
Yes. Job done.
Also election lost.
I have an idea...
Take the increase in population each year (estimated). Distribute the numbers around the country - each council is on the hook to produce X new homes - either private development or whatever.
IF they want to be nimbies - they can *buy* house credits for houses built by councils in other areas. Bit like Carbon Credits. So a council that builds above the quota can sell the excess to those below quota.
We've been doing that - the problem is that the estimates forgot the X million eastern Europeans who have live down South.
I'm talking about an enforced system - which we definitely haven't been doing.
All authorities have a responsibility to build a specified number of houses and if they fail to meet that target permission for housing is virtually an automatic right (provided it's not green belt). So I don't think the issue is where you think it is.
The issue is that we have a target for X0,000 homes a year and it probably should be X00,000 a year...
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
Italian doctors always come to mind when I see medics panicing. Based on their reports Covid was an indiscriminate disease attacking young and old alike.
Sometimes being on the front line can actually give you a far worse perspective than hiding behind a keyboard looking at the stats.
Of all the hills to die on I’m not sure why @Philip_Thompson chose a pedant off with me that essentially revolved around a definition of “2008”. I hate to back down as much as the next man but even I have limits…
I think that is good point. If you don’t have some sort of limit, draw a line somewhere, you can have neither liberty or freedom, just chaos and anarchy. So to be fair to old Mr Smithson who Philip slandered, and young Mr Smithson and other admins, they do run a very very tolerant and liberal blog, you probably forget how you can say any naughty word here without it automatically changed for you, or you won’t get banned if not woke enough.
Did Philip Thompson ever explain how his little boat was flying the cross of St George to tell everyone he was good Christian guy not bad pirate, with a pirate flag telling the world he was a greedy cut throat mercenary, both at the same time?
PS it was very funny when he called the reform party loonies! I cut and pasted the reform manifesto and he admitted he agreed in nearly every word of it. 🤦♀️
Even real loonies would have observed that exchange and shook their heads. Lol
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Yes that is true. Poll after poll has shown exactly that. And yes - and witness Lab's lock 'em down harder approach just now - it puts politicians into a bind.
But I still think this is more of a should we tax people more type question whereby we all know at what point the income/wealth threshold should start and it ain't with the survey respondent.
I still hold that were, say, masks not mandatory there would be 10-20% compliance at best. It was down to 5-10% for example on the tube pre-omicron and they were mandatory there according to TfL. And actions speak louder than words.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Good to see you understand as much about Ukraine as about Wales -- a county on which you have repeatedly made disastrous predictions about a LibDem revival on pb.com.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russian will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
I don't think this is that straightforward.
In the last 100 years Russian / Soviet governments have on several occasions arranged the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Plus all forced relocations of populations, imposition of new minorities (a strategy also used by China).
I don't see Ukraine caving easily. And I wonder whether in the end the Russian population would choose to be in advanced, rich democracy rather than Putin's penumbra of failed states around Russia?
Are there similar examples in countries further down the road eg the Baltics?
I'd posit certain similarities to the China / Taiwan situation. Ukraine needs to be impossible for Russia to invade, ultimately.
It is certainly complex. There are a considerable number of people living in Ukraine who consider themselves "Russian" to some extent. The question is what that means - "Russian" as in the sense of having Russian culture, language etc, but wanting to be a citizen of Ukraine, or "Russian" as in the sense of wanting to be part of the Homeland?
Will make it close to impossible for winning punters.
On one level that is absolutely essential to protect problem gamblers but it's going to open up as you say a complete set of other issues.
Alongside that we do need a rule which says that no one can be barred or have limited stakes imposed (except for protection reasons).
Is this something that Aaron Bell, née @Tissue_Price could take up?
As long as no one is cheating, winning punters should not be restricted by bookmakers as part of the terms of their licence. Paddypower have restricted me to trivial stakes even though I am only modestly a winner on their political bets. It isn't my fault that they mispriced Scottish seats in 2015!
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
You cannot negotiate with the virus; and no-one has any idea what actions will lead to what level of deaths. All we can say - roughly - is certain actions - e.g. masks, wfh, vax - *reduces* infections and deaths. But we have no ides what the baseline of deaths will be for non-action, especially with Omicron.
Yes I get that but the lost years of restrictions needs to be put into the machine. It is not just stop deaths from Covid with nothing on the other side of the ledger.
If you took all regulations and restrictions away tomorrow I would say there would be around 10-20% mask wearing, for example. I believe the overwhelming majority of people want as normal a life as possible. If this is close to being accurate then a democratically-elected government must create a society that fulfils this desire.
We get n thousand road deaths each year. A tiny amount vs Covid but nevertheless the government has come to an agreement about an acceptable level of road deaths.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
Of course people want as normal a life as possible. But most people are sensible enough to understand that it isn't always possible.
