I don't know whether it applies nationally, but several of my relatives who are in their 30s have been able to book their boosters since last night. My son-in-law managed to get his appointment for later today!
I suspect that fairly soon the everybody who what's a booster will have had one, and we will be surprised at how many say no thanks, not anti-vaxers as they had the first 2 jabs, just board with this.
On that subject My booster is booked for next Friday, but over the last week I have had 7 text messages requesting that I book one. should I be suspishas that my original booking has not worked? or is this just a system that is not joined up? or are they trying to encourage me to move my booking earlier. if its the latter the messages are not worded that way.
My wife, my younger son, and myself all received boosters on 30 October, but are all receiving regular texts and emails inviting us to book.
One thing I haven't seen analysed is the difference between what the laws actually said at the time and the guidelines. The latter are not the law.
Are people sure that the two aren't being confused? The police were often confused by this as well, one reason why so many Covid prosecutions were dropped by the CPS?
Last year on 29 December we had a pub quiz at Daughter's pub. I was quiz mistress. Tables were set the right distance apart with all the rule of 6 and mask rules in place. We checked the rules at the time. Maybe it was because we were in a different tier, I dunno.
Appreciate that this doesn't explain the political impact. And there is also the question of the spirit of the rules. But, much as I dislike the PM, there are far worse things his government has done, than him hosting a quiz in the office via Zoom.
I also hope to God for Labour's sake than no Labour MP flouted the rules or the spirit of them at any point last autumn or Xmas.
I am not trying to defend what happened, but was interested to see this article, which ventures to suggest no laws were broken...
I think the Crown property exemption theory has been debunked.
Does Crown Immunity apply?
Of course not. It would mean that the Civil Servants at the party would equally be immune from speeding tickets.
Strange response. We're not arguing about the actions of individuals in their own cars, but whether an employer, which us the Crown in this case, is holding an illegal party on Crown premises.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
They should stay on the PM one rule for him, another rule for you, and no-one should trust the PM attack lines.
Even if he was banged to rights and evidence easy to find, there is zero chance the police, CPS and courts will all prosecute anyway so why bother with the law.
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2024 they would govern for Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
As I said that attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Don't shoot the messenger it just won't.
When you next put yourself forward in an election you'd be well advised to remember that.
Stop sprouting rubbish, to achieve elected office you need to get the support of your party and get the voters out for your party and deliver on the priorities of your voters when in office. In any case I am already in elected office having got over 1,000 Conservative voters to vote for me, even if only at town council level.
You are not going to win voters who never normally support your party regardless, you can assist them in terms of personal difficulty but in terms of policy you will always vote for what your voters want first
The more you rant won't make what you say true. It is not.
If you are seeking national office telling people you will only govern for those who voted for you is not a successful strategy.
I have no idea what position you were elected to I know it was something in Essex but just giving you some advice for the future.
Please ignore it should you do wish.
You will govern above all for those who elected you, as they voted for your policies and platform. As I said you can help others who did not vote for you in terms of personal difficulty but you will not put their policy priorities over those of your party's voters.
Otherwise you will end up with a classic case of trying to appease everyone, end up pleasing nobody as your party's voters will not vote for you anymore if your party has not deselected you first and those who did not vote for you last time will still vote for their usual party not yours anyway
You should govern for everyone. No one is saying enact your opponent's policies but your own policies should be designed to benefit everyone.
This is such a transparently obvious truth that I can't believe I am typing it out.
Under FPTP you govern for those who elected you and gave you a majority. Your policies are what they wanted and yes you believe they benefit everyone too even if your opponents don't but above all they benefit your voters which is why they voted for them.
The only governments which govern for over 50% of the population are coalition governments of multiple parties eg as we had from 2010-2015 between the Tories and LDs or as countries with PR normally have. However such coalition governments by nature dilute what you can deliver for your party's voters at the same time, while still not delivering the priorities of the voters of opposition parties who are still not in government
Ok try a thought experiment.
If you asked any member of the Cabinet, Boris Johnson for example, whether their government governed for everyone or for "those who elected you" what would they say.
Well obviously they would say everyone. Because they are liars. And, even worse, politicians.
I love how his critics act like Boris is the first politician to be divorced from the truth. They're all as bad as each other.
Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May all told absolute humdingers of lies.
Boris should go but because he's gone native and is weak not because he's dishonest.
Who was the last completely honest PM? I can't think of anything untrue that Thatcher said so maybe her? Though her critics at the time might have said otherwise.
Having lived through it Thatcher equivocated a lot more at the time than her subsequent reputation suggests. There was also the Belgrano nonsense where she was not exactly straightforward (if entirely correct).
Interestingly it was the obvious dishonesty over it, rather than the sinking itself, which most annoyed people.
Whether or not it was sailing towards the task force (it wasn't) it still represented a threat and its sinking was perfectly legitimate. Thatcher, uncharacteristically, got that detail wrong.
Adam Brooks @EssexPR · 2h The Government has tried to make the Lateral Flow test the softener to Vaccine Passports, but almost everywhere in Europe that option is later removed.. Don’t be fooled, these ARE Vaccine Passports.
Can you guarantee that testing would remain @nadhimzahawi ?
Yes or NO
If you take the position that there's any value at all in having vaxports then, logically, you must also remove the LFT get out clause.
Self-administered and self-reported LFT results can be falsified without any fear of detection or consequence, and therefore render the whole effort totally pointless.
I would go so far as to say that the vaxport proposal that the Government is making is, therefore, a transparent and obvious waste of public money.
I don't know whether it applies nationally, but several of my relatives who are in their 30s have been able to book their boosters since last night. My son-in-law managed to get his appointment for later today!
I suspect that fairly soon the everybody who what's a booster will have had one, and we will be surprised at how many say no thanks, not anti-vaxers as they had the first 2 jabs, just board with this.
On that subject My booster is booked for next Friday, but over the last week I have had 7 text messages requesting that I book one. should I be suspishas that my original booking has not worked? or is this just a system that is not joined up? or are they trying to encourage me to move my booking earlier. if its the latter the messages are not worded that way.
My wife, my younger son, and myself all received boosters on 30 October, but are all receiving regular texts and emails inviting us to book.
Mrs C and I have had our boosters, but no reminders. Have we been written off?
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
I think you'll find that some Tory voters, mainly admittedly in urban areas were, and indeed are, happy with the hunting ban. The minimum wage has worked out well, too. AFAIK no-one seeks to repay either of those. The only policy that has been significantly changed is that relating the EU. And the Conservatives supported Blair's Iraq policy. Had they not done so it would have not passed them Commons.
Some but not all, especially not those involved in hunting in rural areas. Most Tory voters of course opposed Blair's EU policies and expansion of free movement absent transition controls, hence they voted for Brexit in 2016. So Blair certainly did not govern for Tory voters.
He then annoyed his leftwing base by invading Iraq and introducing tuition fees, so having tried to please everyone in 1997, by the time he left office he ended up pleasing almost nobody
I'm sure you cannot draw that conclusion about the position of Conservative voters vis a vis the EU in the late 90's. Farage was still a City trader, seen as odd by his peers. And, looking at the figures, had the Conservatives not voted with the Government over Iraq, but had instead voted against the War, the Government would have been defeated and we would not have been dragged into war.
One can, of course, argue, that the average Iraqi is better off without Saddam but they've gone through, and are still going though much suffering to reach that point, and I'm not sure that they'd all agree with you.
Tory voters by the late 1990s and early 2000s were strongly eurosceptic. Blair still introduced the EU social chapter, signed the Nice and Amsterdam treaties towards an EU constitution and of course introduced free movement without restriction in 2004, none of which was supported by Tory voters.
He then annoyed leftwing voters with the Iraq War. So as I said he tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing almost nobody, neither Tories nor his leftwing core vote. He still appealed to some centrist Blairites but by 2007 Labour were ready to dump him in favour of Brown who was more appealing to their base
Adam Brooks @EssexPR · 2h The Government has tried to make the Lateral Flow test the softener to Vaccine Passports, but almost everywhere in Europe that option is later removed.. Don’t be fooled, these ARE Vaccine Passports.
Can you guarantee that testing would remain @nadhimzahawi ?
Yes or NO
If you take the position that there's any value at all in having vaxports then, logically, you must also remove the LFT get out clause.
Self-administered and self-reported LFT results can be falsified without any fear of detection or consequence, and therefore render the whole effort totally pointless.
I would go so far as to say that the vaxport proposal that the Government is making is, therefore, a transparent and obvious waste of public money.
Not if it encourages more people to get vaccinated. LFT are mainly to protect the unvaccinated and those who have not had their boosters, so the unvaccinated are more likely to do them and require their friends to do them if they want to go out to large events
I don't know whether it applies nationally, but several of my relatives who are in their 30s have been able to book their boosters since last night. My son-in-law managed to get his appointment for later today!
I suspect that fairly soon the everybody who what's a booster will have had one, and we will be surprised at how many say no thanks, not anti-vaxers as they had the first 2 jabs, just board with this.
On that subject My booster is booked for next Friday, but over the last week I have had 7 text messages requesting that I book one. should I be suspishas that my original booking has not worked? or is this just a system that is not joined up? or are they trying to encourage me to move my booking earlier. if its the latter the messages are not worded that way.
My wife, my younger son, and myself all received boosters on 30 October, but are all receiving regular texts and emails inviting us to book.
Mrs C and I have had our boosters, but no reminders. Have we been written off?
I keep getting letters saying I need to book for a booster.
I don't know whether it applies nationally, but several of my relatives who are in their 30s have been able to book their boosters since last night. My son-in-law managed to get his appointment for later today!
I suspect that fairly soon the everybody who what's a booster will have had one, and we will be surprised at how many say no thanks, not anti-vaxers as they had the first 2 jabs, just board with this.
On that subject My booster is booked for next Friday, but over the last week I have had 7 text messages requesting that I book one. should I be suspishas that my original booking has not worked? or is this just a system that is not joined up? or are they trying to encourage me to move my booking earlier. if its the latter the messages are not worded that way.
My wife, my younger son, and myself all received boosters on 30 October, but are all receiving regular texts and emails inviting us to book.
Probably need another one by March at this rate so maybe book in for then!
As far as I can tell there are texts from NHS central and your GP, neither seems to know your vaccination appointments with the other one?
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2024 they would govern for Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
As I said that attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Don't shoot the messenger it just won't.
When you next put yourself forward in an election you'd be well advised to remember that.
Stop sprouting rubbish, to achieve elected office you need to get the support of your party and get the voters out for your party and deliver on the priorities of your voters when in office. In any case I am already in elected office having got over 1,000 Conservative voters to vote for me, even if only at town council level.
You are not going to win voters who never normally support your party regardless, you can assist them in terms of personal difficulty but in terms of policy you will always vote for what your voters want first
The more you rant won't make what you say true. It is not.
If you are seeking national office telling people you will only govern for those who voted for you is not a successful strategy.
I have no idea what position you were elected to I know it was something in Essex but just giving you some advice for the future.
Please ignore it should you do wish.
You will govern above all for those who elected you, as they voted for your policies and platform. As I said you can help others who did not vote for you in terms of personal difficulty but you will not put their policy priorities over those of your party's voters.
Otherwise you will end up with a classic case of trying to appease everyone, end up pleasing nobody as your party's voters will not vote for you anymore if your party has not deselected you first and those who did not vote for you last time will still vote for their usual party not yours anyway
You should govern for everyone. No one is saying enact your opponent's policies but your own policies should be designed to benefit everyone.
This is such a transparently obvious truth that I can't believe I am typing it out.
Under FPTP you govern for those who elected you and gave you a majority. Your policies are what they wanted and yes you believe they benefit everyone too even if your opponents don't but above all they benefit your voters which is why they voted for them.
The only governments which govern for over 50% of the population are coalition governments of multiple parties eg as we had from 2010-2015 between the Tories and LDs or as countries with PR normally have. However such coalition governments by nature dilute what you can deliver for your party's voters at the same time, while still not delivering the priorities of the voters of opposition parties who are still not in government
Ok try a thought experiment.
If you asked any member of the Cabinet, Boris Johnson for example, whether their government governed for everyone or for "those who elected you" what would they say.
