A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
"Unless saved by rising wages, ministers are about to stumble out of Covid straight into the path of an oncoming lorry marked “Lower Living Standards”."
As I think I have said before, the next GE is going to be far closer than many people think at the moment. Starmer and Reeves have all to play for as the Tories get into an almighty economic mess.
It's going to be a peculiar mix of full employment, inflation and business failures
Medium to small business failures, I suspect. Large, and primarily off-shore owned ones will be OK. Not too sure about 'full' employment, though. Even allowing for recent decisions, I suspect there'll be a lot more zero hours and similar short-term contracts.
Indeed.
This Tory government has been peculiarly hostile to the interests of small and medium sized businesses, normally a bedrock of support.
Quite shocking that the DFE have admitted in their own report that masks are basically just theatre and then pushed forwards anyway.
"visible outward signal of safety behaviour and a reminder of Covid-19 risks"
Because the benefit in reducing absence was almost zero, or at least statistically insignificant.
The decision should be reversed asap and good on those kids who are refusing to comply.
My 12yo has to wear her mask now. It is hard for them having to do this yet if I walk into any pub in the country I can have a drink, chat and laugh with no requirement at all. Given this latest study this mask mandate should be scrapped.
On topic, Sunak has 'faded' a bit too. Simply punters who got overexcited about the imminent defenestration of Johnson realising that he's going to be around for a bit longer and so, with more time for events to derail ambitions or for more contenders to emerge, they become less attractive.
I traded out Truss before Christmas as I thought she'd got too short. Not convinced she makes the final two in an contest soon and far from convinced there will be a contest soon.
Quite shocking that the DFE have admitted in their own report that masks are basically just theatre and then pushed forwards anyway.
"visible outward signal of safety behaviour and a reminder of Covid-19 risks"
Because the benefit in reducing absence was almost zero, or at least statistically insignificant.
The decision should be reversed asap and good on those kids who are refusing to comply.
I was thinking that, if I was still at secondary school and wanted to be mischevious in a class I didn't like, I would go in wearing a motorcycle helmet or some kind of other full head protection citing 'covid safety'.
Hasn't she just disappeared from view? I haven't noted any news events.
She's off looking for the Holy Grail solution to Brexit
There is only one solution. And a lot of people aren’t prepared to take their fingers out their ears yet and listen as it is explained in nice, simple language they can understand.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
...an excellent photo leading the article. An interesting piece that reminds those who haven't made the connection that the parallels between Hitlers rise to power in the 30's with a sophisticated state apparatus and population and Trumps are too close for comfort.
The other parallel with the 30s is that Hitler's rise to power was (I would argue) driven to a large extent by fear of communism: similarly, the American populist right is to a large extent driven by fear of the American left and what has been going on in cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
"Colston judge was worried about pressure on jury: Defence lawyers were told off for urging jury to be on 'right side of history' in statue-toppling case
'Colston Four' were all cleared of causing criminal damage to Bristol statue Judge feared defence lawyers may have placed jury under 'wrongful' pressure Barrister Liam Walker apologised for urging jury to 'be on right side of history'"
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense. Maybe he will get Brexit finished at some point, even if it will be shit, but looking like he won't even get that far.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense.
We have a Conservative in power, Boris, who also clearly defeated a Socialist, Corbyn, in 2019 which May failed to do in 2017
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
HYUFD even as a Conservative I assume you really don't think it was better to have Trump as president?
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense. Maybe he will get Brexit finished at some point, even if it will be shit, but looking like he won't even get that far.
Brexit was achieved in January 2020 and with a trade deal with the EU in January 2021
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense.
We have a Conservative in power, Boris, who also clearly defeated a Socialist, Corbyn, in 2019 which May failed to do in 2017
No, he is just a selfish narcissist who wears a blue rosette out of expediency.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
HYUFD even as a Conservative I assume you really don't think it was better to have Trump as president?
As a British conservative maybe not but for US conservatives (and remember US conservatives are the most rightwing in the western world) then it was a good thing Trump was President
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
Any link to the study? Most of the story is paywalled for me and I'm always interested in mask studies for Covid (as an epidemiologist, because estimating efficacy is an interesting epidemiological problem - there's lots of confounding, potential misclassification bias and the benefits are at the population level more than the individual level)
Thanks, interesting approach and makes sense given the lack of data for a more conventional multivariable model. I've done plenty of propensity matching, but not come across this particular variation before. I like its elegance.
On the original Times story, the results are not statistically significant, but the point estimates are different over a short (two-three week) period. Absences were 20% higher (weighted) in the no mask group compared to the mask group (again, not significant evidence though). Different decreases in absences in the goups. Could add up to a substantial difference over a longer period. Would be interesting to see a larger study over a longer period. Also, the analysis is on absence rate of pupils. Absence rate of teachers would also be a relevant measure (but with fewer teachers, a larger sample would likely be needed to find anything interesting).
Whether masks are worth the downsides is of course a different question. There may be better options for schools (e.g. ventilation/air purification).
[Added some edits to clarify my viewpoint - what I wrote originally looked a bit too pro-masks-in-schools which is not really my view]
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense.
We have a Conservative in power, Boris, who also clearly defeated a Socialist, Corbyn, in 2019 which May failed to do in 2017
NoneOfTheAbove's point - and it's a pretty good one - is you've quite obviously changed your position from saying the main thing is to have a conservative to the main thing is to get Brexit done.
That's fine - I understand why it was a strong motivating factor in 2019. But you've been out-argued here - by your own admission, Johnson was about getting Brexit done rather than progressing conservative priorities more broadly. And that's part of his problem - now that Brexit is done (at least insofar as we are literally out), you do have to ask if you're the Tory Party whether conservative priorities are best advanced by a shambolic liar, or by someone else.
...an excellent photo leading the article. An interesting piece that reminds those who haven't made the connection that the parallels between Hitlers rise to power in the 30's with a sophisticated state apparatus and population and Trumps are too close for comfort.
The other parallel with the 30s is that Hitler's rise to power was (I would argue) driven to a large extent by fear of communism: similarly, the American populist right is to a large extent driven by fear of the American left and what has been going on in cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
Most people just want a normal and quiet life.
I don't think that's right, in either case. My mother lived in Danzig/Gdansk at the time and was frequently in Berlin, where my grandfather was working. She said the overwhelming driver was desperation over the recession coupled with a sense of national humiliation over losing WW1. The communists were by then relatively marginal, and preoccupied with feuding with the social democrats; it was obvious that they were nowhere near power. She primarily blamed the anti-Hitler moderates, who folded at critical moments.
In the US, my Republican friends tell me that they just feel the Democrats mess up all the time, and get away with blaming everything on Trump. They are contemptuous about Biden, evasive about Trump, and feel it's time to bring back what they see as sensible government. Seattle etc. is mentioned in passing as an example of "Democrat shambles" but seems as far as I can tell very much a secondary thing, seen as an example of their main point.