You are also going down a very deep and dangerous rabbit hole. Yes, we get lots of road deaths each year. We also invest heavily to try to reduce that figure, including bringing in legislation and laws that restrict what we can do in our cars - such as the use of mobile phones.
Mr. Sandpit, while I do think Hamilton should've gotten a more severe penalty, the problem they established then was first of all a race-ending collision can be just a 10s penalty, but also the divorce of the action from the consequence.
You might argue that's fair enough, which is a valid view, but now the FIA are actively stating they might deduct points (to alter who wins the title) based on the action. Which inherently links it to the consequence.
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
I’m not opening the Dom Perignon yet. But maybe a nice Chablis with my oysters
Tomorrow the news could be grim, again
Paradoxically, if OMICRON THE MEH is super infectious but seriously mild then it could be the best thing to happen to the advanced world as it struggles with Delta. Let omicron take over ASAP
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Indeed. The liberals here on PB and on the backbenches are seriously out of whack with public opinion.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Good to see you understand as much about Ukraine as about Wales -- a county on which you have repeatedly made disastrous predictions about a LibDem revival on pb.com.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russian will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
I don't think this is that straightforward.
In the last 100 years Russian / Soviet governments have on several occasions arranged the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Plus all forced relocations of populations, imposition of new minorities (a strategy also used by China).
I don't see Ukraine caving easily. And I wonder whether in the end the Russian population would choose to be in advanced, rich democracy rather than Putin's penumbra of failed states around Russia?
Are there similar examples in countries further down the road eg the Baltics?
I'd posit certain similarities to the China / Taiwan situation. Ukraine needs to be impossible for Russia to invade, ultimately.
It is certainly complex. There are a considerable number of people living in Ukraine who consider themselves "Russian" to some extent. The question is what that means - "Russian" as in the sense of having Russian culture, language etc, but wanting to be a citizen of Ukraine, or "Russian" as in the sense of wanting to be part of the Homeland?
What is now very clear is that most Russian speakers in Ukraine do not want to be part of Putin´s empire. Indeed they have been prepared to die rather than accept the Russian invasion.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
You cannot negotiate with the virus; and no-one has any idea what actions will lead to what level of deaths. All we can say - roughly - is certain actions - e.g. masks, wfh, vax - *reduces* infections and deaths. But we have no ides what the baseline of deaths will be for non-action, especially with Omicron.
Yes I get that but the lost years of restrictions needs to be put into the machine. It is not just stop deaths from Covid with nothing on the other side of the ledger.
If you took all regulations and restrictions away tomorrow I would say there would be around 10-20% mask wearing, for example. I believe the overwhelming majority of people want as normal a life as possible. If this is close to being accurate then a democratically-elected government must create a society that fulfils this desire.
We get n thousand road deaths each year. A tiny amount vs Covid but nevertheless the government has come to an agreement about an acceptable level of road deaths.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
Of course people want as normal a life as possible. But most people are sensible enough to understand that it isn't always possible.
You are also going down a very deep and dangerous rabbit hole. Yes, we get lots of road deaths each year. We also invest heavily to try to reduce that figure, including bringing in legislation and laws that restrict what we can do in our cars - such as the use of mobile phones.
It's also a terrible analogy. Five people a day die on our roads. 161 died of Covid yesterday alone. Well over an order of magnitude higher.
Look at peoples' actions. Pre-omicron, so still 40-50,000 cases and 100+ deaths per day there was around 10% mask wearing compliance on the tube. That shows that people accept Covid (as was).
30,000 people per year die of "flu & pneumonia". That, assuming, say, an 8-month season, is 125 deaths per day.
I don't remember (m)any heated PB debates, nor any restrictions on liberty, for flu & pneumonia.
Sarah Hurst @Life_Disrupted · 2h People who can't afford wallpaper shouldn't keep having children.
I don’t understand the appeal of wallpaper.
There. Do I win the award for the most inane comment in the history of PB?
It's a high bar. I'm not sure you came close.
It's also an intelligent comment in another sense. A sane and responsible person would have decorated the flat minimally and furnished it plainly - maybe John Lewis but no higher than that (albeit within conservation regs). Not quite private squalor but certainly functional, to contrast with the public grandeur in the rest of the building. Very foolish to do otherwise.
Plus. Wallpaper is fundamentally, highly impractical compared with the alternative.
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
I’m not opening the Dom Perignon yet. But maybe a nice Chablis with my oysters
Tomorrow the news could be grim, again
Paradoxically, if OMICRON THE MEH is super infectious but seriously mild then it could be the best thing to happen to the advanced world as it struggles with Delta. Let omicron take over ASAP
Forgive my ignorance of virology, but are we sure that omicron is definitely outcompeting the other variants? Could it be the case that they transmit/infect simultaneously/independently?