Well obviously they would say everyone. Because they are liars. And, even worse, politicians.
I love how his critics act like Boris is the first politician to be divorced from the truth. They're all as bad as each other.
Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May all told absolute humdingers of lies.
Boris should go but because he's gone native and is weak not because he's dishonest.
Who was the last completely honest PM? I can't think of anything untrue that Thatcher said so maybe her? Though her critics at the time might have said otherwise.
Having lived through it Thatcher equivocated a lot more at the time than her subsequent reputation suggests. There was also the Belgrano nonsense where she was not exactly straightforward (if entirely correct).
The last totally honest politician I can think of was Ian Paisley. He never said anything he did not believe even when it made things difficult for him. Even his political enemies admitted that and, in Northern Ireland politics, that is quite an admission.
I still regard him as a nutter, but an honest one...
Enoch Powell was also honest, same with Tony Benn, those on the political extremes often are as they never compromise
Hmmm...there remain very serious question marks over the lady he referenced in 'Rivers of Blood.' Yes, there is a possible candidate but if she was the model he changed a very large number of details.
Adam Brooks @EssexPR · 2h The Government has tried to make the Lateral Flow test the softener to Vaccine Passports, but almost everywhere in Europe that option is later removed.. Don’t be fooled, these ARE Vaccine Passports.
Can you guarantee that testing would remain @nadhimzahawi ?
Yes or NO
If you take the position that there's any value at all in having vaxports then, logically, you must also remove the LFT get out clause.
Self-administered and self-reported LFT results can be falsified without any fear of detection or consequence, and therefore render the whole effort totally pointless.
I would go so far as to say that the vaxport proposal that the Government is making is, therefore, a transparent and obvious waste of public money.
Adam Brooks @EssexPR · 2h The Government has tried to make the Lateral Flow test the softener to Vaccine Passports, but almost everywhere in Europe that option is later removed.. Don’t be fooled, these ARE Vaccine Passports.
Can you guarantee that testing would remain @nadhimzahawi ?
Yes or NO
If you take the position that there's any value at all in having vaxports then, logically, you must also remove the LFT get out clause.
Self-administered and self-reported LFT results can be falsified without any fear of detection or consequence, and therefore render the whole effort totally pointless.
I would go so far as to say that the vaxport proposal that the Government is making is, therefore, a transparent and obvious waste of public money.
The LFT get out is being promised to try and reduce the backbench rebellion on Tuesday.
They will drop it later on and it will just be vaxports.
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2024 they would govern for Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
As I said that attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Don't shoot the messenger it just won't.
When you next put yourself forward in an election you'd be well advised to remember that.
Stop sprouting rubbish, to achieve elected office you need to get the support of your party and get the voters out for your party and deliver on the priorities of your voters when in office. In any case I am already in elected office having got over 1,000 Conservative voters to vote for me, even if only at town council level.
You are not going to win voters who never normally support your party regardless, you can assist them in terms of personal difficulty but in terms of policy you will always vote for what your voters want first
The more you rant won't make what you say true. It is not.
If you are seeking national office telling people you will only govern for those who voted for you is not a successful strategy.
I have no idea what position you were elected to I know it was something in Essex but just giving you some advice for the future.
Please ignore it should you do wish.
You will govern above all for those who elected you, as they voted for your policies and platform. As I said you can help others who did not vote for you in terms of personal difficulty but you will not put their policy priorities over those of your party's voters.
Otherwise you will end up with a classic case of trying to appease everyone, end up pleasing nobody as your party's voters will not vote for you anymore if your party has not deselected you first and those who did not vote for you last time will still vote for their usual party not yours anyway
You should govern for everyone. No one is saying enact your opponent's policies but your own policies should be designed to benefit everyone.
This is such a transparently obvious truth that I can't believe I am typing it out.
Under FPTP you govern for those who elected you and gave you a majority. Your policies are what they wanted and yes you believe they benefit everyone too even if your opponents don't but above all they benefit your voters which is why they voted for them.
The only governments which govern for over 50% of the population are coalition governments of multiple parties eg as we had from 2010-2015 between the Tories and LDs or as countries with PR normally have. However such coalition governments by nature dilute what you can deliver for your party's voters at the same time, while still not delivering the priorities of the voters of opposition parties who are still not in government
Ok try a thought experiment.
If you asked any member of the Cabinet, Boris Johnson for example, whether their government governed for everyone or for "those who elected you" what would they say.
Well obviously they would say everyone. Because they are liars. And, even worse, politicians.
I love how his critics act like Boris is the first politician to be divorced from the truth. They're all as bad as each other.
Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May all told absolute humdingers of lies.
Boris should go but because he's gone native and is weak not because he's dishonest.
Who was the last completely honest PM? I can't think of anything untrue that Thatcher said so maybe her? Though her critics at the time might have said otherwise.
Having lived through it Thatcher equivocated a lot more at the time than her subsequent reputation suggests. There was also the Belgrano nonsense where she was not exactly straightforward (if entirely correct).
The last totally honest politician I can think of was Ian Paisley. He never said anything he did not believe even when it made things difficult for him. Even his political enemies admitted that and, in Northern Ireland politics, that is quite an admission.
I still regard him as a nutter, but an honest one...
He was a good example of another problem though. He believed stuff that was so obviously wrong that it really didn't matter if he was telling the truth (as he saw it) or not.
We haven't had an exit wave. You and Max keep saying this. A sustained 40k new cases daily is neither a wave nor an exit. What we have done is maintained steady pressure on the NHS for months and months and now face the same Omicron surge as everyone else. The difference between us and everyone else is that we've had months of weakening of the health system and months of illness and death.
But as its other people's families dying and not your own, you're in favour.
I'm interested to know what your alternative solution - one that keeps the hospitals afloat without causing the economy to implode - looks like. Is it permanent lockdown, never to be lifted for the rest of human history? After all, lighter touch restrictions have had no dramatic effect, and may have done no good at all. Looking at the current situation and that over the last few months, Scotland is currently doing a bit better than England in terms of caseload but the Scottish Government is in at least as much of a panic about Omicron as the one down in London. Wales and Northern Ireland have also been more cautious since July and have actually done worse.
This is your (wholly understandable) frustration with/disdain for Boris Johnson and all his works speaking again. All sound and fury, but no suggestion of any practical alternative to trying our best to live with the virus rather than under its yoke.
My alternative solution for England was the solution in most other European countries including my own. Don't drop all restrictions and tell the populace to go back to normal. Keep masks. Keep social distancing as *guidance* not a hard rule. Keep people sanitising. Reduce the spread.
Scotland did not do measurably better than England. We can't keep NPIs forever.
The consequences of Nicola's latest restrictions are going to be horrendous and put many struggling businesses in the entertainment and retail sectors out of business permanently, especially given the lack of financial support this time around.
But Nicola will be able to delay her demands for a second Indyref that she doesn't think she can win for a few more months and that is what matters.
She can also blame all the business failures on the refusal of the UK Treasury to provide more funds, absolving herself and creating a new grievance into the bargain. It's quite convenient.
Perhaps we can have a new Sunday game, guessing how the weeks media narrative will go and seeing how many we get right? 🙂
I’ll go first.
Monday - Inflation hit 8%, amid market panic, emergency meeting at BoE raises interest rates 0.17%. BBC NEWS coverage (under new BBC Director General ‘Dilyn’) is dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Tuesday - Scientists rolled out from first light to explain how Omicron will take one loved one from each family this Christmas unless restrictions are passed by Parliament. Gove makes compromise to rebels: pub passports or no pub, the nation is watching you; Rebellion fizzles out. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Wednesday - Having used Ukraine as diversion, Putin invades UK. UK ministries slow to respond due to being at “unofficial gathering in Santa hat”/WFH (delete according to which media outlet you work for). NATO respond by releasing their UFO files. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Thursday - the last available magic mixies cauldron identified in store in West Midlands; police erect barriers to prevent loss of life, but barriers overrun in late afternoon. The Christmas panic buying riots begin. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. In late sports news, Liverpool (now known as Putingrad Rovers) manage to blow a 3 goal lead to Newcastleburg and lose - Eagles posts expletives many of us have never even heard of before. Friday - Boris wins by election sending the Conservative Party home for Christmas in happy spirits. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by “invincible Boris” the most electorally successful Conservative in history.
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
I think you'll find that some Tory voters, mainly admittedly in urban areas were, and indeed are, happy with the hunting ban. The minimum wage has worked out well, too. AFAIK no-one seeks to repay either of those. The only policy that has been significantly changed is that relating the EU. And the Conservatives supported Blair's Iraq policy. Had they not done so it would have not passed them Commons.
Some but not all, especially not those involved in hunting in rural areas. Most Tory voters of course opposed Blair's EU policies and expansion of free movement absent transition controls, hence they voted for Brexit in 2016. So Blair certainly did not govern for Tory voters.
He then annoyed his leftwing base by invading Iraq and introducing tuition fees, so having tried to please everyone in 1997, by the time he left office he ended up pleasing almost nobody
I'm sure you cannot draw that conclusion about the position of Conservative voters vis a vis the EU in the late 90's. Farage was still a City trader, seen as odd by his peers. And, looking at the figures, had the Conservatives not voted with the Government over Iraq, but had instead voted against the War, the Government would have been defeated and we would not have been dragged into war.
One can, of course, argue, that the average Iraqi is better off without Saddam but they've gone through, and are still going though much suffering to reach that point, and I'm not sure that they'd all agree with you.
Tory voters by the late 1990s and early 2000s were strongly eurosceptic. Blair still introduced the EU social chapter, signed the Nice and Amsterdam treaties towards an EU constitution and of course introduced free movement without restriction in 2004, none of which was supported by Tory voters.
He then annoyed leftwing voters with the Iraq War. So as I said he tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing almost nobody, neither Tories nor his leftwing core vote. He still appealed to some centrist Blairites but by 2007 Labour were ready to dump him in favour of Brown who was more appealing to their base
Not sure whence comes your evidence for 'strongly' eurosceptic in the mid to late Blair years. Not my recollection. And gung-ho Tories were all for the Iraq invasion.
While I've advocated for a VONC I'm not expecting one in the short-term.
I expect the Lib Dems will win NS next week with a majority in the thousands, but then we're into Christmas and people will switch off from politics for a few weeks.
In January people won't be bothered about 'Last Christmas' parties anymore, they'll be bothered by what happened this Christmas and any possible Omicron restrictions in January. If the UK ends up back in lockdown then the PM must be ousted.
The UK should be almost uniquely well-placed to ride an Omicron wave without lockdown thanks to very high vaccine rates, booster rates, plus having the exit wave over the summer boosting natural immunity too. If we avoid an Omicron lockdown and other nations don't, then that could boost the government's popularity again prior to other possible news stories moving the agenda on like Article 16 being invoked.
For the bet I wouldn't take the bet either way as there's too many complications. If Boris really gets mired in worse he could jump before being pushed. Even if Boris recovers from this in January then it wouldn't pay out until potentially 2024 and there's always the possibility to have a VONC in 2023 on entirely unrelated matters.
We haven't had an exit wave. You and Max keep saying this. A sustained 40k new cases daily is neither a wave nor an exit. What we have done is maintained steady pressure on the NHS for months and months and now face the same Omicron surge as everyone else. The difference between us and everyone else is that we've had months of weakening of the health system and months of illness and death.
But as its other people's families dying and not your own, you're in favour.
So why have the numbers in hospital been regularly higher in the likes of France and Spain than in the UK during the last six months.
As illustration there are currently 13,855 in French hospital with covid:
Those figures are interesting, but as ever, it is hard to compare between two different countries, who might have different admittance criteria, rules and regs, and even number of available critical care beds.
France has 5.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people; the UK has 2.5 That alone might make admittance criteria very different.
When the nightingale hospitals were set up we were often told that extra beds are useless with extra workers to tend the extra patients.
We're often also told that other countries have much higher numbers of hospital beds.
Given that health spending in France for example is IIRC pretty similar to in the UK then how do they have more than double the number of hospital beds ?
Different usage policy ? Different care policy ? Different focus of health spending ?