But SSI/TimT and our other US contributors will be able to advise better.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
There is no need to comment, for anything one might say, every reader is already thinking.
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
Thr thing i think people (including myself) find hard to grasp is the sheer mind bending capacity of cargo ships.
It seems intuitively completely impossible for us to be able to transpprt sufficient gas by ship to power us but we totally can.
The maritime industry is truly astonishing, and almost totally absent from the general public’s consciousness. Bizarre.
If you know any youngsters looking for a great career, give them a helpful nudge.
Agreed. One of my best friends who got only a few Highers has had an amazing career in the Merchant Navy (ETO).
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
...an excellent photo leading the article. An interesting piece that reminds those who haven't made the connection that the parallels between Hitlers rise to power in the 30's with a sophisticated state apparatus and population and Trumps are too close for comfort.
The other parallel with the 30s is that Hitler's rise to power was (I would argue) driven to a large extent by fear of communism: similarly, the American populist right is to a large extent driven by fear of the American left and what has been going on in cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
Most people just want a normal and quiet life.
I don't think that's right, in either case. My mother lived in Danzig/Gdansk at the time and was frequently in Berlin, where my grandfather was working. She said the overwhelming driver was desperation over the recession coupled with a sense of national humiliation over losing WW1. The communists were by then relatively marginal, and preoccupied with feuding with the social democrats; it was obvious that they were nowhere near power. She primarily blamed the anti-Hitler moderates, who folded at critical moments.
In the US, my Republican friends tell me that they just feel the Democrats mess up all the time, and get away with blaming everything on Trump. They are contemptuous about Biden, evasive about Trump, and feel it's time to bring back what they see as sensible government. Seattle etc. is mentioned in passing as an example of "Democrat shambles" but seems as far as I can tell very much a secondary thing, seen as an example of their main point.
But SSI/TimT and our other US contributors will be able to advise better.
Good to see that you have Republican friends. I fear that these type of political friendships are becoming less and less common.
Shocking videos from Almaty. Rarely have I had more humble and welcoming hosts than in Kazakhstan.
As for China and Taiwan, whether China is successful there rather depends on whether you think this is the Chinese Century.
I look at the foreign policy behaviour of China and Russia and see a lashing out from positions of severe and terminal domestic weakness. The trouble is that the West isn’t in good shape either.
China has always been prepared to play the long game with everything it does. The CCP is not slaughtering the Uighers, it’s slowly and patiently tilting the demographic trends its way and dismantling the Uigher cultural heritage in favour of Hanification. Equally the policy with Taiwan has always been similar. Steady as she goes. It’s blown of course recently but a growing economic blockade of the island would do the trick eventually.
Because does the West really have the strength and solidarity to do much about it? Well for starters it’s not going to sink a Chinese carrier group over it.
Someone mentioned the selective default on bonds held by the Chinese government. Ok. But what’s the worth of the assets (both physical and IP) held by corporate America in China? And corporate Europe for that matter? Are we prepared to switch off exports to China? Penury for Germany lies down that road. And switch off imports?? No.
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia. You’d like to think power brokers in the West are quietly figuring out how to undo it, piece by piece. And reminding Xi that all their fates are tied together. But we all know they’re not.
So where does that leave us? At a guess, in a period where it looks like the globe is tilting on its axis eastwards and obituaries will be written for Western democracy and Pax Americana. And at a hope, shortly thereafter in a new era where the innovation and optimism of the Western system puts us back on course as the contradictions of the autocrats implode.
Might not work out that way though. We might be seeing the decay of all the great empires simultaneously with civilisation about to enter a sustained period of regression in technology, prosperity and population. I’d be tempted to give that scenario greater odds than a global Pax Sinica frankly. All fascinating viewing from those UAPs no doubt.
Can anyone think of a more ridiculous time to have cut our ties with the EU or have in power the people who orchestrated it?
Well given the fact that the Germans are now sucking up to the Chinese and excusing all their crimes I think it is a bloody good time not to be associated with the EU.
That argument might carry more weight if
1. It was true 2. The British state’s pals were all squeaky clean
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
HYUFD even as a Conservative I assume you really don't think it was better to have Trump as president?
As a British conservative maybe not but for US conservatives (and remember US conservatives are the most rightwing in the western world) then it was a good thing Trump was President
So - if you are a Trump supporter then it was a good thing that Trump was president. Fair enough, but you seem to be saying that you personally think that Trump was a sensible choice as candidate (because he won), and that it was a good thing he became president (because he was a "conservative in power")?
As Putin ready his troops for battle, ours are sent to prop up the NHS.
Not sure what to feel about that.
Certainly doesn't feel like 'Global Britain'! But then I don't see what we could do in Khazakstan, useful or otherwise!
Of all the vacuous slogans dreamed by this government GLOBAL BRITAIN is the one that makes people groan.
....And thanks to Liz Truss's ownership of it she has ruled herself out of ever being taken seriously. It makes Milliband's 'Edstone' look profound
I was at an FT conference a couple of years ago where she spoke (this was during May's leadership). I thought she was a reasonably accomplished speaker, and a bit better than the journalists on before her. But up next was John McDonnell. And he was 10x more impressive. An avowed socialist and not by any means known as a political superstar, at a meeting of business leaders, but he had infinitely more charisma. It put Truss into context.
(That afternoon everyone's favourite warmonger (Sir) Tonty Blair turned up for a panel and, well, he truly was in another league but we knew that anyway).
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
HYUFD even as a Conservative I assume you really don't think it was better to have Trump as president?
As a British conservative maybe not but for US conservatives (and remember US conservatives are the most rightwing in the western world) then it was a good thing Trump was President
Thanks for that reply HYUFD. Is Trump a conservative though? He is no Bushx2 or Reagan and he seem to be destroying the Republican party as we used to know it as it seems to have lost its sane constituency.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense.
We have a Conservative in power, Boris, who also clearly defeated a Socialist, Corbyn, in 2019 which May failed to do in 2017
No, he is just a selfish narcissist who wears a blue rosette out of expediency.
One of the interesting aspects of Trump, too, is that you could easily have seen him running as a Democrat had he seen a gap in the market. US conservatives might like him because he'll pursue conservative policies but he isn't on the (far) right because he's got a firm set of principles, or indeed any at all.
...an excellent photo leading the article. An interesting piece that reminds those who haven't made the connection that the parallels between Hitlers rise to power in the 30's with a sophisticated state apparatus and population and Trumps are too close for comfort.
The other parallel with the 30s is that Hitler's rise to power was (I would argue) driven to a large extent by fear of communism: similarly, the American populist right is to a large extent driven by fear of the American left and what has been going on in cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
Most people just want a normal and quiet life.
