The idea of a computer built using an array of processors may have first arisen in 1952.
Today, the world's most powerful supercomputer has a processing capacity of 442 petaFLOPS, 442,000,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second.
The first operational computer weather forecast produced by the Met Office in 1965 was run on a computer called Comet that could perform 60,000 arithmetic operations per second.
However, the first experimental forecast was produced in 1952, on EDSAC, which could manage 167 multiplications per second, or 667 other operations.
The current Met Office supercomputer is due for replacement, but can still manage a creditable 16 petaflops - about 100 million million times faster than the machine they borrowed use of in 1952.
I had a tour of the Met Office sometime around 1993, when it was at the old location in Bracknell. They had a couple of “supercomputers” there, known affectionately as “The Cray Twins”, which had less processing power than my phone does now, 30 years later.
As for time to be alive, maybe born in the 1920s or 30s, and going from electricity being novel to the internet being ubiquitous.
If you were born in the early to mid 1920s, and were male, you stood a good chance of fighting in WWII. No thanks. If you were born in the 1930s, you faced living through the war as a child or teenager. No thanks. In the 1990s, I knew a youngish lady who had had polio that had affected her walking. Heck, I believe my mum got polio, fortunately with no long-term effects. No thanks. My grandparents were using an outside toilet into their eighties, in the 1990s (despite my dad and their other kids offering to build one attached to the house for them). (They had an indoors toilet upstairs, but if downstairs would go to the outside one.) No thanks.
We look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Much of the past was sh*t.
Here's a prediction: worldwide, in the long term, the Covid outbreak will end up saving more lives than it has cost, as the progress in vaccination and treatment technology will end up saving lives.
I see a better future for my little 'un than I, or any of my ancestors, had. Despite Covid (*), the time to be alive is now.
(*) After all, influenza-style outbreaks, and of other diseases, were hardly unknown.
Oh indeed, the very best time to be alive is right now - despite what we might read every day, about how awful everything in the world is at the moment.
Fascinating thread, and I'm sure Big G and I could share memories.
I'm not quite sure, though, now IS the best time to be alive; our adult (or nearly adult) grandchildren seem to have more concerns than Mrs C and I did. It's our 60th anniversary later this year and I think that, while life is materially better for our two elder grandchildren (one married, one in what appears to be pretty stable relationship), the optimism isn't quite there. Climate change is going to bring about something of a 'reset' in living patterns!
Good morning
Life seemed to be much more carefree 50 plus years ago than today and maybe that is because we had less and certainly did not have 24/7 social media and the complexity of todays world
My wife and I have decided to start sorting out the huge amount of old photos and memorabilia from years ago and we have been reading the wonderful love letters between my grandparents circa the late 1870 to WW1 and the pure romance in the letters is charming and of course were sent daily between each other. I should say my grandfather was a professional soldier and was away from my grandmother quite often.
We also came across a wedding photo of my parents in 1935 with a copy of my mothers wedding dress invoice in the amount of £2 7s 6p
Our first home, a flat over an 'open all hours' shop half way up the Pennines cost us £2 per week! Did have an outside toilet though; a step across from the back door. My mother was a pharmacist who, in the 30's opened her own pharmacy, and I've got her cash book. Meticulous accounting, down the ha'penny!
I had a chat with my lettings agent last week about rents for students in a Midlands' city near here.
The University is charging self-catering rents of between about 160-225 per week in student halls, typically on ~45 week contracts. Towards the expensive end, or a bit more expensive, there are things like inclusive private gyms. Apparently 7-8 years after some of these were built, they are still having to give cashbacks to fill the later rooms.
For me, my self-catering accommodation on campus in West Yorkshire was £17 a week in the first year - mid 1980s.
Nine grand a year, per person, for a self catering hall of residence? That’s nuts, and so many of the students are borrowing money that will never be paid back for this.
Surely that amount rents a three-bed house, anywhere north of about Milton Keynes?
Must check with Grandson Two, now in his first year at Uni in a big N.Western city. Don't think he pays that, but he says there are some more expensive new halls.
The idea of a computer built using an array of processors may have first arisen in 1952.
Today, the world's most powerful supercomputer has a processing capacity of 442 petaFLOPS, 442,000,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second.
The first operational computer weather forecast produced by the Met Office in 1965 was run on a computer called Comet that could perform 60,000 arithmetic operations per second.
However, the first experimental forecast was produced in 1952, on EDSAC, which could manage 167 multiplications per second, or 667 other operations.
The current Met Office supercomputer is due for replacement, but can still manage a creditable 16 petaflops - about 100 million million times faster than the machine they borrowed use of in 1952.
I had a tour of the Met Office sometime around 1993, when it was at the old location in Bracknell. They had a couple of “supercomputers” there, known affectionately as “The Cray Twins”, which had less processing power than my phone does now, 30 years later.
As for time to be alive, maybe born in the 1920s or 30s, and going from electricity being novel to the internet being ubiquitous.
If you were born in the early to mid 1920s, and were male, you stood a good chance of fighting in WWII. No thanks. If you were born in the 1930s, you faced living through the war as a child or teenager. No thanks. In the 1990s, I knew a youngish lady who had had polio that had affected her walking. Heck, I believe my mum got polio, fortunately with no long-term effects. No thanks. My grandparents were using an outside toilet into their eighties, in the 1990s (despite my dad and their other kids offering to build one attached to the house for them). (They had an indoors toilet upstairs, but if downstairs would go to the outside one.) No thanks.
We look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Much of the past was sh*t.
Here's a prediction: worldwide, in the long term, the Covid outbreak will end up saving more lives than it has cost, as the progress in vaccination and treatment technology will end up saving lives.
I see a better future for my little 'un than I, or any of my ancestors, had. Despite Covid (*), the time to be alive is now.