That's a really good question. Perhaps they fiddle the figures in different ways to ours.
But I wonder if it all depends on what you count as healthcare spending - for instance we might include things they do not, such as some aspects of social care, dentistry etc. Or our NHS might be really inefficient.
There's such little difference in life expectancy between Western European countries it makes me wonder how much the different health systems have an effect.
Or whether other factors somehow cancel them and each other out - more obesity in the UK cancelling out more smoking in France for example.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
There clearly was a law that some have been found gulity of breaking.
I obviously can't say whether the 'gatherings' at No 10 breach the same law, that is for a court to decide. In the absence of a proper investigation and prosecution, public opinion will inevitably be the arbiter.
Adam Brooks @EssexPR · 2h The Government has tried to make the Lateral Flow test the softener to Vaccine Passports, but almost everywhere in Europe that option is later removed.. Don’t be fooled, these ARE Vaccine Passports.
Can you guarantee that testing would remain @nadhimzahawi ?
Yes or NO
If you take the position that there's any value at all in having vaxports then, logically, you must also remove the LFT get out clause.
Self-administered and self-reported LFT results can be falsified without any fear of detection or consequence, and therefore render the whole effort totally pointless.
I would go so far as to say that the vaxport proposal that the Government is making is, therefore, a transparent and obvious waste of public money.
Not really vaxports if there's an easy testing alternative. Allowing me to (just about) claim I was right all along in saying vaxports were never happening here.
One thing I haven't seen analysed is the difference between what the laws actually said at the time and the guidelines. The latter are not the law.
Are people sure that the two aren't being confused? The police were often confused by this as well, one reason why so many Covid prosecutions were dropped by the CPS?
Last year on 29 December we had a pub quiz at Daughter's pub. I was quiz mistress. Tables were set the right distance apart with all the rule of 6 and mask rules in place. We checked the rules at the time. Maybe it was because we were in a different tier, I dunno.
Appreciate that this doesn't explain the political impact. And there is also the question of the spirit of the rules. But, much as I dislike the PM, there are far worse things his government has done, than him hosting a quiz in the office via Zoom.
I also hope to God for Labour's sake than no Labour MP flouted the rules or the spirit of them at any point last autumn or Xmas.
I am not trying to defend what happened, but was interested to see this article, which ventures to suggest no laws were broken...
I think the Crown property exemption theory has been debunked.
Does Crown Immunity apply?
In this matter, the question of law-breaking is a separate issue for the police to deal with.
Regardless of the legalities, what this does is to poison the Conservative brand and Boris in particular.
Even if he is found innocent, the reputational damage is still done
Indeed, I don't think using an argument based on the technicality of Crown Immunity or Crown property exemption from Coronavirus regulations is helpful. The question is whether No 10 was doing something which would be against the rules and potentially illegal for anyone else.
But I'm a pedant and think people shouldn't bang on about something being illegal when, in fact, it isn't. It's potentially just as much a lie as some of the things Boris spouts.
Similarly, when someone is sentenced for a crime I like to be told what crime they have actually committed. Sometimes it is obvious, but sometimes not and we are told for example that two policemen have been sent to prison for sharing photos on WhatsApp. No they haven't, they were sent to prison for misconduct in public office.
Adam Brooks @EssexPR · 2h The Government has tried to make the Lateral Flow test the softener to Vaccine Passports, but almost everywhere in Europe that option is later removed.. Don’t be fooled, these ARE Vaccine Passports.
Can you guarantee that testing would remain @nadhimzahawi ?
Yes or NO
If you take the position that there's any value at all in having vaxports then, logically, you must also remove the LFT get out clause.
Self-administered and self-reported LFT results can be falsified without any fear of detection or consequence, and therefore render the whole effort totally pointless.
I would go so far as to say that the vaxport proposal that the Government is making is, therefore, a transparent and obvious waste of public money.
The LFT get out is being promised to try and reduce the backbench rebellion on Tuesday.
They will drop it later on and it will just be vaxports.
Oh absolutely, that makes complete sense.
It's all more something-must-be-done-ism anyway, though. The current, limited proposals will make no difference.
I don't know whether it applies nationally, but several of my relatives who are in their 30s have been able to book their boosters since last night. My son-in-law managed to get his appointment for later today!
I suspect that fairly soon the everybody who what's a booster will have had one, and we will be surprised at how many say no thanks, not anti-vaxers as they had the first 2 jabs, just board with this.
On that subject My booster is booked for next Friday, but over the last week I have had 7 text messages requesting that I book one. should I be suspishas that my original booking has not worked? or is this just a system that is not joined up? or are they trying to encourage me to move my booking earlier. if its the latter the messages are not worded that way.
I think just bored is right.
I queued for 3.5 hours for my booster but I am increasingly reminded of the story of Jim callaghan in the navy in ww2. He religiously wrote his life jacket all day every day for years. On the day he was demobbed he took it off and chucked it overboard. It sank like a stone.
The lifejackets back then had a short life, especially when worn continuously - which they weren't designed for. The flotation material would absorb water, rot and become useless.
He should have "lost" his life jacket every few months.
Do Labour really want to get rid of Johnson though? Whoever replaces him might have a better chance of winning the next election.
Sky have just said today's photo actually show Boris in a zoom meeting complying with the covid regulations, but that Boris's problem is the vote on Tuesday and the by election on Thursday
I have had a quiet morning this morning away from the political shenanigans and to be honest it is really pleasant to step back from the present cauldron of debate
I am quite clear Boris should resign, but no matter how much we 'howl into the wind' this is a matter for his mps and only they can bring about the change
I don't know whether it applies nationally, but several of my relatives who are in their 30s have been able to book their boosters since last night. My son-in-law managed to get his appointment for later today!
I suspect that fairly soon the everybody who what's a booster will have had one, and we will be surprised at how many say no thanks, not anti-vaxers as they had the first 2 jabs, just board with this.
On that subject My booster is booked for next Friday, but over the last week I have had 7 text messages requesting that I book one. should I be suspishas that my original booking has not worked? or is this just a system that is not joined up? or are they trying to encourage me to move my booking earlier. if its the latter the messages are not worded that way.
My wife, my younger son, and myself all received boosters on 30 October, but are all receiving regular texts and emails inviting us to book.
Probably need another one by March at this rate so maybe book in for then!
As far as I can tell there are texts from NHS central and your GP, neither seems to know your vaccination appointments with the other one?
That's my interpretation. We were all jabbed by the local GPs (and my medical record confirms mine) but the reminders are coming from a national system.
@Farooq I've looked at your links now and for the reasons I said above and more they are not evidence in my eyes that mask mandates work long term.
There's a difference between saying masks work, in certain environments, and that mask mandates work for an endemic disease.
Again getting those who are bothered about the virus, like Foxy, to wear a quality and well fitted FFP2 or better mask like Foxy does at the football would achieve far more.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
There clearly was a law that some have been found gulity of breaking.
I obviously can't say whether the 'gatherings' at No 10 breach the same law, that is for a court to decide. In the absence of a proper investigation and prosecution, public opinion will inevitably be the arbiter.
No, the media will be the arbiter and try to drive public opinion accordingly. They’ve sat in this for a while. What else have they got and not just on the blue team.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2024 they would govern for Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
As I said that attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Don't shoot the messenger it just won't.
When you next put yourself forward in an election you'd be well advised to remember that.
Stop sprouting rubbish, to achieve elected office you need to get the support of your party and get the voters out for your party and deliver on the priorities of your voters when in office. In any case I am already in elected office having got over 1,000 Conservative voters to vote for me, even if only at town council level.
You are not going to win voters who never normally support your party regardless, you can assist them in terms of personal difficulty but in terms of policy you will always vote for what your voters want first
The more you rant won't make what you say true. It is not.
If you are seeking national office telling people you will only govern for those who voted for you is not a successful strategy.
I have no idea what position you were elected to I know it was something in Essex but just giving you some advice for the future.
Please ignore it should you do wish.
You will govern above all for those who elected you, as they voted for your policies and platform. As I said you can help others who did not vote for you in terms of personal difficulty but you will not put their policy priorities over those of your party's voters.
Otherwise you will end up with a classic case of trying to appease everyone, end up pleasing nobody as your party's voters will not vote for you anymore if your party has not deselected you first and those who did not vote for you last time will still vote for their usual party not yours anyway
You should govern for everyone. No one is saying enact your opponent's policies but your own policies should be designed to benefit everyone.
This is such a transparently obvious truth that I can't believe I am typing it out.
Under FPTP you govern for those who elected you and gave you a majority. Your policies are what they wanted and yes you believe they benefit everyone too even if your opponents don't but above all they benefit your voters which is why they voted for them.
The only governments which govern for over 50% of the population are coalition governments of multiple parties eg as we had from 2010-2015 between the Tories and LDs or as countries with PR normally have. However such coalition governments by nature dilute what you can deliver for your party's voters at the same time, while still not delivering the priorities of the voters of opposition parties who are still not in government
Ok try a thought experiment.
If you asked any member of the Cabinet, Boris Johnson for example, whether their government governed for everyone or for "those who elected you" what would they say.
Well obviously they would say everyone. Because they are liars. And, even worse, politicians.
I love how his critics act like Boris is the first politician to be divorced from the truth. They're all as bad as each other.
Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May all told absolute humdingers of lies.
Boris should go but because he's gone native and is weak not because he's dishonest.
Who was the last completely honest PM? I can't think of anything untrue that Thatcher said so maybe her? Though her critics at the time might have said otherwise.
Having lived through it Thatcher equivocated a lot more at the time than her subsequent reputation suggests. There was also the Belgrano nonsense where she was not exactly straightforward (if entirely correct).
Interestingly it was the obvious dishonesty over it, rather than the sinking itself, which most annoyed people.
Whether or not it was sailing towards the task force (it wasn't) it still represented a threat and its sinking was perfectly legitimate. Thatcher, uncharacteristically, got that detail wrong.
Indeed. We were at war. It was a legitimate target, and would have been even if it had been in harbour.
Similarly, I never understood the kerfuffle about the British ISIS members killed by drones. They were enemy combatants and just as legitimate a target as all the Iraqis and Syrians we were killing by drones.
One thing I haven't seen analysed is the difference between what the laws actually said at the time and the guidelines. The latter are not the law.
Are people sure that the two aren't being confused? The police were often confused by this as well, one reason why so many Covid prosecutions were dropped by the CPS?
Last year on 29 December we had a pub quiz at Daughter's pub. I was quiz mistress. Tables were set the right distance apart with all the rule of 6 and mask rules in place. We checked the rules at the time. Maybe it was because we were in a different tier, I dunno.
Appreciate that this doesn't explain the political impact. And there is also the question of the spirit of the rules. But, much as I dislike the PM, there are far worse things his government has done, than him hosting a quiz in the office via Zoom.
I also hope to God for Labour's sake than no Labour MP flouted the rules or the spirit of them at any point last autumn or Xmas.
I am not trying to defend what happened, but was interested to see this article, which ventures to suggest no laws were broken...
I think the Crown property exemption theory has been debunked.
Does Crown Immunity apply?
In this matter, the question of law-breaking is a separate issue for the police to deal with.
Regardless of the legalities, what this does is to poison the Conservative brand and Boris in particular.
Even if he is found innocent, the reputational damage is still done
Indeed, I don't think using an argument based on the technicality of Crown Immunity or Crown property exemption from Coronavirus regulations is helpful. The question is whether No 10 was doing something which would be against the rules and potentially illegal for anyone else.
But I'm a pedant and think people shouldn't bang on about something being illegal when, in fact, it isn't. It's potentially just as much a lie as some of the things Boris spouts.
Similarly, when someone is sentenced for a crime I like to be told what crime they have actually committed. Sometimes it is obvious, but sometimes not and we are told for example that two policemen have been sent to prison for sharing photos on WhatsApp. No they haven't, they were sent to prison for misconduct in public office.
Carry on in this vein and you'll end up like me - pedantically pointing out facts!
And that would never do in an era when "feelings" and "perception" no matter how daft are the only things that count.
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2024 they would govern for Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
As I said that attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Don't shoot the messenger it just won't.