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
It is also a fact which seems to mysteriously elude some very intelligent and informed posters when they post on the subject.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Indeed. The liberals here on PB and on the backbenches are seriously out of whack with public opinion.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Indeed. The liberals here on PB and on the backbenches are seriously out of whack with public opinion.
70% of people favour raising taxes on "higher earning Britons"
It's almost an exact parallel given the yougov polls split by age pretty consistently show the lockdown majorities come from demographics far less likely to have a social life. Revealed preference is clear people are far more worried about other people having freedom than they are about exercising it for themselves.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Indeed. The liberals here on PB and on the backbenches are seriously out of whack with public opinion.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Good to see you understand as much about Ukraine as about Wales -- a county on which you have repeatedly made disastrous predictions about a LibDem revival on pb.com.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russian will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
I don't think this is that straightforward.
In the last 100 years Russian / Soviet governments have on several occasions arranged the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Plus all forced relocations of populations, imposition of new minorities (a strategy also used by China).
I don't see Ukraine caving easily. And I wonder whether in the end the Russian population would choose to be in advanced, rich democracy rather than Putin's penumbra of failed states around Russia?
Are there similar examples in countries further down the road eg the Baltics?
I'd posit certain similarities to the China / Taiwan situation. Ukraine needs to be impossible for Russia to invade, ultimately.
It is certainly complex. There are a considerable number of people living in Ukraine who consider themselves "Russian" to some extent. The question is what that means - "Russian" as in the sense of having Russian culture, language etc, but wanting to be a citizen of Ukraine, or "Russian" as in the sense of wanting to be part of the Homeland?
What is now very clear is that most Russian speakers in Ukraine do not want to be part of Putin´s empire. Indeed they have been prepared to die rather than accept the Russian invasion.
What is the actual evidence for that? Do we have reliable polling among the various groupings in Ukraine?
EDIT: Yes, a number have joined various groups, including the Ukrainian Army to oppose Putin. But the number that have done that relative to the population is small. After all, the number of people in all the militias, Ukrainian Army etc is small compared to the overall population of Ukraine.
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
I’m not opening the Dom Perignon yet. But maybe a nice Chablis with my oysters
Tomorrow the news could be grim, again
Paradoxically, if OMICRON THE MEH is super infectious but seriously mild then it could be the best thing to happen to the advanced world as it struggles with Delta. Let omicron take over ASAP
Forgive my ignorance of virology, but are we sure that omicron is definitely outcompeting the other variants? Could it be the case that they transmit/infect simultaneously/independently?
Genuine question.
Does anyone know?
The orthodox view seems to be that it isn't inheritantly more transmissible, but the immunity evasion advantage means it can venture where other variants fear to tread.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Good to see you understand as much about Ukraine as about Wales -- a county on which you have repeatedly made disastrous predictions about a LibDem revival on pb.com.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russia will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
I have spent my whole academic and working life in CEE. You clearly have not. I just spent 2 days at a high level diplomatic conference with a group of acknowledged experts in the field. Don´t think I saw you there.
A Russian Plebiscite??? The Jeffersonian democracy that is Putin´s Russia will give a fair vote... Um, No.
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
I’m not opening the Dom Perignon yet. But maybe a nice Chablis with my oysters
Tomorrow the news could be grim, again
Paradoxically, if OMICRON THE MEH is super infectious but seriously mild then it could be the best thing to happen to the advanced world as it struggles with Delta. Let omicron take over ASAP
Forgive my ignorance of virology, but are we sure that omicron is definitely outcompeting the other variants? Could it be the case that they transmit/infect simultaneously/independently?
Genuine question.
Does anyone know?
Its a bit of both. Omicron can be spreading at the same time that delta is - they are both finding new people to infect. Possibly reinfect. However one is likely spreading faster (omicron) and so the relative amounts of omicron are growing (seen in the data, following the S-gene drop our in PCR testing). Where reinfection is rare, and vaccination is good at avoiding infection, the virus(es) will run out of hosts eventually, and as that happens the one with the advantage will 'win' - more and more will be omicron. \ BUT - if reinfection keeps going, then delta can keep going too. I suspect that reinfection, while more than previously, is still not going to be huge, so ultimately the wave of omicron infection will subside, as all waves do, leaving behind a significantly more resilient population. BUT (no 2) resistance to reinfection will wane with time. Hence boosters.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Good to see you understand as much about Ukraine as about Wales -- a county on which you have repeatedly made disastrous predictions about a LibDem revival on pb.com.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russian will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
I don't think this is that straightforward.
In the last 100 years Russian / Soviet governments have on several occasions arranged the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Plus all forced relocations of populations, imposition of new minorities (a strategy also used by China).
I don't see Ukraine caving easily. And I wonder whether in the end the Russian population would choose to be in advanced, rich democracy rather than Putin's penumbra of failed states around Russia?
Are there similar examples in countries further down the road eg the Baltics?