I don't think that's right, in either case. My mother lived in Danzig/Gdansk at the time and was frequently in Berlin, where my grandfather was working. She said the overwhelming driver was desperation over the recession coupled with a sense of national humiliation over losing WW1. The communists were by then relatively marginal, and preoccupied with feuding with the social democrats; it was obvious that they were nowhere near power. She primarily blamed the anti-Hitler moderates, who folded at critical moments.
In the US, my Republican friends tell me that they just feel the Democrats mess up all the time, and get away with blaming everything on Trump. They are contemptuous about Biden, evasive about Trump, and feel it's time to bring back what they see as sensible government. Seattle etc. is mentioned in passing as an example of "Democrat shambles" but seems as far as I can tell very much a secondary thing, seen as an example of their main point.
But SSI/TimT and our other US contributors will be able to advise better.
Thanks Nick. I'd rate your primary sources as more useful than my vague impressions on Germany! On America, what I meant was that the reasons people vote Republican despite Trump is that they perceive the Democrats as far-left. Seattle, Portland, etc are examples of what happens when the far left is left to do its own thing - but Virginia was another recent example of centrists voting for the right, despite the associations with Trump and his supporters, because of the perception that the Democrats were far left (in that particular case, the issue of critical race theory being taught in schools was given.) I should emphasise that I haven't talked to an American IRL about politics for years!
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
There is no need to comment, for anything one might say, every reader is already thinking.
He does highlight one reason conservatives do so well electorally in the UK and US. Their No.1 priority is winning. An object lesson that seems to need to be learned anew by every generation of left of centre leaders.
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
Thr thing i think people (including myself) find hard to grasp is the sheer mind bending capacity of cargo ships.
It seems intuitively completely impossible for us to be able to transpprt sufficient gas by ship to power us but we totally can.
The maritime industry is truly astonishing, and almost totally absent from the general public’s consciousness. Bizarre.
If you know any youngsters looking for a great career, give them a helpful nudge.
Agreed. One of my best friends who got only a few Highers has had an amazing career in the Merchant Navy (ETO).
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
The broken bones and STIs are however just an optional extra.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
HYUFD even as a Conservative I assume you really don't think it was better to have Trump as president?
As a British conservative maybe not but for US conservatives (and remember US conservatives are the most rightwing in the western world) then it was a good thing Trump was President
So - if you are a Trump supporter then it was a good thing that Trump was president. Fair enough, but you seem to be saying that you personally think that Trump was a sensible choice as candidate (because he won), and that it was a good thing he became president (because he was a "conservative in power")?
If I was American I would normally vote Democrat (at least for President), the last Republican I would have voted for for President was Bush in 2000.
I was not talking from my perspective but US conservatives perspectives, in the US I would be an Independent not a Republican
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
Thr thing i think people (including myself) find hard to grasp is the sheer mind bending capacity of cargo ships.
It seems intuitively completely impossible for us to be able to transpprt sufficient gas by ship to power us but we totally can.
The maritime industry is truly astonishing, and almost totally absent from the general public’s consciousness. Bizarre.
If you know any youngsters looking for a great career, give them a helpful nudge.
Agreed. One of my best friends who got only a few Highers has had an amazing career in the Merchant Navy (ETO).
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
The broken bones and STIs are however just an optional extra.
The fact the entire crew have exactly the same portfolio of STIs is a concern.
The broken arm was a result of a drunken attempt at the dirty dancing lift during a storm.
Quite shocking that the DFE have admitted in their own report that masks are basically just theatre and then pushed forwards anyway.
"visible outward signal of safety behaviour and a reminder of Covid-19 risks"
Because the benefit in reducing absence was almost zero, or at least statistically insignificant.
The decision should be reversed asap and good on those kids who are refusing to comply.
My 12yo has to wear her mask now. It is hard for them having to do this yet if I walk into any pub in the country I can have a drink, chat and laugh with no requirement at all. Given this latest study this mask mandate should be scrapped.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense.
We have a Conservative in power, Boris, who also clearly defeated a Socialist, Corbyn, in 2019 which May failed to do in 2017
NoneOfTheAbove's point - and it's a pretty good one - is you've quite obviously changed your position from saying the main thing is to have a conservative to the main thing is to get Brexit done.
That's fine - I understand why it was a strong motivating factor in 2019. But you've been out-argued here - by your own admission, Johnson was about getting Brexit done rather than progressing conservative priorities more broadly. And that's part of his problem - now that Brexit is done (at least insofar as we are literally out), you do have to ask if you're the Tory Party whether conservative priorities are best advanced by a shambolic liar, or by someone else.
I voted for May's Tory Party in 2017. Had more people voted for May's Tory Party in 2017 and she had won a big majority and easily seen off Corbyn and had a majority to get her Brexit Deal through we would never have got Boris and May would likely still be PM.
Those who failed to vote for May in 2017 and Labour MPs who failed to vote for May's Deal are arguably more responsible for Boris being PM now than I am
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
Thr thing i think people (including myself) find hard to grasp is the sheer mind bending capacity of cargo ships.
It seems intuitively completely impossible for us to be able to transpprt sufficient gas by ship to power us but we totally can.
The maritime industry is truly astonishing, and almost totally absent from the general public’s consciousness. Bizarre.
If you know any youngsters looking for a great career, give them a helpful nudge.
Agreed. One of my best friends who got only a few Highers has had an amazing career in the Merchant Navy (ETO).
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
The broken bones and STIs are however just an optional extra.
The fact the entire crew have exactly the same portfolio of STIs is a concern.
The broken arm was a result of a drunken attempt at the dirty dancing lift during a storm.
Not selling her. Nothing more stupid than being drunk at sea, never mind in heavy weather.
Quite shocking that the DFE have admitted in their own report that masks are basically just theatre and then pushed forwards anyway.
"visible outward signal of safety behaviour and a reminder of Covid-19 risks"
Because the benefit in reducing absence was almost zero, or at least statistically insignificant.
The decision should be reversed asap and good on those kids who are refusing to comply.
My 12yo has to wear her mask now. It is hard for them having to do this yet if I walk into any pub in the country I can have a drink, chat and laugh with no requirement at all. Given this latest study this mask mandate should be scrapped.
...an excellent photo leading the article. An interesting piece that reminds those who haven't made the connection that the parallels between Hitlers rise to power in the 30's with a sophisticated state apparatus and population and Trumps are too close for comfort.
The other parallel with the 30s is that Hitler's rise to power was (I would argue) driven to a large extent by fear of communism: similarly, the American populist right is to a large extent driven by fear of the American left and what has been going on in cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
Most people just want a normal and quiet life.