When you next put yourself forward in an election you'd be well advised to remember that.
Stop sprouting rubbish, to achieve elected office you need to get the support of your party and get the voters out for your party and deliver on the priorities of your voters when in office. In any case I am already in elected office having got over 1,000 Conservative voters to vote for me, even if only at town council level.
You are not going to win voters who never normally support your party regardless, you can assist them in terms of personal difficulty but in terms of policy you will always vote for what your voters want first
The more you rant won't make what you say true. It is not.
If you are seeking national office telling people you will only govern for those who voted for you is not a successful strategy.
I have no idea what position you were elected to I know it was something in Essex but just giving you some advice for the future.
Please ignore it should you do wish.
You will govern above all for those who elected you, as they voted for your policies and platform. As I said you can help others who did not vote for you in terms of personal difficulty but you will not put their policy priorities over those of your party's voters.
Otherwise you will end up with a classic case of trying to appease everyone, end up pleasing nobody as your party's voters will not vote for you anymore if your party has not deselected you first and those who did not vote for you last time will still vote for their usual party not yours anyway
You should govern for everyone. No one is saying enact your opponent's policies but your own policies should be designed to benefit everyone.
This is such a transparently obvious truth that I can't believe I am typing it out.
Under FPTP you govern for those who elected you and gave you a majority. Your policies are what they wanted and yes you believe they benefit everyone too even if your opponents don't but above all they benefit your voters which is why they voted for them.
The only governments which govern for over 50% of the population are coalition governments of multiple parties eg as we had from 2010-2015 between the Tories and LDs or as countries with PR normally have. However such coalition governments by nature dilute what you can deliver for your party's voters at the same time, while still not delivering the priorities of the voters of opposition parties who are still not in government
Ok try a thought experiment.
If you asked any member of the Cabinet, Boris Johnson for example, whether their government governed for everyone or for "those who elected you" what would they say.
Well obviously they would say everyone. Because they are liars. And, even worse, politicians.
I love how his critics act like Boris is the first politician to be divorced from the truth. They're all as bad as each other.
Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May all told absolute humdingers of lies.
Boris should go but because he's gone native and is weak not because he's dishonest.
Who was the last completely honest PM? I can't think of anything untrue that Thatcher said so maybe her? Though her critics at the time might have said otherwise.
Having lived through it Thatcher equivocated a lot more at the time than her subsequent reputation suggests. There was also the Belgrano nonsense where she was not exactly straightforward (if entirely correct).
Interestingly it was the obvious dishonesty over it, rather than the sinking itself, which most annoyed people.
Because people concentrated on Thatcher, they have completely missed what really happened with respect to the Belgrano.
The "cover-up" was actually aligning stories to protect naval officers. Who did the right thing.
Perhaps we can have a new Sunday game, guessing how the weeks media narrative will go and seeing how many we get right? 🙂
I’ll go first.
Monday - Inflation hit 8%, amid market panic, emergency meeting at BoE raises interest rates 0.17%. BBC NEWS coverage (under new BBC Director General ‘Dilyn’) is dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Tuesday - Scientists rolled out from first light to explain how Omicron will take one loved one from each family this Christmas unless restrictions are passed by Parliament. Gove makes compromise to rebels: pub passports or no pub, the nation is watching you; Rebellion fizzles out. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Wednesday - Having used Ukraine as diversion, Putin invades UK. UK ministries slow to respond due to being at “unofficial gathering in Santa hat”/WFH (delete according to which media outlet you work for). NATO respond by releasing their UFO files. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Thursday - the last available magic mixies cauldron identified in store in West Midlands; police erect barriers to prevent loss of life, but barriers overrun in late afternoon. The Christmas panic buying riots begin. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. In late sports news, Liverpool (now known as Putingrad Rovers) manage to blow a 3 goal lead to Newcastleburg and lose - Eagles posts expletives many of us have never even heard of before. Friday - Boris wins by election sending the Conservative Party home for Christmas in happy spirits. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by “invincible Boris” the most electorally successful Conservative in history.
We haven't had an exit wave. You and Max keep saying this. A sustained 40k new cases daily is neither a wave nor an exit. What we have done is maintained steady pressure on the NHS for months and months and now face the same Omicron surge as everyone else. The difference between us and everyone else is that we've had months of weakening of the health system and months of illness and death.
But as its other people's families dying and not your own, you're in favour.
I'm interested to know what your alternative solution - one that keeps the hospitals afloat without causing the economy to implode - looks like. Is it permanent lockdown, never to be lifted for the rest of human history? After all, lighter touch restrictions have had no dramatic effect, and may have done no good at all. Looking at the current situation and that over the last few months, Scotland is currently doing a bit better than England in terms of caseload but the Scottish Government is in at least as much of a panic about Omicron as the one down in London. Wales and Northern Ireland have also been more cautious since July and have actually done worse.
This is your (wholly understandable) frustration with/disdain for Boris Johnson and all his works speaking again. All sound and fury, but no suggestion of any practical alternative to trying our best to live with the virus rather than under its yoke.
My alternative solution for England was the solution in most other European countries including my own. Don't drop all restrictions and tell the populace to go back to normal. Keep masks. Keep social distancing as *guidance* not a hard rule. Keep people sanitising. Reduce the spread.
That's an interestingly worded response. Have you formally given up on the Union now and joined the independence camp?
Anyhow, I refer to my previous response. Maintaining a more cautious approach since July has, at best, helped Scotland around the margins (it certainly didn't prevent the collapse of the Scottish ambulance service, for example, and nor has it spared the Scottish Government from the general panic over new restrictions now,) and doesn't appear to have done Wales any good at all.
Ultimately, what works best against this disease is radical self-isolation - keeping away from human contact completely - or, if you really must meet people rather than spending the remainder of your days communicating exclusively via Zoom or WhatsApp, only doing so outdoors. And the easier it becomes to catch the illness, the more acute this problem will get. We can't keep this going indefinitely.
I referred to England and Scotland as separate with regards to Covid because they are.
I don't know whether it applies nationally, but several of my relatives who are in their 30s have been able to book their boosters since last night. My son-in-law managed to get his appointment for later today!
I suspect that fairly soon the everybody who what's a booster will have had one, and we will be surprised at how many say no thanks, not anti-vaxers as they had the first 2 jabs, just board with this.
On that subject My booster is booked for next Friday, but over the last week I have had 7 text messages requesting that I book one. should I be suspishas that my original booking has not worked? or is this just a system that is not joined up? or are they trying to encourage me to move my booking earlier. if its the latter the messages are not worded that way.
My wife, my younger son, and myself all received boosters on 30 October, but are all receiving regular texts and emails inviting us to book.
Probably need another one by March at this rate so maybe book in for then!
As far as I can tell there are texts from NHS central and your GP, neither seems to know your vaccination appointments with the other one?
That's my interpretation. We were all jabbed by the local GPs (and my medical record confirms mine) but the reminders are coming from a national system.
It's belt and braces. Better than the alternative. I am receiving 3 or 4 emails a day from test and trace even though I spoke to them on the phone. Much rather this than miss people. Or ignore them after a couple of reminders.
Please will you now stop with your anti-science nonsense? Note that this is NOT a call for a particular policy. There are still valid schools of thought that say "masks work, but we shouldn't mandate them". But anyone who says masks don't work is a liar.
Only looked at the first link so far but you've misunderstood the question it seems. The question isn't whether masks work in a controlled environment, of course they do!
The question is whether mask mandates work over the long term post vaccines. That I dispute.
Your first link is out of date and starts from a false premise. It refers to a shortage in medical grade masks, so advocates for cloth masks. That made sense last year pre-vaccines and while such a shortage existed so I agreed with it then.
Facts have changed since then though, it may have been true early in the pandemic, but now we have vaccines and we do not have a shortage of medical grade masks. If you want a medical grade mask you can get one from Amazon or elsewhere very easily.
Considering my proposal is that instead of pushing cloth masks on those who don't want one we'd be better off educating those who are worried to ditch their cloth masks and to wear a decent medical grade one instead, like Foxy for instance does at the football ... I don't consider an article written pre vaccines on the false premise that medical masks are in short supply as remotely relevant.
How is it I missed this post earlier?
Firstly, the science in the review is not "out of date", and the medical mask shortage cited is not really part of the science, it's context. The context has changed, yes, but the science hasn't. Masks work, even cloth masks. That is the only point I wanted to make. if you argue for people choosing a better grade of masks, agreed. If you're saying that vaccines are MORE important, agreed. But you did exactly what I thought you would. You glanced at it, found a non-reason to dismiss it all, and moved on.
Can you please look at the science in there and just admit one thing: masks work. Because that is the only point, the only thing I want you to grasp.
I never disputed that masks work. I advocated for cloth masks last year when we were pre vaccines and when decent masks were in short supply.
I do dispute that mask mandates work over the long term.
There's a difference. The two are not the same thing.
In Shropshire North, the by-election is now being very clearly reported as a two horse race between the LDs and Conservatives. Those are the conditions required for a Labour tactical squeeze.
One thing I haven't seen analysed is the difference between what the laws actually said at the time and the guidelines. The latter are not the law.
Are people sure that the two aren't being confused? The police were often confused by this as well, one reason why so many Covid prosecutions were dropped by the CPS?
Last year on 29 December we had a pub quiz at Daughter's pub. I was quiz mistress. Tables were set the right distance apart with all the rule of 6 and mask rules in place. We checked the rules at the time. Maybe it was because we were in a different tier, I dunno.
Appreciate that this doesn't explain the political impact. And there is also the question of the spirit of the rules. But, much as I dislike the PM, there are far worse things his government has done, than him hosting a quiz in the office via Zoom.
I also hope to God for Labour's sake than no Labour MP flouted the rules or the spirit of them at any point last autumn or Xmas.
I am not trying to defend what happened, but was interested to see this article, which ventures to suggest no laws were broken...
I think the Crown property exemption theory has been debunked.
Does Crown Immunity apply?
Of course not. It would mean that the Civil Servants at the party would equally be immune from speeding tickets.
Strange response. We're not arguing about the actions of individuals in their own cars, but whether an employer, which us the Crown in this case, is holding an illegal party on Crown premises.
The Crown can't be prosecuted for this but the individuals attending the party can. Hard to see how any corporate employer would meet the threshold of criminal liability under the relevant regulations. It's on the employees. I remember the police having words with people working at a supermarket in Herne Bay after they had a party following their shift last Christmas. Not the supermarket itself.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
I think you'll find that some Tory voters, mainly admittedly in urban areas were, and indeed are, happy with the hunting ban. The minimum wage has worked out well, too. AFAIK no-one seeks to repay either of those. The only policy that has been significantly changed is that relating the EU. And the Conservatives supported Blair's Iraq policy. Had they not done so it would have not passed them Commons.
Some but not all, especially not those involved in hunting in rural areas. Most Tory voters of course opposed Blair's EU policies and expansion of free movement absent transition controls, hence they voted for Brexit in 2016. So Blair certainly did not govern for Tory voters.
He then annoyed his leftwing base by invading Iraq and introducing tuition fees, so having tried to please everyone in 1997, by the time he left office he ended up pleasing almost nobody
I'm sure you cannot draw that conclusion about the position of Conservative voters vis a vis the EU in the late 90's. Farage was still a City trader, seen as odd by his peers. And, looking at the figures, had the Conservatives not voted with the Government over Iraq, but had instead voted against the War, the Government would have been defeated and we would not have been dragged into war.
One can, of course, argue, that the average Iraqi is better off without Saddam but they've gone through, and are still going though much suffering to reach that point, and I'm not sure that they'd all agree with you.
Tory voters by the late 1990s and early 2000s were strongly eurosceptic. Blair still introduced the EU social chapter, signed the Nice and Amsterdam treaties towards an EU constitution and of course introduced free movement without restriction in 2004, none of which was supported by Tory voters.
He then annoyed leftwing voters with the Iraq War. So as I said he tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing almost nobody, neither Tories nor his leftwing core vote. He still appealed to some centrist Blairites but by 2007 Labour were ready to dump him in favour of Brown who was more appealing to their base
Not sure whence comes your evidence for 'strongly' eurosceptic in the mid to late Blair years. Not my recollection. And gung-ho Tories were all for the Iraq invasion.