I'd posit certain similarities to the China / Taiwan situation. Ukraine needs to be impossible for Russia to invade, ultimately.
I think there is a very strong Ukrainian identity in the West of the Ukraine. They will certainly fight.
But, the very Eastern part of the Ukraine -- I think Russia will take that and keep it as easily as they took the Crimea.
In the last 100 years Russian Soviet governments have on several occasions arranged the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Ukrainian nationalists do not have that much to be proud of either.
The role of Ukrainian nationalists in the Second World War and after was highly discreditable. The Ukrainian police, working for the Germans, played a crucial role in the liquidation of hundreds of thousands of Jews. There was also extensive ethnic cleansing of Poles from shared areas in Galicia.
And I wonder whether in the end the Russian population would choose to be in advanced, rich democracy rather than Putin's penumbra of failed states around Russia?
Well, the Russian population in the Crimea seem to have rejected this option of an "advanced, rich democracy" as opposed to Putin's penumbra.
In an ethnic fight, most people make their choice on ethnic grounds.
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
I’m not opening the Dom Perignon yet. But maybe a nice Chablis with my oysters
Tomorrow the news could be grim, again
Paradoxically, if OMICRON THE MEH is super infectious but seriously mild then it could be the best thing to happen to the advanced world as it struggles with Delta. Let omicron take over ASAP
Forgive my ignorance of virology, but are we sure that omicron is definitely outcompeting the other variants? Could it be the case that they transmit/infect simultaneously/independently?
Genuine question.
Does anyone know?
Good question. The variants do seem to replace each other according to The R but is that an iron law always?
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Indeed. The liberals here on PB and on the backbenches are seriously out of whack with public opinion.
If OMICRON THE BARGAINER offered you a deal, would you take it?
ie how many deaths would be acceptable, if OMICRON THE MERCIFUL BUT CRUEL then brought Covid to an end as a pandemic, and it was tamed into a new flu?
I reckon I'd take 100,000 UK deaths this winter. Easy. 100,000 morbidly obese, stupidly antivax, very very old, sorry guys - bye. The rest of us get our lives back
In fact if OMICRON THE TRUTHFUL swore blind that he'd stop fucking us over, and turn into a cold by May, forever and ever, I might accept 500,000 deaths. Pretty steep, but there ya go. A million just seems too callous.
I'm guessing there is an olive left and that's all in the first martini but you are mixing/have ordered the second. Amiright?
Entirely sober. I reckon this is a cold calculation we are all quietly making. The bargaining stage
OK one more winter, take 200,000, I can cope, then just go away
We can endure a lot of pain, and a lot of death, and a lot of lockdown, what we cannot endure is that it might never stop. That this is it, forever. That is intolerable. So we make little mental bargains to get us thru the days
It's precisely those bargains that the government needs to make and let us know what they have decided. We are coming up to two years now and this might last a few more years. The public should be asked their views on this and also for extra funding for the NHS if that is what it will take for the NHS to be "protected" regardless of this or that virus.
Oh and what on earth are you doing sober? It's past one o'clock.
You cannot negotiate with the virus; and no-one has any idea what actions will lead to what level of deaths. All we can say - roughly - is certain actions - e.g. masks, wfh, vax - *reduces* infections and deaths. But we have no ides what the baseline of deaths will be for non-action, especially with Omicron.
Yes I get that but the lost years of restrictions needs to be put into the machine. It is not just stop deaths from Covid with nothing on the other side of the ledger.
If you took all regulations and restrictions away tomorrow I would say there would be around 10-20% mask wearing, for example. I believe the overwhelming majority of people want as normal a life as possible. If this is close to being accurate then a democratically-elected government must create a society that fulfils this desire.
We get n thousand road deaths each year. A tiny amount vs Covid but nevertheless the government has come to an agreement about an acceptable level of road deaths.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
Of course people want as normal a life as possible. But most people are sensible enough to understand that it isn't always possible.
You are also going down a very deep and dangerous rabbit hole. Yes, we get lots of road deaths each year. We also invest heavily to try to reduce that figure, including bringing in legislation and laws that restrict what we can do in our cars - such as the use of mobile phones.
It's also a terrible analogy. Five people a day die on our roads. 161 died of Covid yesterday alone. Well over an order of magnitude higher.
It isn't entirely. It is only because of such measures that so few die on our roads. (I recall reading more Americans died in RTA's than in Vietnam during that period). 50 + years of legislation, research, education and technological advances have led us to this point. For COVID we are still under 2 years.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Indeed. The liberals here on PB and on the backbenches are seriously out of whack with public opinion.
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
I’m not opening the Dom Perignon yet. But maybe a nice Chablis with my oysters
Tomorrow the news could be grim, again
Paradoxically, if OMICRON THE MEH is super infectious but seriously mild then it could be the best thing to happen to the advanced world as it struggles with Delta. Let omicron take over ASAP
As some of us have said from the start. It would be the best case scenario.