I don't think that's right, in either case. My mother lived in Danzig/Gdansk at the time and was frequently in Berlin, where my grandfather was working. She said the overwhelming driver was desperation over the recession coupled with a sense of national humiliation over losing WW1. The communists were by then relatively marginal, and preoccupied with feuding with the social democrats; it was obvious that they were nowhere near power. She primarily blamed the anti-Hitler moderates, who folded at critical moments.
Uh oh Nick, you'll get the angry posters telling you the the conservstices collaborating with the Facists was perfectly morally justifiable because the Commies were a massive threat.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
HYUFD even as a Conservative I assume you really don't think it was better to have Trump as president?
As a British conservative maybe not but for US conservatives (and remember US conservatives are the most rightwing in the western world) then it was a good thing Trump was President
So - if you are a Trump supporter then it was a good thing that Trump was president. Fair enough, but you seem to be saying that you personally think that Trump was a sensible choice as candidate (because he won), and that it was a good thing he became president (because he was a "conservative in power")?
If I was American I would normally vote Democrat (at least for President), the last Republican I would have voted for for President was Bush in 2000.
I was not talking from my perspective but US conservatives perspectives, in the US I would be an Independent not a Republican
Just seen you in a new light there HYUFD. I can't imagine you as a floating voter.
Shocking videos from Almaty. Rarely have I had more humble and welcoming hosts than in Kazakhstan.
As for China and Taiwan, whether China is successful there rather depends on whether you think this is the Chinese Century.
I look at the foreign policy behaviour of China and Russia and see a lashing out from positions of severe and terminal domestic weakness. The trouble is that the West isn’t in good shape either.
China has always been prepared to play the long game with everything it does. The CCP is not slaughtering the Uighers, it’s slowly and patiently tilting the demographic trends its way and dismantling the Uigher cultural heritage in favour of Hanification. Equally the policy with Taiwan has always been similar. Steady as she goes. It’s blown of course recently but a growing economic blockade of the island would do the trick eventually.
Because does the West really have the strength and solidarity to do much about it? Well for starters it’s not going to sink a Chinese carrier group over it.
Someone mentioned the selective default on bonds held by the Chinese government. Ok. But what’s the worth of the assets (both physical and IP) held by corporate America in China? And corporate Europe for that matter? Are we prepared to switch off exports to China? Penury for Germany lies down that road. And switch off imports?? No.
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia. You’d like to think power brokers in the West are quietly figuring out how to undo it, piece by piece. And reminding Xi that all their fates are tied together. But we all know they’re not.
So where does that leave us? At a guess, in a period where it looks like the globe is tilting on its axis eastwards and obituaries will be written for Western democracy and Pax Americana. And at a hope, shortly thereafter in a new era where the innovation and optimism of the Western system puts us back on course as the contradictions of the autocrats implode.
Might not work out that way though. We might be seeing the decay of all the great empires simultaneously with civilisation about to enter a sustained period of regression in technology, prosperity and population. I’d be tempted to give that scenario greater odds than a global Pax Sinica frankly. All fascinating viewing from those UAPs no doubt.
Can anyone think of a more ridiculous time to have cut our ties with the EU or have in power the people who orchestrated it?
Well given the fact that the Germans are now sucking up to the Chinese and excusing all their crimes I think it is a bloody good time not to be associated with the EU.
That argument might carry more weight if
1. It was true 2. The British state’s pals were all squeaky clean
1. It is true 2. My comment was in reply to Rogers specifically about China. Your whataboutism is irrelevant. Just like most of the rest of your views.
...an excellent photo leading the article. An interesting piece that reminds those who haven't made the connection that the parallels between Hitlers rise to power in the 30's with a sophisticated state apparatus and population and Trumps are too close for comfort.
The other parallel with the 30s is that Hitler's rise to power was (I would argue) driven to a large extent by fear of communism: similarly, the American populist right is to a large extent driven by fear of the American left and what has been going on in cities like San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
Most people just want a normal and quiet life.
I don't think that's right, in either case. My mother lived in Danzig/Gdansk at the time and was frequently in Berlin, where my grandfather was working. She said the overwhelming driver was desperation over the recession coupled with a sense of national humiliation over losing WW1. The communists were by then relatively marginal, and preoccupied with feuding with the social democrats; it was obvious that they were nowhere near power. She primarily blamed the anti-Hitler moderates, who folded at critical moments.
In the US, my Republican friends tell me that they just feel the Democrats mess up all the time, and get away with blaming everything on Trump. They are contemptuous about Biden, evasive about Trump, and feel it's time to bring back what they see as sensible government. Seattle etc. is mentioned in passing as an example of "Democrat shambles" but seems as far as I can tell very much a secondary thing, seen as an example of their main point.
But SSI/TimT and our other US contributors will be able to advise better.
That's interesting, although am I right in assuming that your Republican friends are a particular type of Republican, and a pretty unusual type now?
You say they are "evasive about Trump" - presumably on the basis he undercuts (to say the least) their central theme that Republican governance is stable, sensible, and competent. But polls tend to suggest that's now very much a minority Republican view - Republicans more generally appear to like Trump a lot and want more of the same, whereas your friends sound to me like the sorts who might vote for Trump through gritted teeth so that Biden isn't in power but, if they were prepared to speak very honestly with you, would much prefer a far more conventional candidate.
There's a fairly extreme tension in the Republican Party, it seems, between your friends who want competence and stability and feel the GOP has always been the best for that, and angry Trumpers who just want to f*** s*** up. I wonder what their feeling is about that rather odd set of bedfellows? I mean, it's amazing to talk about "sensible Goverrnment" and "Democrat shambles" after the sheer chaos of 6th January 2021.
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
Thr thing i think people (including myself) find hard to grasp is the sheer mind bending capacity of cargo ships.
It seems intuitively completely impossible for us to be able to transpprt sufficient gas by ship to power us but we totally can.
The maritime industry is truly astonishing, and almost totally absent from the general public’s consciousness. Bizarre.
If you know any youngsters looking for a great career, give them a helpful nudge.
Agreed. One of my best friends who got only a few Highers has had an amazing career in the Merchant Navy (ETO).
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
The broken bones and STIs are however just an optional extra.
The fact the entire crew have exactly the same portfolio of STIs is a concern.
The broken arm was a result of a drunken attempt at the dirty dancing lift during a storm.
Not selling her. Nothing more stupid than being drunk at sea, never mind in heavy weather.
Omicron is completely loose in Australia. Their cases are almost at the levels in the UK. The exception is Western Australia which is basically at zero Covid with just a few cases caught at the state border.
It is become more clear that those countries that have implemented lockdowns in the face of Omicron have only slightly delayed the spread. I am pleased the government held the line on not another lockdown. They must have been under immense pressure from some quarters to do so.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense.