Well for starters Tory members overwhelmingly voted for the eurosceptic IDS over the pro EU Ken Clarke even as early as 2001 and the Tories under IDS and the equally eurosceptic Howard still got over 30%.
You are yet again missing the point completely on Iraq as Blair lost his leftwing base over that.
So my point stands, Blair tried to please everyone in 1997, by 2007 he had neither Tories or his leftwing base and while he still had some centrists that was not enough for him to keep the Labour leadership and stop Brown replacing him as PM and as a more leftwing Labour leader
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
Well, he pleased enough people to win three general elections. What a failure.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron and Osborne are as is Portillo and Heseltine and Mandelson. Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
1 - UK has stated that the 'current round of fish negotiations is concluded', with about 10-15% of remaining Macron demands fulfilled. Presumably they scraped some evidence together, or made firm decisions where they could.
So presumably more tantrums incoming soon from Petit Putin.
UK govt as ever not being proactive enough in pushing back wrt this. Should have done this back in June.
So Truss's desk is slightly more clear than it was last week.
2 - France up in arms about a Pres. candidate who has insulted Macron:
Then this astoundingly contemptuous tirade against Macron: "We will leave in his window this plastic mannequin, this automaton which wanders in a labyrinth of mirrors, this faceless mask which disfigures ours. We will leave this adolescent to seek himself eternally." https://twitter.com/frasermatthew/status/1467789119912873986
Seems rather more polite than the stuff Macron comes out with about elected leaders who won't do what he wants.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is now not keen on vaccine passports, pitching as reluctantly going with plan B, only last month he didn't think they went far enough and wanted passport++ scheme.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron are as is Portillo and Heseltine, Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Corbyn was part cavalier, part roundhead
Could I put it to you that maybe none of these people are Roundheads or Cavaliers because those groups ceased to exist over 400 years ago!
So, Hamilton or Verstappen? I fear that pole yesterday is going to be decisive and that the latter will claim it.
I just hope it's a good race. In some ways they both deserve the title; in some ways (IMV) Verstappen does not.
I've got a bottle of red wine to watch the race live (thanks to Sky and Ch4), and Mrs J is downstairs cooking with the little 'un, and I've got permission to eat in front of the TV.
But I hope the race is uncontroversial, if not boring, and that the title race is well won.
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2024 they would govern for Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
As I said that attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Don't shoot the messenger it just won't.
When you next put yourself forward in an election you'd be well advised to remember that.
Stop sprouting rubbish, to achieve elected office you need to get the support of your party and get the voters out for your party and deliver on the priorities of your voters when in office. In any case I am already in elected office having got over 1,000 Conservative voters to vote for me, even if only at town council level.
You are not going to win voters who never normally support your party regardless, you can assist them in terms of personal difficulty but in terms of policy you will always vote for what your voters want first
The more you rant won't make what you say true. It is not.
If you are seeking national office telling people you will only govern for those who voted for you is not a successful strategy.
I have no idea what position you were elected to I know it was something in Essex but just giving you some advice for the future.
Please ignore it should you do wish.
You will govern above all for those who elected you, as they voted for your policies and platform. As I said you can help others who did not vote for you in terms of personal difficulty but you will not put their policy priorities over those of your party's voters.
Otherwise you will end up with a classic case of trying to appease everyone, end up pleasing nobody as your party's voters will not vote for you anymore if your party has not deselected you first and those who did not vote for you last time will still vote for their usual party not yours anyway
You should govern for everyone. No one is saying enact your opponent's policies but your own policies should be designed to benefit everyone.
This is such a transparently obvious truth that I can't believe I am typing it out.
Under FPTP you govern for those who elected you and gave you a majority. Your policies are what they wanted and yes you believe they benefit everyone too even if your opponents don't but above all they benefit your voters which is why they voted for them.
The only governments which govern for over 50% of the population are coalition governments of multiple parties eg as we had from 2010-2015 between the Tories and LDs or as countries with PR normally have. However such coalition governments by nature dilute what you can deliver for your party's voters at the same time, while still not delivering the priorities of the voters of opposition parties who are still not in government
Ok try a thought experiment.
If you asked any member of the Cabinet, Boris Johnson for example, whether their government governed for everyone or for "those who elected you" what would they say.
Well obviously they would say everyone. Because they are liars. And, even worse, politicians.
I love how his critics act like Boris is the first politician to be divorced from the truth. They're all as bad as each other.
Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May all told absolute humdingers of lies.
Boris should go but because he's gone native and is weak not because he's dishonest.
Who was the last completely honest PM? I can't think of anything untrue that Thatcher said so maybe her? Though her critics at the time might have said otherwise.
Having lived through it Thatcher equivocated a lot more at the time than her subsequent reputation suggests. There was also the Belgrano nonsense where she was not exactly straightforward (if entirely correct).
Mrs Thatcher denied plans to double VAT. Though technically she was correct as 8 to 15 per cent is not quite double. Let's call it a political promise.
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
Well, he pleased enough people to win three general elections. What a failure.
By 2005 however once he had lost the left as well he got the lowest voteshare of any re elected PM since WW2 and Labour then swiftly forced him out as leader in favour of Brown
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron are as is Portillo and Heseltine, Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Corbyn was part cavalier, part roundhead
Could I put it to you that maybe none of these people are Roundheads or Cavaliers because those groups ceased to exist over 400 years ago!
Just saying.
Although I do think both strands have more of an influence on our society and politics than we often care to recognise.
We haven't had an exit wave. You and Max keep saying this. A sustained 40k new cases daily is neither a wave nor an exit. What we have done is maintained steady pressure on the NHS for months and months and now face the same Omicron surge as everyone else. The difference between us and everyone else is that we've had months of weakening of the health system and months of illness and death.
But as its other people's families dying and not your own, you're in favour.
I'm interested to know what your alternative solution - one that keeps the hospitals afloat without causing the economy to implode - looks like. Is it permanent lockdown, never to be lifted for the rest of human history? After all, lighter touch restrictions have had no dramatic effect, and may have done no good at all. Looking at the current situation and that over the last few months, Scotland is currently doing a bit better than England in terms of caseload but the Scottish Government is in at least as much of a panic about Omicron as the one down in London. Wales and Northern Ireland have also been more cautious since July and have actually done worse.
This is your (wholly understandable) frustration with/disdain for Boris Johnson and all his works speaking again. All sound and fury, but no suggestion of any practical alternative to trying our best to live with the virus rather than under its yoke.
My alternative solution for England was the solution in most other European countries including my own. Don't drop all restrictions and tell the populace to go back to normal. Keep masks. Keep social distancing as *guidance* not a hard rule. Keep people sanitising. Reduce the spread.
That's an interestingly worded response. Have you formally given up on the Union now and joined the independence camp?
Anyhow, I refer to my previous response. Maintaining a more cautious approach since July has, at best, helped Scotland around the margins (it certainly didn't prevent the collapse of the Scottish ambulance service, for example, and nor has it spared the Scottish Government from the general panic over new restrictions now,) and doesn't appear to have done Wales any good at all.
Ultimately, what works best against this disease is radical self-isolation - keeping away from human contact completely - or, if you really must meet people rather than spending the remainder of your days communicating exclusively via Zoom or WhatsApp, only doing so outdoors. And the easier it becomes to catch the illness, the more acute this problem will get. We can't keep this going indefinitely.
I referred to England and Scotland as separate with regards to Covid because they are.
For all the good that it's done the latter.
Comparing the overall Covid death rate for England over the entire pandemic with that for Scotland - and Scotland's is indeed lower - we could conclude that the Edinburgh Government's more cautious approach has saved 1,800 Scots who would otherwise have died if devolved policy did not exist - and that's a crude calculation that doesn't take into account a variety of factors that mitigate against Scotland (a somewhat older and sicker population) but also against England (higher population density and a much more ethnically diverse population,) or the deleterious socio-economic effects that stricter regulation has visited upon Scotland throughout most of that period.
Northern Ireland, overall, has done better than Scotland and Wales has fared worse than England for per capita Covid mortality, but we're none of us a million miles apart. So, if the UK Government really has been as grossly negligent as you seem to want to imply then that hardly reflects well on the devolved administrations, either.
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
I think you'll find that some Tory voters, mainly admittedly in urban areas were, and indeed are, happy with the hunting ban. The minimum wage has worked out well, too. AFAIK no-one seeks to repay either of those. The only policy that has been significantly changed is that relating the EU. And the Conservatives supported Blair's Iraq policy. Had they not done so it would have not passed them Commons.
Some but not all, especially not those involved in hunting in rural areas. Most Tory voters of course opposed Blair's EU policies and expansion of free movement absent transition controls, hence they voted for Brexit in 2016. So Blair certainly did not govern for Tory voters.
He then annoyed his leftwing base by invading Iraq and introducing tuition fees, so having tried to please everyone in 1997, by the time he left office he ended up pleasing almost nobody
I'm sure you cannot draw that conclusion about the position of Conservative voters vis a vis the EU in the late 90's. Farage was still a City trader, seen as odd by his peers. And, looking at the figures, had the Conservatives not voted with the Government over Iraq, but had instead voted against the War, the Government would have been defeated and we would not have been dragged into war.
One can, of course, argue, that the average Iraqi is better off without Saddam but they've gone through, and are still going though much suffering to reach that point, and I'm not sure that they'd all agree with you.
Tory voters by the late 1990s and early 2000s were strongly eurosceptic. Blair still introduced the EU social chapter, signed the Nice and Amsterdam treaties towards an EU constitution and of course introduced free movement without restriction in 2004, none of which was supported by Tory voters.
He then annoyed leftwing voters with the Iraq War. So as I said he tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing almost nobody, neither Tories nor his leftwing core vote. He still appealed to some centrist Blairites but by 2007 Labour were ready to dump him in favour of Brown who was more appealing to their base
Not sure whence comes your evidence for 'strongly' eurosceptic in the mid to late Blair years. Not my recollection. And gung-ho Tories were all for the Iraq invasion.
Well for starters Tory members overwhelmingly voted for the eurosceptic IDS over the pro EU Ken Clarke even as early as 2001 and the Tories under IDS and the equally eurosceptic Howard still got over 30%.
You are yet again missing the point completely on Iraq as Blair lost his leftwing base over that.
So my point stands, Blair tried to please everyone in 1997, by 2007 he had neither Tories or his leftwing base and while he still had some centrists that was not enough for him to keep the Labour leadership and stop Brown replacing him as PM and as a more leftwing Labour leader
60:40. Overwhelming?
Blair never really had a 'left-wing' base. And it was always understood that Blair would at some point give way to Brown.
Politics is rarely black and white; wholly good vs wholly evil. Nor does it stand still; it's a living thing and, like all such changes and evolves. Something which almost 70 years of watching, sometimes involved, sometimes not has taught me.
@Farooq your problem is you seem to be, like Rochdale, incapable of seeing past "cases = BAD".
For me, as many cases as happen naturally occur is a GOOD thing. Especially if those who are bothered about the virus are protected by wearing a quality FFP2 etc mask while those who aren't, are not wearing one.
That segments the risk so that the right people are getting immunity more, which raises the herd immunity levels for the benefit of everyone including those having to wear a mask because they're afraid.
I don't accept the premise that preventing "cases" is a good thing. It may have been early on in the pandemic pre vaccines but it isn't anymore. I don't want cases reduced by NPIs, so them being reduced by NPIs isn't a benefit.
The BMJ article says how states (and nations) with mask mandates have had lower case rates. That is an argument AGAINST mask mandates for me. Those states have failed to get immunity.
Perhaps we can have a new Sunday game, guessing how the weeks media narrative will go and seeing how many we get right? 🙂
I’ll go first.