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
The most telling thing I have seen from SA was the Doctor in Gauteng interviewed yesterday. It was not so much what she had to say but how she looked. She was very calm relaxed and happy. Compare and contrast to Javid two weeks ago before much was known about Omicron. (And Italian Doctors in Late Feb 2020)
I’m not opening the Dom Perignon yet. But maybe a nice Chablis with my oysters
Tomorrow the news could be grim, again
Paradoxically, if OMICRON THE MEH is super infectious but seriously mild then it could be the best thing to happen to the advanced world as it struggles with Delta. Let omicron take over ASAP
Forgive my ignorance of virology, but are we sure that omicron is definitely outcompeting the other variants? Could it be the case that they transmit/infect simultaneously/independently?
Genuine question.
Does anyone know?
Good question. The variants do seem to replace each other according to The R but is that an iron law always?
See my post - it depends a bit on levels of reinfection. Up to now reinfection has been pretty small - that may not be the case with omicron. Time will tell.
Sarah Hurst @Life_Disrupted · 2h People who can't afford wallpaper shouldn't keep having children.
I don’t understand the appeal of wallpaper.
There. Do I win the award for the most inane comment in the history of PB?
It's a high bar. I'm not sure you came close.
It's also an intelligent comment in another sense. A sane and responsible person would have decorated the flat minimally and furnished it plainly - maybe John Lewis but no higher than that (albeit within conservation regs). Not quite private squalor but certainly functional, to contrast with the public grandeur in the rest of the building. Very foolish to do otherwise.
Plus. Wallpaper is fundamentally, highly impractical compared with the alternative.
My great uncle used to wallpaper and then add a coat of satin varnish or polyurethane. He was an interesting character.
In the first bit She says we take a lesson from Crimea War. It may not register with us where Russians feel their Slav kinsfolk, Eastern Orthodox Russian speakers are under threat of being marginalised, so we have to try to get into the mindset of a patriotic Russian Slav (she doesn’t say how we do do that, and the next bit I can only translate as Pair Ron with his Hammer Out?) and that Ukraine is a bit of a ethno mess from the days of grand Lithuanian empire, that was very Catholic like the poles, its current border with Russia might actually be in wrong place for ongoing peace and happiness.
In the second bit she asks, partition anyone?
Has Malmesbury and Soup Dragon ever been seen in same room together?
Ha.
Ukraine is a concept, like Poland, that has been wheeled backwards and forwards across that part of Europe.
I had ancestors there and the joke goes - lived in Russia, Ukraine, Poland etc etc. Without having left the village....
If you want an "ethnically pure state".... IKARRRRRRAAAAAA!
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Indeed. The liberals here on PB and on the backbenches are seriously out of whack with public opinion.
True. Also, the public is wrong.
Quite, and, in aggregate, they're holding the opinions they're conditioned to hold. At some point the people who orchestrated that need to help them move to more sustainable opinions.
Mr. Sandpit, while I do think Hamilton should've gotten a more severe penalty, the problem they established then was first of all a race-ending collision can be just a 10s penalty, but also the divorce of the action from the consequence.
You might argue that's fair enough, which is a valid view, but now the FIA are actively stating they might deduct points (to alter who wins the title) based on the action. Which inherently links it to the consequence.
The whole point of the stewarding system, is to divorce the action from the consequence. It’s the action that is supposed to be punished or otherwise, not the outcome.
It’s stewarding on outcomes that’s causing the problem. The Brazil and Saudi incidents, leading to relatively lenient penalties, would have been much more controversial if they had resulted in more severe damage to the cars involved.
Even @Dura_Ace knows that he’d get a black flag for brake-testing an opponent in a single-seater. Drivers are supposed to grow out of that sort of thing as 8-year-olds in karts.
Sarah Hurst @Life_Disrupted · 2h People who can't afford wallpaper shouldn't keep having children.
I don’t understand the appeal of wallpaper.
There. Do I win the award for the most inane comment in the history of PB?
It's a high bar. I'm not sure you came close.
It's also an intelligent comment in another sense. A sane and responsible person would have decorated the flat minimally and furnished it plainly - maybe John Lewis but no higher than that (albeit within conservation regs). Not quite private squalor but certainly functional, to contrast with the public grandeur in the rest of the building. Very foolish to do otherwise.
Plus. Wallpaper is fundamentally, highly impractical compared with the alternative.
My great uncle used to wallpaper and then add a coat of satin varnish or polyurethane. He was an interesting character.
Polyurethane is the devil's urine. Goes off/yellow with time. But very hard to remove from many things.
The present boundaries of Ukraine were set by Stalin. It is the impossible country.
It would be better if Ukraine is dismembered with minimum loss of blood. But, one way or another, it will inevitably be dismembered.