We have a Conservative in power, Boris, who also clearly defeated a Socialist, Corbyn, in 2019 which May failed to do in 2017
NoneOfTheAbove's point - and it's a pretty good one - is you've quite obviously changed your position from saying the main thing is to have a conservative to the main thing is to get Brexit done.
That's fine - I understand why it was a strong motivating factor in 2019. But you've been out-argued here - by your own admission, Johnson was about getting Brexit done rather than progressing conservative priorities more broadly. And that's part of his problem - now that Brexit is done (at least insofar as we are literally out), you do have to ask if you're the Tory Party whether conservative priorities are best advanced by a shambolic liar, or by someone else.
I voted for May's Tory Party in 2017. Had more people voted for May's Tory Party in 2017 and she had won a big majority and easily seen off Corbyn and had a majority to get her Brexit Deal through we would never have got Boris and May would likely still be PM.
Those who failed to vote for May in 2017 and Labour MPs who failed to vote for May's Deal are arguably more responsible for Boris being PM now than I am
"arguably" is doing a lot of work in that last sentence. I admire your chutzpah but the responsibility for the FLSOJ being PM lies with Tory MPs (who can eject him), Tory voters (who put him into Downing Street) and Tory activists (who encouraged them). That means you!
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
Thr thing i think people (including myself) find hard to grasp is the sheer mind bending capacity of cargo ships.
It seems intuitively completely impossible for us to be able to transpprt sufficient gas by ship to power us but we totally can.
The maritime industry is truly astonishing, and almost totally absent from the general public’s consciousness. Bizarre.
If you know any youngsters looking for a great career, give them a helpful nudge.
Agreed. One of my best friends who got only a few Highers has had an amazing career in the Merchant Navy (ETO).
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
The broken bones and STIs are however just an optional extra.
The fact the entire crew have exactly the same portfolio of STIs is a concern.
The broken arm was a result of a drunken attempt at the dirty dancing lift during a storm.
Not selling her. Nothing more stupid than being drunk at sea, never mind in heavy weather.
Don't think they were at sea to be fair.
Big ships don't really notice a storm if they aren't
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense.
We have a Conservative in power, Boris, who also clearly defeated a Socialist, Corbyn, in 2019 which May failed to do in 2017
NoneOfTheAbove's point - and it's a pretty good one - is you've quite obviously changed your position from saying the main thing is to have a conservative to the main thing is to get Brexit done.
That's fine - I understand why it was a strong motivating factor in 2019. But you've been out-argued here - by your own admission, Johnson was about getting Brexit done rather than progressing conservative priorities more broadly. And that's part of his problem - now that Brexit is done (at least insofar as we are literally out), you do have to ask if you're the Tory Party whether conservative priorities are best advanced by a shambolic liar, or by someone else.
I voted for May's Tory Party in 2017. Had more people voted for May's Tory Party in 2017 and she had won a big majority and easily seen off Corbyn and had a majority to get her Brexit Deal through we would never have got Boris and May would likely still be PM.
Those who failed to vote for May in 2017 and Labour MPs who failed to vote for May's Deal are arguably more responsible for Boris being PM now than I am
It's all terribly interesting talking about your own political history, I'm sure.
But one thing you tend to do on this site is badly conflate your own views with those of voters and of Tory MPs deciding how best to move forward. So you flit oddly between asserting what conservatives (big or small C) think, and telling us what motivates you personally. These are not the same thing - you are a particular type of conservative, with a particular set of views.
My nephew visited from the US last autumn. He was here for a week, and his test came through the day before he left again.
Getting everyone to do an LFT at the airport would be rather more effective. But in any event, such things ought to have been discussed over a year ago.
Omicron is completely loose in Australia. Their cases are almost at the levels in the UK. The exception is Western Australia which is basically at zero Covid with just a few cases caught at the state border.
It is become more clear that those countries that have implemented lockdowns in the face of Omicron have only slightly delayed the spread. I am pleased the government held the line on not another lockdown. They must have been under immense pressure from some quarters to do so.
Next week the pressure will increase because kids are back in school and the headline rate of infection will be terrible. Hopefully the government is able to bat the scientists away again.
Well, that was astoundingly efficient. Straight in, straight out. Rather pleased.
NHS teams have got a lot of practice in rapid injection processes. 25 or so years ago I sat in on plans for meningitis injection campaigns for teenagers. We had an advantage of course, in that most if not all of them were at school, although that did slow things down a bit because we had to get authorisation from parents, but apart from that nurses worked in teams, one talking, one preparing the strings, another loading them and another injecting.
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
I would think the danger is a second jury might think OK she's guiltyish but she's now had so much shit on remand, we'll let her off
Trial by jury fans please explain
It's the USA so rules are very different.
Given that there is jury selection in New York, all 3 of the defence, the prosecution and the judge and reject jurors and there was a questionnaire with questions regarding experience of child abuse followed by questions to reflect it - these people were accept by all 3 groups to be valid jurors
I would wait and see what happens.
Equally what are US papers saying because both the Telegraph and Times do not have much US readership nor journalists with real knowledge of how the US justice system and US courts work.
As Putin ready his troops for battle, ours are sent to prop up the NHS.
Not sure what to feel about that.
Certainly doesn't feel like 'Global Britain'! But then I don't see what we could do in Khazakstan, useful or otherwise!
Of all the vacuous slogans dreamed by this government GLOBAL BRITAIN is the one that makes people groan.
....And thanks to Liz Truss's ownership of it she has ruled herself out of ever being taken seriously. It makes Milliband's 'Edstone' look profound
She's fucking ridiculous even by tory standards.
As a non-military man, I have to ask what's ridiculous about that photo?
Passengers normally can't wait get to get shot of the helmet and survival rig not stand around with the visor down getting their photo taken next to a couple of chubby ATOs. (Or whatever they are called these days).
I flew with Blair on a Crab Air Chinook from Basra to the Big O (they wanted FAA on board to handle the radios) and he politely declined the bone dome. He was shitting himself though.
A question: is the Conservative Party the same one that was insane enough to vote BJ to be leader and PM? If it is, expect them to choose someone of a similar ilk. Or have the influx of new MPs / the change in membership / Brexit being 'done' changed the balance of power within the party?
Hardly insane, BJ won the Conservatives their biggest election victory in 2019 since Thatcher in 1987.
Whether it is sane or not rests upon the outcome for the country, not the party. Trump won election but making him president was hardly a sensible thing to do.
For the party whether GOP or Tory the main thing is having a conservative in power
So why did the Tories replace a conservative PM with Boris Johnson?
She did not get Brexit done which most conservatives wanted and Boris did
So we are clear that the main thing is to get Brexit done, not have a conservative in power? That makes more sense.
We have a Conservative in power, Boris, who also clearly defeated a Socialist, Corbyn, in 2019 which May failed to do in 2017
NoneOfTheAbove's point - and it's a pretty good one - is you've quite obviously changed your position from saying the main thing is to have a conservative to the main thing is to get Brexit done.