Monday - Inflation hit 8%, amid market panic, emergency meeting at BoE raises interest rates 0.17%. BBC NEWS coverage (under new BBC Director General ‘Dilyn’) is dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Tuesday - Scientists rolled out from first light to explain how Omicron will take one loved one from each family this Christmas unless restrictions are passed by Parliament. Gove makes compromise to rebels: pub passports or no pub, the nation is watching you; Rebellion fizzles out. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Wednesday - Having used Ukraine as diversion, Putin invades UK. UK ministries slow to respond due to being at “unofficial gathering in Santa hat”/WFH (delete according to which media outlet you work for). NATO respond by releasing their UFO files. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Thursday - the last available magic mixies cauldron identified in store in West Midlands; police erect barriers to prevent loss of life, but barriers overrun in late afternoon. The Christmas panic buying riots begin. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. In late sports news, Liverpool (now known as Putingrad Rovers) manage to blow a 3 goal lead to Newcastleburg and lose - Eagles posts expletives many of us have never even heard of before. Friday - Boris wins by election sending the Conservative Party home for Christmas in happy spirits. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by “invincible Boris” the most electorally successful Conservative in history.
Have a good Sunday everyone 🙋♀️
It's not too late to delete this.
Not the response I was hoping for. What have I done wrong 😟
Perhaps we can have a new Sunday game, guessing how the weeks media narrative will go and seeing how many we get right? 🙂
I’ll go first.
Monday - Inflation hit 8%, amid market panic, emergency meeting at BoE raises interest rates 0.17%. BBC NEWS coverage (under new BBC Director General ‘Dilyn’) is dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Tuesday - Scientists rolled out from first light to explain how Omicron will take one loved one from each family this Christmas unless restrictions are passed by Parliament. Gove makes compromise to rebels: pub passports or no pub, the nation is watching you; Rebellion fizzles out. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Wednesday - Having used Ukraine as diversion, Putin invades UK. UK ministries slow to respond due to being at “unofficial gathering in Santa hat”/WFH (delete according to which media outlet you work for). NATO respond by releasing their UFO files. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Thursday - the last available magic mixies cauldron identified in store in West Midlands; police erect barriers to prevent loss of life, but barriers overrun in late afternoon. The Christmas panic buying riots begin. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. In late sports news, Liverpool (now known as Putingrad Rovers) manage to blow a 3 goal lead to Newcastleburg and lose - Eagles posts expletives many of us have never even heard of before. Friday - Boris wins by election sending the Conservative Party home for Christmas in happy spirits. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by “invincible Boris” the most electorally successful Conservative in history.
What do we think has been pixelated from the bottom centre of the photo, between the two clocks? I was assuming it was another clock but, pixelated for what reason?
It shows the time in Moscow ?
My guess is the pixellated clock-blocker is a photo of young Wilf.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron are as is Portillo and Heseltine, Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Corbyn was part cavalier, part roundhead
Could I put it to you that maybe none of these people are Roundheads or Cavaliers because those groups ceased to exist over 400 years ago!
Just saying.
Indeed (my favourite word today, it seems) and the distinction was always a poor one. Plenty of Parliamentarians came from the Cavalier class and plenty of Royalists came from the lower classes (the term referred to the lower classes not wearing their hair fashionably long).
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
I think you'll find that some Tory voters, mainly admittedly in urban areas were, and indeed are, happy with the hunting ban. The minimum wage has worked out well, too. AFAIK no-one seeks to repay either of those. The only policy that has been significantly changed is that relating the EU. And the Conservatives supported Blair's Iraq policy. Had they not done so it would have not passed them Commons.
Some but not all, especially not those involved in hunting in rural areas. Most Tory voters of course opposed Blair's EU policies and expansion of free movement absent transition controls, hence they voted for Brexit in 2016. So Blair certainly did not govern for Tory voters.
He then annoyed his leftwing base by invading Iraq and introducing tuition fees, so having tried to please everyone in 1997, by the time he left office he ended up pleasing almost nobody
I'm sure you cannot draw that conclusion about the position of Conservative voters vis a vis the EU in the late 90's. Farage was still a City trader, seen as odd by his peers. And, looking at the figures, had the Conservatives not voted with the Government over Iraq, but had instead voted against the War, the Government would have been defeated and we would not have been dragged into war.
One can, of course, argue, that the average Iraqi is better off without Saddam but they've gone through, and are still going though much suffering to reach that point, and I'm not sure that they'd all agree with you.
Tory voters by the late 1990s and early 2000s were strongly eurosceptic. Blair still introduced the EU social chapter, signed the Nice and Amsterdam treaties towards an EU constitution and of course introduced free movement without restriction in 2004, none of which was supported by Tory voters.
He then annoyed leftwing voters with the Iraq War. So as I said he tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing almost nobody, neither Tories nor his leftwing core vote. He still appealed to some centrist Blairites but by 2007 Labour were ready to dump him in favour of Brown who was more appealing to their base
Not sure whence comes your evidence for 'strongly' eurosceptic in the mid to late Blair years. Not my recollection. And gung-ho Tories were all for the Iraq invasion.
Well for starters Tory members overwhelmingly voted for the eurosceptic IDS over the pro EU Ken Clarke even as early as 2001 and the Tories under IDS and the equally eurosceptic Howard still got over 30%.
You are yet again missing the point completely on Iraq as Blair lost his leftwing base over that.
So my point stands, Blair tried to please everyone in 1997, by 2007 he had neither Tories or his leftwing base and while he still had some centrists that was not enough for him to keep the Labour leadership and stop Brown replacing him as PM and as a more leftwing Labour leader
60:40. Overwhelming?
Blair never really had a 'left-wing' base. And it was always understood that Blair would at some point give way to Brown.
Politics is rarely black and white; wholly good vs wholly evil. Nor does it stand still; it's a living thing and, like all such changes and evolves. Something which almost 70 years of watching, sometimes involved, sometimes not has taught me.
60 40 is a landslide on any definition.
Labour tolerated Blair as long as he won general elections by big majorities, they never really felt he was leftwing enough.
As soon as much of his leftwing base deserted him for the LDs in 2005 they forced him out as leader and PM swiftly after in 2007 in favour of Brown
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron are as is Portillo and Heseltine, Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Corbyn was part cavalier, part roundhead
Could I put it to you that maybe none of these people are Roundheads or Cavaliers because those groups ceased to exist over 400 years ago!
The leaked photos, they must be able to work out who leaked them. Its a tv on the wall of a clearly identifiable room i.e. the clocks and the art work. Very dumb by whoever took them.
There can't have been that many people in that room, even by the standards of covid breaking habits of the staff.
Perhaps we can have a new Sunday game, guessing how the weeks media narrative will go and seeing how many we get right? 🙂
I’ll go first.
Monday - Inflation hit 8%, amid market panic, emergency meeting at BoE raises interest rates 0.17%. BBC NEWS coverage (under new BBC Director General ‘Dilyn’) is dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Tuesday - Scientists rolled out from first light to explain how Omicron will take one loved one from each family this Christmas unless restrictions are passed by Parliament. Gove makes compromise to rebels: pub passports or no pub, the nation is watching you; Rebellion fizzles out. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Wednesday - Having used Ukraine as diversion, Putin invades UK. UK ministries slow to respond due to being at “unofficial gathering in Santa hat”/WFH (delete according to which media outlet you work for). NATO respond by releasing their UFO files. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. Thursday - the last available magic mixies cauldron identified in store in West Midlands; police erect barriers to prevent loss of life, but barriers overrun in late afternoon. The Christmas panic buying riots begin. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. In late sports news, Liverpool (now known as Putingrad Rovers) manage to blow a 3 goal lead to Newcastleburg and lose - Eagles posts expletives many of us have never even heard of before. Friday - Boris wins by election sending the Conservative Party home for Christmas in happy spirits. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by “invincible Boris” the most electorally successful Conservative in history.
Have a good Sunday everyone 🙋♀️
It's not too late to delete this.
Not the response I was hoping for. What have I done wrong 😟
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
I think you'll find that some Tory voters, mainly admittedly in urban areas were, and indeed are, happy with the hunting ban. The minimum wage has worked out well, too. AFAIK no-one seeks to repay either of those. The only policy that has been significantly changed is that relating the EU. And the Conservatives supported Blair's Iraq policy. Had they not done so it would have not passed them Commons.
Some but not all, especially not those involved in hunting in rural areas. Most Tory voters of course opposed Blair's EU policies and expansion of free movement absent transition controls, hence they voted for Brexit in 2016. So Blair certainly did not govern for Tory voters.
He then annoyed his leftwing base by invading Iraq and introducing tuition fees, so having tried to please everyone in 1997, by the time he left office he ended up pleasing almost nobody
I'm sure you cannot draw that conclusion about the position of Conservative voters vis a vis the EU in the late 90's. Farage was still a City trader, seen as odd by his peers. And, looking at the figures, had the Conservatives not voted with the Government over Iraq, but had instead voted against the War, the Government would have been defeated and we would not have been dragged into war.
One can, of course, argue, that the average Iraqi is better off without Saddam but they've gone through, and are still going though much suffering to reach that point, and I'm not sure that they'd all agree with you.
Tory voters by the late 1990s and early 2000s were strongly eurosceptic. Blair still introduced the EU social chapter, signed the Nice and Amsterdam treaties towards an EU constitution and of course introduced free movement without restriction in 2004, none of which was supported by Tory voters.
He then annoyed leftwing voters with the Iraq War. So as I said he tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing almost nobody, neither Tories nor his leftwing core vote. He still appealed to some centrist Blairites but by 2007 Labour were ready to dump him in favour of Brown who was more appealing to their base
Not sure whence comes your evidence for 'strongly' eurosceptic in the mid to late Blair years. Not my recollection. And gung-ho Tories were all for the Iraq invasion.
Well for starters Tory members overwhelmingly voted for the eurosceptic IDS over the pro EU Ken Clarke even as early as 2001 and the Tories under IDS and the equally eurosceptic Howard still got over 30%.
You are yet again missing the point completely on Iraq as Blair lost his leftwing base over that.
So my point stands, Blair tried to please everyone in 1997, by 2007 he had neither Tories or his leftwing base and while he still had some centrists that was not enough for him to keep the Labour leadership and stop Brown replacing him as PM and as a more leftwing Labour leader
60:40. Overwhelming?
Blair never really had a 'left-wing' base. And it was always understood that Blair would at some point give way to Brown.
Politics is rarely black and white; wholly good vs wholly evil. Nor does it stand still; it's a living thing and, like all such changes and evolves. Something which almost 70 years of watching, sometimes involved, sometimes not has taught me.
60 40 is a landslide on any definition.
Labour tolerated Blair as long as he won general elections by big majorities, they never really felt he was leftwing enough.
As soon as his much of his leftwing base deserted him for the LDs in 2005 they forced him out as leader swiftly after in 2007 in favour of Brown
No-one ever thought Brown was left-wing. He co-founded New Labour and was Blair's BFF (until he wasn't). The difference is Brown was a Party man and Blair was a Blair man.
If Hamilton gets fastest lap then he and Vercrashen go out, who is champion? Does Hamilton win the fastest lap point or does he need to finish the race to get that?
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron are as is Portillo and Heseltine, Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Corbyn was part cavalier, part roundhead
Could I put it to you that maybe none of these people are Roundheads or Cavaliers because those groups ceased to exist over 400 years ago!
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron and Osborne are as is Portillo and Heseltine and Mandelson. Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
There was a Peculiar People chapel not too far from where I lived as a boy. And in later life, as an election agent, I used to have to deal with an election official who was a PP deacon. Nice chap; honest and cheerful.
Funny to think that if Owen Paterson had just taken a 30 day suspension on the chin he'd be (nearly) back in the Commons by now.
Nobody would have remembered either.
But then its like Big Dom blowing himself up. If he had given it the water works, said he made a terrible mistake because he was scared for his family, resigned, a few soft soap interviews about how he has been targeted by the hate mob and thought he wouldn't be able to protect his family etc, and then 6-12 months, he would have been back.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron are as is Portillo and Heseltine, Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Corbyn was part cavalier, part roundhead
Could I put it to you that maybe none of these people are Roundheads or Cavaliers because those groups ceased to exist over 400 years ago!
I am watching Impeachment on BBC Iplayer at the moment. It is a familiar tale about people trying to bring down someone they hated but could not beat electorally by exploiting foibles and trying to pretend that they demonstrated fundamental flaws or an unfitness to govern or whatever else they used to justify their odious behaviour.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
What about the possibility that someone might actually be fundamentally flawed and unfit to govern?