Because no-one can put the House that Joe Built back together again.
Just as no-one could put the House that Tito Built back together again.
Complete nonsense. The Ethnolinguistic boundaries of Ukrainians were historically well beyond the Don, and in any event Russian speaking Ukrainians are just as loyal to Ukraine as Ukrainian speakers (and there is considerable code switching between the two languages as well as a common patois). Crimea was inhabited by large non Russian groups until 1941, including a large Tartar minority that Stalin sent en bloc to Siberia in one of his more egregious crimes. Russian claims on either Crimea or the Donbas have no legal basis at all. The Ukrainians, like the Czechs in 1938 are prepared to defend themselves, and the continuing aggression of Putin in Moldova, Georgia, and threats and claims against all his neighbours shows clearly that throwing away the legitimate defence of Ukrainian democratic sovereignty would not make any one safer.
Good to see you understand as much about Ukraine as about Wales -- a county on which you have repeatedly made disastrous predictions about a LibDem revival on pb.com.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russia will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
I have spent my whole academic and working life in CEE. You clearly have not. I just spent 2 days at a high level diplomatic conference with a group of acknowledged experts in the field. Don´t think I saw you there.
A Russian Plebiscite??? The Jeffersonian democracy that is Putin´s Russia will give a fair vote... Um, No.
If Labour opposed this nonsense the PM would be in even more trouble. But the lure of state control is just too arousing for the reds to resist.
They opposed the Nationality & Borders bill. That's a bigger litmus test of liberal credentials than positioning on temporary Covid rules for masks, WFH and vaccination status.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
But they do. Throughout the entire pandemic, poll after poll has shown the majority of the public to be more hawkish than the Government. One can welcome or deplore it, or argue that they would think differently if individually persuaded by this or that argument, but it's a fact, and one that puts politicians of all stripes in a difficult position.
Indeed. The liberals here on PB and on the backbenches are seriously out of whack with public opinion.
True. Also, the public is wrong.
Quite, and, in aggregate, they're holding the opinions they're conditioned to hold. At some point the people who orchestrated that need to help them move to more sustainable opinions.
Sarah Hurst @Life_Disrupted · 2h People who can't afford wallpaper shouldn't keep having children.
I don’t understand the appeal of wallpaper.
There. Do I win the award for the most inane comment in the history of PB?
It's a high bar. I'm not sure you came close.
It's also an intelligent comment in another sense. A sane and responsible person would have decorated the flat minimally and furnished it plainly - maybe John Lewis but no higher than that (albeit within conservation regs). Not quite private squalor but certainly functional, to contrast with the public grandeur in the rest of the building. Very foolish to do otherwise.
Plus. Wallpaper is fundamentally, highly impractical compared with the alternative.
My great uncle used to wallpaper and then add a coat of satin varnish or polyurethane. He was an interesting character.
Polyurethane is the devil's urine. Goes off/yellow with time. But very hard to remove from many things.
He also smoked so there was also nicotine colouration. Quite a house as I remember.
Comments
Look at below from the article regarding bookies sharing confidential records:
"Philp said that data watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office’s assessment that the approach could be implemented without violating data protection rules was a major step forward."
Fundamentally different place would be if he'd deliberately driven 5m off the side of the track, like, err, Max often does.
If you took all regulations and restrictions away tomorrow I would say there would be around 10-20% mask wearing, for example. I believe the overwhelming majority of people want as normal a life as possible. If this is close to being accurate then a democratically-elected government must create a society that fulfils this desire.
We get n thousand road deaths each year. A tiny amount vs Covid but nevertheless the government has come to an agreement about an acceptable level of road deaths.
If Covid would kill hundreds of thousands of people every year then the public would demand more measures. It doesn' t (yet) and so they don't.
Alongside that we do need a rule which says that no one can be barred or have limited stakes imposed (except for protection reasons).
Edit: it would be bloody funny if an oyster you ate killed you stone dead this afternoon.
Obviously not funny at all but at the same time bloody funny.
https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1468724349477732356?s=20
Consensus is that it's not quite what he said but it is what he meant. A million Covid infections a day, within three weeks.
Is that tenable?
He then disappeared from the site - temporarily I hope; we need his brainpower to increase the average intelligence level on here - but I will ask him again when he returns.
From the anecdotal evidence I’m seeing though, this has cut through in a much bigger way. It’s the anger that this has impacted them personally and they’ve made personal sacrifices whilst the government hasn’t followed the rules. It goes beyond the “oh it’s Boris being Boris” mindset.
We still have some colonial hangovers aiui, which is inevitable.
A touch like some French going "Mers el Kebir" therefore you are bastards, and some Irish going "Potato potato" therefore you are bastards, in debate
We should be cultivating English speaking in Francophone Africa.