That's fine - I understand why it was a strong motivating factor in 2019. But you've been out-argued here - by your own admission, Johnson was about getting Brexit done rather than progressing conservative priorities more broadly. And that's part of his problem - now that Brexit is done (at least insofar as we are literally out), you do have to ask if you're the Tory Party whether conservative priorities are best advanced by a shambolic liar, or by someone else.
I voted for May's Tory Party in 2017. Had more people voted for May's Tory Party in 2017 and she had won a big majority and easily seen off Corbyn and had a majority to get her Brexit Deal through we would never have got Boris and May would likely still be PM.
Those who failed to vote for May in 2017 and Labour MPs who failed to vote for May's Deal are arguably more responsible for Boris being PM now than I am
"arguably" is doing a lot of work in that last sentence. I admire your chutzpah but the responsibility for the FLSOJ being PM lies with Tory MPs (who can eject him), Tory voters (who put him into Downing Street) and Tory activists (who encouraged them). That means you!
I'd say its over 90% the responsibility of Tory MPs. They knew him, they knew he was not going to be up to the job, that he would trash institutions and standards (i.e the opposite of conservative) and that he would win if in the final two.
I would think the danger is a second jury might think OK she's guiltyish but she's now had so much shit on remand, we'll let her off
Trial by jury fans please explain
It's the USA so rules are very different.
Given that there is jury selection in New York, all 3 of the defence, the prosecution and the judge and reject jurors and there was a questionnaire with questions regarding experience of child abuse followed by questions to reflect it - these people were accept by all 3 groups to be valid jurors
I would wait and see what happens.
Equally what are US papers saying because both the Telegraph and Times do not have much US readership nor journalists with real knowledge of how the US justice system and US courts work.
Yes, but this bloke was lying in the questionnaire
Wouldn't happen in the UK because you can't publish anything about what the jury thought or why, so there would be a different kind of injustice
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
They won't because the Scottish and Welsh governments won't pay for them, it will be the UK (English) taxpayer that foots the bill for their stupid lockdowns.
I also don't think Drakeford will learn from this lesson, I think Nicola will though. Fingers crossed that the people in Wales are able to get rid of him.
My nephew visited from the US last autumn. He was here for a week, and his test came through the day before he left again.
Getting everyone to do an LFT at the airport would be rather more effective. But in any event, such things ought to have been discussed over a year ago.
Younger son and his family visited from Thailand before Christmas. His 'landing PCR' result came through within a couple of hours, as did his family's when they arrived two weeks later. PCR Tested again two days before departure..... results same day. It can be done!
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
I think Europe is not quite there yet in losing dependence on Russian gas but will be in 5 years or so. This may be a factor in Putin's timing for Ukraine. The other thing is that Europe will need to get used to paying more for gas. Shipped gas can never be as cheaply delivered as through pipelines whose capital cost has been sunk. But that issue will be substantially mitigated through cheaper renewables. The medium term outlook for Russia isn't that great.
I would think the danger is a second jury might think OK she's guiltyish but she's now had so much shit on remand, we'll let her off
Trial by jury fans please explain
It's the USA so rules are very different.
Given that there is jury selection in New York, all 3 of the defence, the prosecution and the judge and reject jurors and there was a questionnaire with questions regarding experience of child abuse followed by questions to reflect it - these people were accept by all 3 groups to be valid jurors
I would wait and see what happens.
Equally what are US papers saying because both the Telegraph and Times do not have much US readership nor journalists with real knowledge of how the US justice system and US courts work.
It looks as though the juror purposely ticked the wrong box to get into the jury and convict her. I'd be shocked if there isn't another trial now. The report that the majority of the jury were not convinced of guilt after expert testimony but this one juror swayed them with their own lived experience is a bit worrying.
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
Labour's position before Christmas and in the summer has moved me further away from voting Labour. And the Conservatives position has moved me closer to voting Tory (although under Johnson, that's more or less in the same sense that orbital variations move Pluto closer to Earth - the distance is still vast!). LDs get some points too.
None of which matters, of course, given I'm in a safe Tory seat.
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
Thr thing i think people (including myself) find hard to grasp is the sheer mind bending capacity of cargo ships.
It seems intuitively completely impossible for us to be able to transpprt sufficient gas by ship to power us but we totally can.
The maritime industry is truly astonishing, and almost totally absent from the general public’s consciousness. Bizarre.
If you know any youngsters looking for a great career, give them a helpful nudge.
Agreed. One of my best friends who got only a few Highers has had an amazing career in the Merchant Navy (ETO).
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
The broken bones and STIs are however just an optional extra.
We had a diminutive Cardiffian dabber on Invincible who had FOUR separate and distinct STIs after that famous run ashore in Bangkok.
I would think the danger is a second jury might think OK she's guiltyish but she's now had so much shit on remand, we'll let her off
Trial by jury fans please explain
It's the USA so rules are very different.
Given that there is jury selection in New York, all 3 of the defence, the prosecution and the judge and reject jurors and there was a questionnaire with questions regarding experience of child abuse followed by questions to reflect it - these people were accept by all 3 groups to be valid jurors
I would wait and see what happens.
Equally what are US papers saying because both the Telegraph and Times do not have much US readership nor journalists with real knowledge of how the US justice system and US courts work.
It looks as though the juror purposely ticked the wrong box to get into the jury and convict her. I'd be shocked if there isn't another trial now. The report that the majority of the jury were not convinced of guilt after expert testimony but this one juror swayed them with their own lived experience is a bit worrying.
If they ended up on the Jury after lying on the questionnaire they are likely to get more time than Ghislaine is.
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
It seems pretty clear Starmer as PM would have bowed to any pressure from SAGE and DoH and locked us down. Indeed, it is likely we would never have come out of last winter's lockdown properly.
Also interested in views on the Russian sub bumping into HMS Northumberland.
Not being a sundodger I have no particular insight to offer other than it happens (or nearly happens!) on a regular basis.
We often see warships offshore here, and my local contact in the Admiralty tells me they are usually on the trail of Russian subs, and the Russian subs regularly try to tap into the communication cables that run from the island across the Channel to France. What they are testing, or trying to discover, I do not know.
Also interested in views on the Russian sub bumping into HMS Northumberland.
Not being a sundodger I have no particular insight to offer other than it happens (or nearly happens!) on a regular basis.
Weird as it is a topic I have no particular interest in yet just this morning (unrelated to this incident) I was reading an article about how subs avoid colliding (and also failing) and also deliberately snagging tech being trailed from ships/subs of the opposition which results in some close calls. Knew nothing about the subject and it was fascinating.