In an ideal world I would like to have a PM who is a good family man, who adores his wife and who lives by a strict moral code but, frankly, these are nice to haves. What we absolutely need in a leader is someone who gets the big calls right and steers us through difficult times. Boris's record on this is mixed, I don't dispute that for a moment. For every good call there is an unnecessary blunder, sometimes more than one.
But I am sick to death of this gotcha mentality in the media which means every little thing has to be the big thing and all sense of proportion is lost. There was a stunning interview by Justin Webb on Friday on the Today program where he was frothing that Labour was missing out on the chance to damage the PM by voting for new restrictions next week. The Labour Shadow gently tried to point out that what Labour was doing was supporting the recommendations of the CMO and the CSO and that just might be just a little more important than some political spat.
If I was editor of the Today program Webb would have done his last interview. It would have disgraced a red top chasing down a dodgy celebrity. For the BBC it was unacceptable.
The thing is that Johnson couldn't lie straight in bed. He is the Aldridge Prior of politics. Having a Prime Minister who is completely untrustworthy is highly damaging, even when he is telling the truth. If Johnson said that the sun will rise in the east, people would doubt it.
If the Tories want a sound family man, sober and of sound morals they only need to look to number 11.
The Chancellor who piled necessary taxes on NI instead of IT or a capital tax of some description? Who cut the benefits of the poorest to balance the books whilst protecting wealthy pensioners, again? I am a fan but no one in politics deserves adoration or unqualified admiration.
The Chancellor knows who the Tory base is (and of course he only ended the extension of a UC uplift he had given the poorest in the first place)
His job is to govern for the country as a whole and in particular for those who need the most help to live a decent life whether because of ill health, incapacity, afflictions etc. But he is not the worst and would make a good replacement if the current hysteria carries Boris away, which it might.
His job is to govern for the Tory 2019 voters who elected him with a majority of 80 first and deliver what they voted for.
This attitude is not going to help you achieve elected office.
Rubbish.
If Labour won a majority in 2023/4 they would govern for the priorities of Labour voters first not Tories, don't try and pretend otherwise.
That is the nature of FPTP majority governments
No one told Tony Blair.
The hunting ban, the minimum wage, devolved parliaments and the EU social chapter, taxes on pension funds, ending assisted places at private schools etc were certainly not delivering what Tory voters voted for in 1997 even if he was much less leftwing than most Labour PMs. After Blair invaded Iraq he annoyed leftwing voters too.
Blair is therefore the classic example of someone who tried to please everyone, ended up pleasing almost noone
I think you'll find that some Tory voters, mainly admittedly in urban areas were, and indeed are, happy with the hunting ban. The minimum wage has worked out well, too. AFAIK no-one seeks to repay either of those. The only policy that has been significantly changed is that relating the EU. And the Conservatives supported Blair's Iraq policy. Had they not done so it would have not passed them Commons.
Some but not all, especially not those involved in hunting in rural areas. Most Tory voters of course opposed Blair's EU policies and expansion of free movement absent transition controls, hence they voted for Brexit in 2016. So Blair certainly did not govern for Tory voters.
He then annoyed his leftwing base by invading Iraq and introducing tuition fees, so having tried to please everyone in 1997, by the time he left office he ended up pleasing almost nobody
I'm sure you cannot draw that conclusion about the position of Conservative voters vis a vis the EU in the late 90's. Farage was still a City trader, seen as odd by his peers. And, looking at the figures, had the Conservatives not voted with the Government over Iraq, but had instead voted against the War, the Government would have been defeated and we would not have been dragged into war.
One can, of course, argue, that the average Iraqi is better off without Saddam but they've gone through, and are still going though much suffering to reach that point, and I'm not sure that they'd all agree with you.
Tory voters by the late 1990s and early 2000s were strongly eurosceptic. Blair still introduced the EU social chapter, signed the Nice and Amsterdam treaties towards an EU constitution and of course introduced free movement without restriction in 2004, none of which was supported by Tory voters.
He then annoyed leftwing voters with the Iraq War. So as I said he tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing almost nobody, neither Tories nor his leftwing core vote. He still appealed to some centrist Blairites but by 2007 Labour were ready to dump him in favour of Brown who was more appealing to their base
Not sure whence comes your evidence for 'strongly' eurosceptic in the mid to late Blair years. Not my recollection. And gung-ho Tories were all for the Iraq invasion.
Well for starters Tory members overwhelmingly voted for the eurosceptic IDS over the pro EU Ken Clarke even as early as 2001 and the Tories under IDS and the equally eurosceptic Howard still got over 30%.
You are yet again missing the point completely on Iraq as Blair lost his leftwing base over that.
So my point stands, Blair tried to please everyone in 1997, by 2007 he had neither Tories or his leftwing base and while he still had some centrists that was not enough for him to keep the Labour leadership and stop Brown replacing him as PM and as a more leftwing Labour leader
60:40. Overwhelming?
Blair never really had a 'left-wing' base. And it was always understood that Blair would at some point give way to Brown.
Politics is rarely black and white; wholly good vs wholly evil. Nor does it stand still; it's a living thing and, like all such changes and evolves. Something which almost 70 years of watching, sometimes involved, sometimes not has taught me.
60 40 is a landslide on any definition.
Labour tolerated Blair as long as he won general elections by big majorities, they never really felt he was leftwing enough.
As soon as his much of his leftwing base deserted him for the LDs in 2005 they forced him out as leader swiftly after in 2007 in favour of Brown
No-one ever thought Brown was left-wing. He co-founded New Labour and was Blair's BFF (until he wasn't). The difference is Brown was a Party man and Blair was a Blair man.
Brown as PM raised the top rate of income tax to 50%, something Blair never contemplated and also spent more than Blair, withdrew the last British forces from Iraq and was less in favour of using the private sector in public services
Starmer is now not keen on vaccine passports, pitching as reluctantly going with plan B, only last month he didn't think they went far enough and wanted passport++ scheme.
Starmer's been consistently inconsistent throughout the pandemic. I'm not convinced he'd do a better job than Johnson. May likely would have been on the ball.
He can see the BBC threatened with being slimmed down, at the same time Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Disney throw huge amounts of money at anyone with a scintilla of talent. He sees the BBC's strength in not having budgets, just creativity and letting people get on with it, He notes that at HBO he only has to talk to two people, but at the BBC it's more like eighteen. .... He also talked about the two notes he got from the BBC when making The Thick Of It, one was to remove Michael Tucker's line "That's as inevitable as what they'll find in Jimmy Savile's basement." Pre-Savile death, of course.
Exactly what is it a breach of? You need to specify what activity is illegal and which regulation it broke, and how.
As you do with any law.
Posted last night
I have commented in this story. From what I have been told - social quiz, alcohol being drunk, lots of people together at the office (teams of 6, up to 24 in one room) - it's a clear breach of the govt's guidance and a potential breach of the law, including by the PM https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1469788795813998595
Guidance is not the same as the law, as I kept saying ad nauseam last year.
A "potential breach" is a marvellously elastic phrase.
It is presentationally very bad for the PM because it looks contemptuous and also because of the stupid lies around it all - and the fact that seemingly every government department was doing the same thing.
But the risk for Labour now is that they will over-egg it and make it seem as if wearing tinsel in the office is somehow a criminal offence for which people should be locked up.
Wise words and the danger for labour and others is they start to look as if we cannot enjoy ourselves in this difficult environment and to be honest in my company wearing tinsel and santa hats by the staff in December was normal practice
Starmer is undoubtedly a roundhead Puritan Labour leader, whereas Boris is definitely a fun loving Cavalier.
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
OMG! Bottom meet Barrel
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
At the moment we are part Essex roundhead, part Cavalier, as we are also partly in Oxford which was firmly Cavalier and indeed the royalists HQ.
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron are as is Portillo and Heseltine, Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Corbyn was part cavalier, part roundhead
Could I put it to you that maybe none of these people are Roundheads or Cavaliers because those groups ceased to exist over 400 years ago!
Just saying.
HYUFD has never moved on from the 1750s.
He actually means it.
1650s shirley?
Indeed, 1750s is a bit too modern for me
Talking of which, anyone heard from Jack W recently?
One thing I haven't seen analysed is the difference between what the laws actually said at the time and the guidelines. The latter are not the law.
Are people sure that the two aren't being confused? The police were often confused by this as well, one reason why so many Covid prosecutions were dropped by the CPS?
Last year on 29 December we had a pub quiz at Daughter's pub. I was quiz mistress. Tables were set the right distance apart with all the rule of 6 and mask rules in place. We checked the rules at the time. Maybe it was because we were in a different tier, I dunno.
Appreciate that this doesn't explain the political impact. And there is also the question of the spirit of the rules. But, much as I dislike the PM, there are far worse things his government has done, than him hosting a quiz in the office via Zoom.
I also hope to God for Labour's sake than no Labour MP flouted the rules or the spirit of them at any point last autumn or Xmas.
I am not trying to defend what happened, but was interested to see this article, which ventures to suggest no laws were broken...
If Hamilton gets fastest lap then he and Vercrashen go out, who is champion? Does Hamilton win the fastest lap point or does he need to finish the race to get that?
You need to finish, in the top ten, for the FL point.
Crudely, Hamilton will win if he finishes ahead of Verstappen.
Unless it's a one point place difference and Verstappen has a FL, but I don't think that's feasible.
1 - UK has stated that the 'current round of fish negotiations is concluded', with about 10-15% of remaining Macron demands fulfilled. Presumably they scraped some evidence together, or made firm decisions where they could.
So presumably more tantrums incoming soon from Petit Putin.
UK govt as ever not being proactive enough in pushing back wrt this. Should have done this back in June.
So Truss's desk is slightly more clear than it was last week.
2 - France up in arms about a Pres. candidate who has insulted Macron:
Then this astoundingly contemptuous tirade against Macron: "We will leave in his window this plastic mannequin, this automaton which wanders in a labyrinth of mirrors, this faceless mask which disfigures ours. We will leave this adolescent to seek himself eternally." https://twitter.com/frasermatthew/status/1467789119912873986
Seems rather more polite than the stuff Macron comes out with about elected leaders who won't do what he wants.
A superb description of Macron. Zemmour can write. I’d vote for him if I were - god forfend - French
One thing I haven't seen analysed is the difference between what the laws actually said at the time and the guidelines. The latter are not the law.
Are people sure that the two aren't being confused? The police were often confused by this as well, one reason why so many Covid prosecutions were dropped by the CPS?
Last year on 29 December we had a pub quiz at Daughter's pub. I was quiz mistress. Tables were set the right distance apart with all the rule of 6 and mask rules in place. We checked the rules at the time. Maybe it was because we were in a different tier, I dunno.
Appreciate that this doesn't explain the political impact. And there is also the question of the spirit of the rules. But, much as I dislike the PM, there are far worse things his government has done, than him hosting a quiz in the office via Zoom.
I also hope to God for Labour's sake than no Labour MP flouted the rules or the spirit of them at any point last autumn or Xmas.
I am not trying to defend what happened, but was interested to see this article, which ventures to suggest no laws were broken...
The article is premised on a mis-reading of the law as I understand it.
The article is written by a barrister and they are always wrong 50% of the time (one side has to lose in a judgement ), but it misses the point. People laughing about social distancing and not doing it whilst out in the country people were skipping funerals or watching loved ones die via Zoom or through perspex screens.
People will not be voting this week on the finer points of law, they will be influenced by what they saw, how they felt and how many friends or family they have lost to the plague
He can see the BBC threatened with being slimmed down, at the same time Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Disney throw huge amounts of money at anyone with a scintilla of talent. He sees the BBC's strength in not having budgets, just creativity and letting people get on with it, He notes that at HBO he only has to talk to two people, but at the BBC it's more like eighteen. .... He also talked about the two notes he got from the BBC when making The Thick Of It, one was to remove Michael Tucker's line "That's as inevitable as what they'll find in Jimmy Savile's basement." Pre-Savile death, of course.