Given it's a figure based on the utterly childish idea that a very small doubling time will be maintained through 8 or 9 doubling cycles without slowing down (more or less the basis for every single laughable failed forecast so far this pandemic) I'd certainly be taking the under if he was taking bets.
They don't exactly get many tourists. Despite the epic landscape. The nice lady who put me up told me a story about one tourist season a few years ago, when they had literally two tourist visitors. In a whole year. To make it worse, one of the visitors, a German guy, got blown off Foula's mile high cliffs by a mighty gust and fell to his death.
So that year Foula had a tourist death rate of 50%. Not good for biz. They didn't put it on the posters.
COME TO FOULA, ONLY HALF OF YOU WILL DIE
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1468940979629707264
As long as no one is cheating, winning punters should not be restricted by bookmakers as part of the terms of their licence. Paddypower have restricted me to trivial stakes even though I am only modestly a winner on their political bets. It isn't my fault that they mispriced Scottish seats in 2015!
As I said I can see why the government likes the idea because it solves a big problem for them - but it also creates a different issue and it's a problem the Government doesn't have a clue about.
Remember that my friend is the exact kind of Tory voter and Mark Eastwood the exact kind of Tory MP that HYUFD thinks we should ignore because they aren't proper Tories.
@GuidoFawkes
·
2m
NEW: EU and US Medicine Chiefs Say Omicron is Mild https://order-order.com/2021/12/09/new-eu-and-us-medicine-chiefs-say-omicron-is-mild
If it is mild, bring on the million cases a day. Let's get this done. OMICRON PARTY TIME!!!
Sarah Hurst
@Life_Disrupted
·
2h
People who can't afford wallpaper shouldn't keep having children.
When it's Boris having fun when you're the one who was stuck at home, that's different. He's not on your side any more, you're not a voyeur on one posh bloke getting the better of another.
He's getting one over on you, personally. That's different. It's why Mr Barnard Castle cut through as well.
There. Do I win the award for the most inane comment in the history of PB?
Omicron Four Times More Transmissable Than Delta
December 9, 2021 at 7:45
“The omicron variant of Covid-19 is 4.2 times more transmissible in its early stage than delta, according to a study by a Japanese scientist who advises the country’s health ministry, a finding likely to confirm fears about the new strain’s contagiousness,”
Bllllllllllllur. Blllluuuuuuuuuuurrrlllllllllwlwlululululuulllllllllll?
In the first bit She says we take a lesson from Crimea War. It may not register with us where Russians feel their Slav kinsfolk, Eastern Orthodox Russian speakers are under threat of being marginalised, so we have to try to get into the mindset of a patriotic Russian Slav (she doesn’t say how we do do that, and the next bit I can only translate as Pair Ron with his Hammer Out?) and that Ukraine is a bit of a ethno mess from the days of grand Lithuanian empire, that was very Catholic like the poles, its current border with Russia might actually be in wrong place for ongoing peace and happiness.
In the second bit she asks, partition anyone?
Has Malmesbury and Soup Dragon ever been seen in same room together?
And since everyone seems to hate anything being built, we need also to use stock more efficiently. And that means overhwelmingly in the OO sector.
The government does not, for example, restrict the number of cars sold, or introduce a scheme whereby only half of cars can be driven on any one day, in an attempt to reduce the number of cars in use and slow down the rate of car deaths, because these measures would have a massive disruptive effect on many people's daily lives.
I'm sure that there is a lot that the government can do to reduce Covid deaths that does not involve interfering with people's daily lives, and my guess is that such measures should be sufficient to keep the NHS functioning over the winter. However, it seems that many voters want the reassurance of being restricted, so that they have a sense that the government is on top of things.
I remember someone on here as describing the end result as an expensive Indian restaurant trying to appear to be trendy yet cheap.
Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine have little in common.
If there is war, Russia will take much more of Eastern Ukraine than if there is a plebiscite to decide the boundaries.
I'm not sure you came close.
And it's not "the"; it's one of a team aiui. Member of the commission.
PS: Your post the other day about LH and Spoty. I can see that happening. If he wins in a dramatic climax it'll be fresh in the mind for the Spoty vote. My main Peaty play sank without trace (since he failed to set Strictly on fire) but I do have a small amount on Lewis at a very big price. Likely be Emma though. Quite a surprise if not.
Therefore it was always going to be a Nicola slam-dunk. Salmond is even more unpopular than Boris in Scotland. That's why Salmond's Alba party, sank in the May elections.
There's obviously the back-story of who knew what when etc., and the general unbelievability of Nicola's claims to know nothing of Salmond's modus operandi until years after everyone else knew, but all that stuff got swept away in the Shakespearian drama.
I would also be watching all this very carefully, if I was Starmer.
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1468880251753226243
If Labour opposed this nonsense the PM would be in even more trouble. But the lure of state control is just too arousing for the reds to resist.