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
There are some people who are deeply anti-restrictions, but probably not many. Looking at the Wikipedia graph of all the polls, it looks like the really low Conservative ratings we saw for a bit were down to churn between Con and RefUK, and once it became clear that Boris wasn't going to go beyond Plan B, those voters returned to the blue column.
That 3 - 5 percent matters a lot to the Conservatives, they really need to keep them onboard. But apart from having some rhetorical fun with this, I'm not sure it will affect the Con-Lab/SNP battleground much.
Only the really simple minded should by now not have realised the mortal danger for Western society to be so economically interdependent on China, and specifically energy dependent on Russia.
There are two separate points here, but the second one is the easier: Western Europe has never been less dependent on Russia.
In the old days (say 2007), apart from a few small fields, there were exactly three places Europe got natural gas from: Norway, the UK (which was in serious decline) and Russia.
Now, the UK has disappeared, but the gas supply situation has completely changed. If you were Centrica in 2007, and you wanted to enter into a gas supply contract, there was Statoil in Norway and Gazprom in Russia... and that chap from BG who was jumping up and down and gesticulating about LNG, but what did he know?
Fourteen years later, the US has gone from natural gas importer to massive exporter. Qatar has built more LNG export capacity in the last two decades than existed in 2000. PNG and Peru have started exporting gas. And Australia is maybe 5% into development of the Northwest Shelf.
That chap at Centrica now has a dozen firms offering him long term supply contracts at good prices.
I used to be one of the largest energy investors in London. There are another two dozen countries with massive gas fields who simply can't get funding, because buyers in the West have had plenty of options. (Mozambique's discoveries are enormous: it could be the Saudi Arabia of gas.)
The UK, Italy and the Baltic states were first. We built LNG import facilities so we could bring natural gas in from these new exporters. But everyone is now jumping on the train. If I were doing my old job, I would be salivating at the opportunity to finance Hamburg LNG, because those buyers can't trust Russia any more. (And, for the record, we in the UK have been complicit too: the pipeline may go through Germany, but there have been no shortage of UK purchasers of Nordstream 2 gas.)
Simply: LNG changes the world. Russia's whole hold on the West disappears when they can simply order cargoes from the US, Australia and Qatar.
Thr thing i think people (including myself) find hard to grasp is the sheer mind bending capacity of cargo ships.
It seems intuitively completely impossible for us to be able to transpprt sufficient gas by ship to power us but we totally can.
The maritime industry is truly astonishing, and almost totally absent from the general public’s consciousness. Bizarre.
If you know any youngsters looking for a great career, give them a helpful nudge.
Agreed. One of my best friends who got only a few Highers has had an amazing career in the Merchant Navy (ETO).
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
The broken bones and STIs are however just an optional extra.
We had a diminutive Cardiffian dabber on Invincible who had FOUR separate and distinct STIs after that famous run ashore in Bangkok.
Makes you proud.
Yebbut STIs always evolve into something really mild, just another common cold, etc etc
Could put it to I'm still standing by Elton (also borrowing Ishmael's suggested slogan)
You know I'm not Corbyn, better than he ever was Looking like a true survivor, not acting like a little kid I'm still standing after all this time Picking up the pieces of my party without him on my mind
I'm Not Corbyn (Not An Antisemite) I'm Not Corbyn (Not An Antisemite)
Edit: but on the original question, no - not a clue. But if SKS eventually wins then it will be through a combination of not being Corbyn and also not being Johnson. Vision and policies would be nice, but what can you do?
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
There are some people who are deeply anti-restrictions, but probably not many. Looking at the Wikipedia graph of all the polls, it looks like the really low Conservative ratings we saw for a bit were down to churn between Con and RefUK, and once it became clear that Boris wasn't going to go beyond Plan B, those voters returned to the blue column.
That 3 - 5 percent matters a lot to the Conservatives, they really need to keep them onboard. But apart from having some rhetorical fun with this, I'm not sure it will affect the Con-Lab/SNP battleground much.
Yes, not locking down has been good but my vote is not dependent on it, Boris will have to go for first.
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
Scotland doing much better on hospitalisations than England currently, albeit rising fast in both places. Scotland did have a bad patch in the Autumn 2021, but not as bad as the current Omicron wave. I doubt the Scottish government will be punished for relatively light touch interventions.
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
Labour's position before Christmas and in the summer has moved me further away from voting Labour. And the Conservatives position has moved me closer to voting Tory (although under Johnson, that's more or less in the same sense that orbital variations move Pluto closer to Earth - the distance is still vast!). LDs get some points too.
None of which matters, of course, given I'm in a safe Tory seat.
The former Braintree constituency, regarded as 'safe' for Tony Newton, went Labour in 1977 on a swing of almost 18% Brooks Newmark won it back in 2005, of course.
Comments
It has had 30 years of a Dictator, and SOP is to decapitate all potential competition. So perhaps the best they could get is a pygmy parade.
Craig Murray is out, so available as an advisor again.
Sajid Javid warned that Britain risks being forced into another lockdown after decision to relax travel restrictions
He told Covid-O that scrapping PCR tests would limit ability to detect future mutant strains
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sajid-javid-warns-lifting-travel-curbs-could-lead-to-covid-lockdowns-zq7rrfrxt
Javid said that relaxing travel restrictions increases risk of more deadly & more transmissible strain entering UK in future undetected
Shapps said that Australia has seen a surge in Omicron despite some of toughest border controls in World
PM ultimately sided with Shapps
This Tory government has been peculiarly hostile to the interests of small and medium sized businesses, normally a bedrock of support.
I traded out Truss before Christmas as I thought she'd got too short. Not convinced she makes the final two in an contest soon and far from convinced there will be a contest soon.
Most people just want a normal and quiet life.
I'm not sure if that is classed as progress.
....And thanks to Liz Truss's ownership of it she has ruled herself out of ever being taken seriously. It makes Milliband's 'Edstone' look profound
On the original Times story, the results are not statistically significant, but the point estimates are different over a short (two-three week) period. Absences were 20% higher (weighted) in the no mask group compared to the mask group (again, not significant evidence though). Different decreases in absences in the goups. Could add up to a substantial difference over a longer period. Would be interesting to see a larger study over a longer period. Also, the analysis is on absence rate of pupils. Absence rate of teachers would also be a relevant measure (but with fewer teachers, a larger sample would likely be needed to find anything interesting).
Whether masks are worth the downsides is of course a different question. There may be better options for schools (e.g. ventilation/air purification).
[Added some edits to clarify my viewpoint - what I wrote originally looked a bit too pro-masks-in-schools which is not really my view]
That's fine - I understand why it was a strong motivating factor in 2019. But you've been out-argued here - by your own admission, Johnson was about getting Brexit done rather than progressing conservative priorities more broadly. And that's part of his problem - now that Brexit is done (at least insofar as we are literally out), you do have to ask if you're the Tory Party whether conservative priorities are best advanced by a shambolic liar, or by someone else.