The problem is that in the BBC, as in much of the public sector, any attempt at efficiency or reducing headcount is fought by slashing the people who do the work, in an attempt to create a backlash.
I recall an incident where an email from a very stupid administrator in the NHS was published. She boasted that, to push back against administrative savings, she'd put most of the nurses in the cancer section of St Ormund's Street Hospital on notice.
An interesting thing in the reaction to this was a general sense of "yeah, that's bad, but she was just doing what you do. Look, squirrel", in the press.
1 - UK has stated that the 'current round of fish negotiations is concluded', with about 10-15% of remaining Macron demands fulfilled. Presumably they scraped some evidence together, or made firm decisions where they could.
So presumably more tantrums incoming soon from Petit Putin.
UK govt as ever not being proactive enough in pushing back wrt this. Should have done this back in June.
So Truss's desk is slightly more clear than it was last week.
2 - France up in arms about a Pres. candidate who has insulted Macron:
Then this astoundingly contemptuous tirade against Macron: "We will leave in his window this plastic mannequin, this automaton which wanders in a labyrinth of mirrors, this faceless mask which disfigures ours. We will leave this adolescent to seek himself eternally." https://twitter.com/frasermatthew/status/1467789119912873986
Seems rather more polite than the stuff Macron comes out with about elected leaders who won't do what he wants.
A superb description of Macron. Zemmour can write. I’d vote for him if I were - god forfend - French
Macron is a classic of the French Establishment who marketed himself as the polite kind of populist. One would would be acceptable in the fashionable salons as well as the local corner bar. He turned out to be popular in neither.
What do we think has been pixelated from the bottom centre of the photo, between the two clocks? I was assuming it was another clock but, pixelated for what reason?
It shows the time in Moscow ?
My guess is the pixellated clock-blocker is a photo of young Wilf.
Why does everyone assume that the TV picture shown is actually on the leaker's wall?
If I was the leaker I would photoshop my TV picture onto a photo of someone else's wall and then obscure something in the picture to give it veracity.
How many politicians have 3 world clocks on their mantelpiece?
Comments
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Viral-Search-Covid-19-Alina-Chan-ebook
Even if he was banged to rights and evidence easy to find, there is zero chance the police, CPS and courts will all prosecute anyway so why bother with the law.
Self-administered and self-reported LFT results can be falsified without any fear of detection or consequence, and therefore render the whole effort totally pointless.
I would go so far as to say that the vaxport proposal that the Government is making is, therefore, a transparent and obvious waste of public money.
He then annoyed leftwing voters with the Iraq War. So as I said he tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing almost nobody, neither Tories nor his leftwing core vote. He still appealed to some centrist Blairites but by 2007 Labour were ready to dump him in favour of Brown who was more appealing to their base
I had one a month ago.
As far as I can tell there are texts from NHS central and your GP, neither seems to know your vaccination appointments with the other one?
They will drop it later on and it will just be vaxports.
I’ll go first.
Monday - Inflation hit 8%, amid market panic, emergency meeting at BoE raises interest rates 0.17%.
BBC NEWS coverage (under new BBC Director General ‘Dilyn’) is dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out.
Tuesday - Scientists rolled out from first light to explain how Omicron will take one loved one from each family this Christmas unless restrictions are passed by Parliament. Gove makes compromise to rebels: pub passports or no pub, the nation is watching you; Rebellion fizzles out. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out.
Wednesday - Having used Ukraine as diversion, Putin invades UK. UK ministries slow to respond due to being at “unofficial gathering in Santa hat”/WFH (delete according to which media outlet you work for).
NATO respond by releasing their UFO files. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out.
Thursday - the last available magic mixies cauldron identified in store in West Midlands; police erect barriers to prevent loss of life, but barriers overrun in late afternoon. The Christmas panic buying riots begin. BBC NEWS coverage dominated by how scary Omicron is and how brilliant the booster roll out. In late sports news, Liverpool (now known as Putingrad Rovers) manage to blow a 3 goal lead to Newcastleburg and lose - Eagles posts expletives many of us have never even heard of before.
Friday - Boris wins by election sending the Conservative Party home for Christmas in happy spirits.
BBC NEWS coverage dominated by “invincible Boris” the most electorally successful Conservative in history.
Have a good Sunday everyone 🙋♀️
And gung-ho Tories were all for the Iraq invasion.
Or whether other factors somehow cancel them and each other out - more obesity in the UK cancelling out more smoking in France for example.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59600519
I obviously can't say whether the 'gatherings' at No 10 breach the same law, that is for a court to decide. In the absence of a proper investigation and prosecution, public opinion will inevitably be the arbiter.
But I'm a pedant and think people shouldn't bang on about something being illegal when, in fact, it isn't. It's potentially just as much a lie as some of the things Boris spouts.
Similarly, when someone is sentenced for a crime I like to be told what crime they have actually committed. Sometimes it is obvious, but sometimes not and we are told for example that two policemen have been sent to prison for sharing photos on WhatsApp. No they haven't, they were sent to prison for misconduct in public office.
It's all more something-must-be-done-ism anyway, though. The current, limited proposals will make no difference.
He should have "lost" his life jacket every few months.
I have had a quiet morning this morning away from the political shenanigans and to be honest it is really pleasant to step back from the present cauldron of debate
I am quite clear Boris should resign, but no matter how much we 'howl into the wind' this is a matter for his mps and only they can bring about the change
There's a difference between saying masks work, in certain environments, and that mask mandates work for an endemic disease.
Again getting those who are bothered about the virus, like Foxy, to wear a quality and well fitted FFP2 or better mask like Foxy does at the football would achieve far more.
Similarly, I never understood the kerfuffle about the British ISIS members killed by drones. They were enemy combatants and just as legitimate a target as all the Iraqis and Syrians we were killing by drones.
And that would never do in an era when "feelings" and "perception" no matter how daft are the only things that count.
The "cover-up" was actually aligning stories to protect naval officers. Who did the right thing.
I am receiving 3 or 4 emails a day from test and trace even though I spoke to them on the phone.
Much rather this than miss people. Or ignore them after a couple of reminders.
I do dispute that mask mandates work over the long term.
There's a difference. The two are not the same thing.
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/politics/north-shropshire-by-election/2021/12/08/north-shropshire-by-election-odds-bookies-install-lib-dems-as-favourites/
Indeed it is the clearest contrast between a roundhead Labour leader and a Cavalier Tory leader since Brown v Cameron, albeit under May the Tories had more of a roundhead leader themselves
Anyway, if that's your opinion, what are you doing here? Essex was Puritan territory.
You are yet again missing the point completely on Iraq as Blair lost his leftwing base over that.
So my point stands, Blair tried to please everyone in 1997, by 2007 he had neither Tories or his leftwing base and while he still had some centrists that was not enough for him to keep the Labour leadership and stop Brown replacing him as PM and as a more leftwing Labour leader
However the division runs across party lines eg Blair was a cavalier as much as Boris and Cameron and Osborne are as is Portillo and Heseltine and Mandelson. Thatcher was a roundhead as was IDS and Ann Widdecombe say as is May and as was Brown and as is Starmer.
Corbyn was part cavalier, part roundhead
Has BJ gone yet?
Two titbits:
1 - UK has stated that the 'current round of fish negotiations is concluded', with about 10-15% of remaining Macron demands fulfilled. Presumably they scraped some evidence together, or made firm decisions where they could.
Jersey taking a similar position. Now moving on to individual quotas etc.
https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/130-french-boats-can-stay-33-must-go-fishing-negotiations-come-close/#.YbXp-L3P1EY
So presumably more tantrums incoming soon from Petit Putin.
UK govt as ever not being proactive enough in pushing back wrt this. Should have done this back in June.
So Truss's desk is slightly more clear than it was last week.
2 - France up in arms about a Pres. candidate who has insulted Macron:
Then this astoundingly contemptuous tirade against Macron: "We will leave in his window this plastic mannequin, this automaton which wanders in a labyrinth of mirrors, this faceless mask which disfigures ours. We will leave this adolescent to seek himself eternally."
https://twitter.com/frasermatthew/status/1467789119912873986
Seems rather more polite than the stuff Macron comes out with about elected leaders who won't do what he wants.
https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1470008037763170308?s=20
Just saying.
I've got a bottle of red wine to watch the race live (thanks to Sky and Ch4), and Mrs J is downstairs cooking with the little 'un, and I've got permission to eat in front of the TV.
But I hope the race is uncontroversial, if not boring, and that the title race is well won.
I fear I'm going to be disappointed.
Comparing the overall Covid death rate for England over the entire pandemic with that for Scotland - and Scotland's is indeed lower - we could conclude that the Edinburgh Government's more cautious approach has saved 1,800 Scots who would otherwise have died if devolved policy did not exist - and that's a crude calculation that doesn't take into account a variety of factors that mitigate against Scotland (a somewhat older and sicker population) but also against England (higher population density and a much more ethnically diverse population,) or the deleterious socio-economic effects that stricter regulation has visited upon Scotland throughout most of that period.
Northern Ireland, overall, has done better than Scotland and Wales has fared worse than England for per capita Covid mortality, but we're none of us a million miles apart. So, if the UK Government really has been as grossly negligent as you seem to want to imply then that hardly reflects well on the devolved administrations, either.
Blair never really had a 'left-wing' base. And it was always understood that Blair would at some point give way to Brown.
Politics is rarely black and white; wholly good vs wholly evil. Nor does it stand still; it's a living thing and, like all such changes and evolves.
Something which almost 70 years of watching, sometimes involved, sometimes not has taught me.
For me, as many cases as happen naturally occur is a GOOD thing. Especially if those who are bothered about the virus are protected by wearing a quality FFP2 etc mask while those who aren't, are not wearing one.
That segments the risk so that the right people are getting immunity more, which raises the herd immunity levels for the benefit of everyone including those having to wear a mask because they're afraid.
I don't accept the premise that preventing "cases" is a good thing. It may have been early on in the pandemic pre vaccines but it isn't anymore. I don't want cases reduced by NPIs, so them being reduced by NPIs isn't a benefit.
The BMJ article says how states (and nations) with mask mandates have had lower case rates. That is an argument AGAINST mask mandates for me. Those states have failed to get immunity.
Labour tolerated Blair as long as he won general elections by big majorities, they never really felt he was leftwing enough.
As soon as much of his leftwing base deserted him for the LDs in 2005 they forced him out as leader and PM swiftly after in 2007 in favour of Brown
He actually means it.
There can't have been that many people in that room, even by the standards of covid breaking habits of the staff.
But indeed, Essex was Puritan for a bit, and indeed had a Protestant Sect known as the "Peculiar People":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peculiar_People
Founded by James Banyard, no less.
(quotes badly messed up)
But then its like Big Dom blowing himself up. If he had given it the water works, said he made a terrible mistake because he was scared for his family, resigned, a few soft soap interviews about how he has been targeted by the hate mob and thought he wouldn't be able to protect his family etc, and then 6-12 months, he would have been back.
....
He also talked about the two notes he got from the BBC when making The Thick Of It, one was to remove Michael Tucker's line "That's as inevitable as what they'll find in Jimmy Savile's basement." Pre-Savile death, of course.
https://bleedingcool.com/tv/armando-iannucci-says-bbc-needs-to-tell-the-government-to-fck-off/
Crudely, Hamilton will win if he finishes ahead of Verstappen.
Unless it's a one point place difference and Verstappen has a FL, but I don't think that's feasible.
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1469983528100188160?s=20
People will not be voting this week on the finer points of law, they will be influenced by what they saw, how they felt and how many friends or family they have lost to the plague
I recall an incident where an email from a very stupid administrator in the NHS was published. She boasted that, to push back against administrative savings, she'd put most of the nurses in the cancer section of St Ormund's Street Hospital on notice.
An interesting thing in the reaction to this was a general sense of "yeah, that's bad, but she was just doing what you do. Look, squirrel", in the press.
He rather reminds me of Blair. Only lesser.
If I was the leaker I would photoshop my TV picture onto a photo of someone else's wall and then obscure something in the picture to give it veracity.
How many politicians have 3 world clocks on their mantelpiece?