In the last 100 years Russian / Soviet governments have on several occasions arranged the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Plus all forced relocations of populations, imposition of new minorities (a strategy also used by China).
I don't see Ukraine caving easily. And I wonder whether in the end the Russian population would choose to be in advanced, rich democracy rather than Putin's penumbra of failed states around Russia?
Are there similar examples in countries further down the road eg the Baltics?
I'd posit certain similarities to the China / Taiwan situation. Ukraine needs to be impossible for Russia to invade, ultimately.
That’s the problem, the inconsistency of it all.
The issue is that we have a target for X0,000 homes a year and it probably should be X00,000 a year...
Sometimes being on the front line can actually give you a far worse perspective than hiding behind a keyboard looking at the stats.
Did Philip Thompson ever explain how his little boat was flying the cross of St George to tell everyone he was good Christian guy not bad pirate, with a pirate flag telling the world he was a greedy cut throat mercenary, both at the same time?
PS it was very funny when he called the reform party loonies! I cut and pasted the reform manifesto and he admitted he agreed in nearly every word of it. 🤦♀️
Even real loonies would have observed that exchange and shook their heads. Lol
But I still think this is more of a should we tax people more type question whereby we all know at what point the income/wealth threshold should start and it ain't with the survey respondent.
I still hold that were, say, masks not mandatory there would be 10-20% compliance at best. It was down to 5-10% for example on the tube pre-omicron and they were mandatory there according to TfL. And actions speak louder than words.
You are also going down a very deep and dangerous rabbit hole. Yes, we get lots of road deaths each year. We also invest heavily to try to reduce that figure, including bringing in legislation and laws that restrict what we can do in our cars - such as the use of mobile phones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great_Britain#/media/File:Killed_on_British_Roads.png
It's also a terrible analogy. Five people a day die on our roads. 161 died of Covid yesterday alone. Well over an order of magnitude higher.
You might argue that's fair enough, which is a valid view, but now the FIA are actively stating they might deduct points (to alter who wins the title) based on the action. Which inherently links it to the consequence.
Tomorrow the news could be grim, again
Paradoxically, if OMICRON THE MEH is super infectious but seriously mild then it could be the best thing to happen to the advanced world as it struggles with Delta. Let omicron take over ASAP
30,000 people per year die of "flu & pneumonia". That, assuming, say, an 8-month season, is 125 deaths per day.
I don't remember (m)any heated PB debates, nor any restrictions on liberty, for flu & pneumonia.
Genuine question.
Does anyone know?
70% of people favour raising taxes on "higher earning Britons"
EDIT: Yes, a number have joined various groups, including the Ukrainian Army to oppose Putin. But the number that have done that relative to the population is small. After all, the number of people in all the militias, Ukrainian Army etc is small compared to the overall population of Ukraine.
A Russian Plebiscite??? The Jeffersonian democracy that is Putin´s Russia will give a fair vote... Um, No.
Wales is not a county either.
BUT - if reinfection keeps going, then delta can keep going too. I suspect that reinfection, while more than previously, is still not going to be huge, so ultimately the wave of omicron infection will subside, as all waves do, leaving behind a significantly more resilient population.
BUT (no 2) resistance to reinfection will wane with time. Hence boosters.
But, the very Eastern part of the Ukraine -- I think Russia will take that and keep it as easily as they took the Crimea.
In the last 100 years Russian Soviet governments have on several occasions arranged the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Ukrainian nationalists do not have that much to be proud of either.
The role of Ukrainian nationalists in the Second World War and after was highly discreditable. The Ukrainian police, working for the Germans, played a crucial role in the liquidation of hundreds of thousands of Jews. There was also extensive ethnic cleansing of Poles from shared areas in Galicia.
And I wonder whether in the end the Russian population would choose to be in advanced, rich democracy rather than Putin's penumbra of failed states around Russia?
Well, the Russian population in the Crimea seem to have rejected this option of an "advanced, rich democracy" as opposed to Putin's penumbra.
In an ethnic fight, most people make their choice on ethnic grounds.
50 + years of legislation, research, education and technological advances have led us to this point.
For COVID we are still under 2 years.
Ukraine is a concept, like Poland, that has been wheeled backwards and forwards across that part of Europe.
I had ancestors there and the joke goes - lived in Russia, Ukraine, Poland etc etc. Without having left the village....
If you want an "ethnically pure state".... IKARRRRRRAAAAAA!
It’s stewarding on outcomes that’s causing the problem. The Brazil and Saudi incidents, leading to relatively lenient penalties, would have been much more controversial if they had resulted in more severe damage to the cars involved.
Even @Dura_Ace knows that he’d get a black flag for brake-testing an opponent in a single-seater. Drivers are supposed to grow out of that sort of thing as 8-year-olds in karts.
Stop voting Tory you lot forthwith.
Off to Abu Dhabi for the weekend 🏎 🏎 🏎