With the Thatcher redux shtick she has the serious problem that Thatch is no longer the only female PM she might be reminding people of
In the US, my Republican friends tell me that they just feel the Democrats mess up all the time, and get away with blaming everything on Trump. They are contemptuous about Biden, evasive about Trump, and feel it's time to bring back what they see as sensible government. Seattle etc. is mentioned in passing as an example of "Democrat shambles" but seems as far as I can tell very much a secondary thing, seen as an example of their main point.
But SSI/TimT and our other US contributors will be able to advise better.
At 26 has a beautiful house, posh car etc, enough cash to invest and to live off. Only a broken arm and multiple STIs to show for it.
We don't have one. And Europe certainly doesn't.
1. It was true
2. The British state’s pals were all squeaky clean
Fair enough, but you seem to be saying that you personally think that Trump was a sensible choice as candidate (because he won), and that it was a good thing he became president (because he was a "conservative in power")?
(That afternoon everyone's favourite warmonger (Sir) Tonty Blair turned up for a panel and, well, he truly was in another league but we knew that anyway).
ETA the fault is not that in itself, it's seeing the photo and not suppressing it
On America, what I meant was that the reasons people vote Republican despite Trump is that they perceive the Democrats as far-left. Seattle, Portland, etc are examples of what happens when the far left is left to do its own thing - but Virginia was another recent example of centrists voting for the right, despite the associations with Trump and his supporters, because of the perception that the Democrats were far left (in that particular case, the issue of critical race theory being taught in schools was given.)
I should emphasise that I haven't talked to an American IRL about politics for years!
I was not talking from my perspective but US conservatives perspectives, in the US I would be an Independent not a Republican
The broken arm was a result of a drunken attempt at the dirty dancing lift during a storm.
Those who failed to vote for May in 2017 and Labour MPs who failed to vote for May's Deal are arguably more responsible for Boris being PM now than I am
I would not object if my daughter decided to stop wearing her mask. She is very rule abiding though so will not.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10373889/NT-introduces-tough-new-Covid-rules-territory-goes-LOCKDOWN-unvaccinated.html
2. My comment was in reply to Rogers specifically about China. Your whataboutism is irrelevant. Just like most of the rest of your views.
You say they are "evasive about Trump" - presumably on the basis he undercuts (to say the least) their central theme that Republican governance is stable, sensible, and competent. But polls tend to suggest that's now very much a minority Republican view - Republicans more generally appear to like Trump a lot and want more of the same, whereas your friends sound to me like the sorts who might vote for Trump through gritted teeth so that Biden isn't in power but, if they were prepared to speak very honestly with you, would much prefer a far more conventional candidate.
There's a fairly extreme tension in the Republican Party, it seems, between your friends who want competence and stability and feel the GOP has always been the best for that, and angry Trumpers who just want to f*** s*** up. I wonder what their feeling is about that rather odd set of bedfellows? I mean, it's amazing to talk about "sensible Goverrnment" and "Democrat shambles" after the sheer chaos of 6th January 2021.
Can’t think why this seems so relevant right now. https://twitter.com/AndrewPRLevi/status/1476706289115881477/video/1
Also Australia even though mostly not in lockdown is acting as if it is: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-07/economic-crisis-covid-19-social-distancing-lockdown-anz-data/100744990
It is become more clear that those countries that have implemented lockdowns in the face of Omicron have only slightly delayed the spread. I am pleased the government held the line on not another lockdown. They must have been under immense pressure from some quarters to do so.
GM possibly on track for a retrial
I would think the danger is a second jury might think OK she's guiltyish but she's now had so much shit on remand, we'll let her off
Trial by jury fans please explain
But one thing you tend to do on this site is badly conflate your own views with those of voters and of Tory MPs deciding how best to move forward. So you flit oddly between asserting what conservatives (big or small C) think, and telling us what motivates you personally. These are not the same thing - you are a particular type of conservative, with a particular set of views.
Getting everyone to do an LFT at the airport would be rather more effective. But in any event, such things ought to have been discussed over a year ago.
The Tories didn't put England into lockdown. Anyone genuinely think if Labour were in power that they wouldn't have? The silence from Labour on a lockdown was smart politics as they can't have it pinned on them that they called for one.
In Scotland and Wales where they did implement some lockdown aspects will the SNP and Welsh Labour be punished for it if, as now seems fairly likely, it was unnecessary?
Given that there is jury selection in New York, all 3 of the defence, the prosecution and the judge and reject jurors and there was a questionnaire with questions regarding experience of child abuse followed by questions to reflect it - these people were accept by all 3 groups to be valid jurors
I would wait and see what happens.
Equally what are US papers saying because both the Telegraph and Times do not have much US readership nor journalists with real knowledge of how the US justice system and US courts work.
I flew with Blair on a Crab Air Chinook from Basra to the Big O (they wanted FAA on board to handle the radios) and he politely declined the bone dome. He was shitting himself though.
Wouldn't happen in the UK because you can't publish anything about what the jury thought or why, so there would be a different kind of injustice
I also don't think Drakeford will learn from this lesson, I think Nicola will though. Fingers crossed that the people in Wales are able to get rid of him.
It can be done!
Can anyone remember what they were
Can anyone tell us what they meant
SKS fans and all comers welcome to reply
https://twitter.com/FraserNelson/status/1479395606506491905
Australia is 92% double jabbed, one of highest figures in the world. But boosters make the big difference vs Omicron infection and just 15% of Australians are boosted
It’s now had more Covid in last 8 days than previous 2yrs, but its reopening continues
That's half of the battle.
None of which matters, of course, given I'm in a safe Tory seat.
Makes you proud.
The press are as confused as ever:
I wonder if they were trying to steal it, like we did theirs
* With Diane Abbott responsible for the counting.
The correct answer was flag, shag and err.
And as to what they meant it was a trick question as they were meaningless.
And forcing kids into masks to make politicians feel like they're doing something is rather wretched.
Still, miles better than the forced vaccination policies of Germany and Italy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
That 3 - 5 percent matters a lot to the Conservatives, they really need to keep them onboard. But apart from having some rhetorical fun with this, I'm not sure it will affect the Con-Lab/SNP battleground much.
You know I'm not Corbyn, better than he ever was
Looking like a true survivor, not acting like a little kid
I'm still standing after all this time
Picking up the pieces of my party without him on my mind
I'm Not Corbyn (Not An Antisemite)
I'm Not Corbyn (Not An Antisemite)
Edit: but on the original question, no - not a clue. But if SKS eventually wins then it will be through a combination of not being Corbyn and also not being Johnson. Vision and policies would be nice, but what can you do?
Brooks Newmark won it back in 2005, of course.
There you go
What a Political Genius with his finger on the pulse