(*) After all, influenza-style outbreaks, and of other diseases, were hardly unknown.
Oh indeed, the very best time to be alive is right now - despite what we might read every day, about how awful everything in the world is at the moment.
Fascinating thread, and I'm sure Big G and I could share memories.
I'm not quite sure, though, now IS the best time to be alive; our adult (or nearly adult) grandchildren seem to have more concerns than Mrs C and I did. It's our 60th anniversary later this year and I think that, while life is materially better for our two elder grandchildren (one married, one in what appears to be pretty stable relationship), the optimism isn't quite there. Climate change is going to bring about something of a 'reset' in living patterns!
There was an innocence and simplicity about past times that has been lost, for sure. And a human peculiarity is that living through shared hardship tends to make people quite happy, at least in retrospect.
Surely it was more exciting, and less damaging, to be aged 11 and find a picture from Playboy in the school toilet than to be watching some hardcore BDSM on your iPhone at the same age?
I once went to a talk that Ted Simon gave about his motorcycle travels, and bought both the Jupiter books on the back of it. They’re not works of literature but the first one is an engaging story of a young guy who sets off round the world on his motorcycle, all his adventures and the friendship and hospitality he receives.
In the second one, he tries to retrace his steps in middle age. It’s quite a poignant read; of course, the world isn’t the same, much that he enjoyed has gone or changed beyond recognition - and the world isn’t open to the middle aged in the way that it is to the young. So it’s a sad read from the aspect of his ageing, and his own transformation in outlook, well on the way toward becoming victor meldrew, but it’s also reflection on how much of the wonder, and relative safety, of the world has disappeared over recent decades. Indeed since the second book was written, it probably isn’t safe for a westerner to make the trip any more, thanks to terrorism and various local crises.
I read the first Ted Simon, and enjoyed it; didn't know about the second. I think one is possibly less likely to be treated as an interesting curiosity, as Simon was able to be, nowadays, and part of that is because there are more people doing, if not exactly what he did, something similar. Simon wrote not too long after the end of National Service, a time when many young men had had their fill of foreign travel. My fiancée and I were considered quite adventurous when, in 1961, we used the last of our college cash to have a couple of weeks in Guernsey before starting work.
Indeed. My dad, born in 1920s, considered a holiday in the Channel Islands to be an exotic and exciting event. Now folk would consider you barking mad if you raved about the wonders of Jersey.
The most “exotic” place I’ve ever been is Bali, and it was pretty rubbish. Jam packed full of Aussies, for whom it seems to be their equivalent of Tenerife.
How far did you explore Bali? It's easy to escape Australia's "Benidorm" (Kuta/Legian)
Fair point: we were only in the south. North much better apparently. But I’ll never be going back. Complete waste of time and money IMHO. The maddest aspect is that we went with three children including an infant.
However, if Bali was ok if wildly overrated, I can tell you the worst place on the planet (and I’ve been to Egypt): the nearby island of Gili Trawangan. I *HATE* that place. An utter cesspit. I’d rather spend the rest of my allotted time in Swindon than spend a single minute in Gili Fecking Trawangan.
The idea of a computer built using an array of processors may have first arisen in 1952.
Today, the world's most powerful supercomputer has a processing capacity of 442 petaFLOPS, 442,000,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second.
The first operational computer weather forecast produced by the Met Office in 1965 was run on a computer called Comet that could perform 60,000 arithmetic operations per second.
However, the first experimental forecast was produced in 1952, on EDSAC, which could manage 167 multiplications per second, or 667 other operations.
The current Met Office supercomputer is due for replacement, but can still manage a creditable 16 petaflops - about 100 million million times faster than the machine they borrowed use of in 1952.
I had a tour of the Met Office sometime around 1993, when it was at the old location in Bracknell. They had a couple of “supercomputers” there, known affectionately as “The Cray Twins”, which had less processing power than my phone does now, 30 years later.
As for time to be alive, maybe born in the 1920s or 30s, and going from electricity being novel to the internet being ubiquitous.
If you were born in the early to mid 1920s, and were male, you stood a good chance of fighting in WWII. No thanks. If you were born in the 1930s, you faced living through the war as a child or teenager. No thanks. In the 1990s, I knew a youngish lady who had had polio that had affected her walking. Heck, I believe my mum got polio, fortunately with no long-term effects. No thanks. My grandparents were using an outside toilet into their eighties, in the 1990s (despite my dad and their other kids offering to build one attached to the house for them). (They had an indoors toilet upstairs, but if downstairs would go to the outside one.) No thanks.
We look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Much of the past was sh*t.
Here's a prediction: worldwide, in the long term, the Covid outbreak will end up saving more lives than it has cost, as the progress in vaccination and treatment technology will end up saving lives.
I see a better future for my little 'un than I, or any of my ancestors, had. Despite Covid (*), the time to be alive is now.
(*) After all, influenza-style outbreaks, and of other diseases, were hardly unknown.
Oh indeed, the very best time to be alive is right now - despite what we might read every day, about how awful everything in the world is at the moment.
Fascinating thread, and I'm sure Big G and I could share memories.
I'm not quite sure, though, now IS the best time to be alive; our adult (or nearly adult) grandchildren seem to have more concerns than Mrs C and I did. It's our 60th anniversary later this year and I think that, while life is materially better for our two elder grandchildren (one married, one in what appears to be pretty stable relationship), the optimism isn't quite there. Climate change is going to bring about something of a 'reset' in living patterns!
There was an innocence and simplicity about past times that has been lost, for sure. And a human peculiarity is that living through shared hardship tends to make people quite happy, at least in retrospect.
Surely it was more exciting, and less damaging, to be aged 11 and find a picture from Playboy in the school toilet than to be watching some hardcore BDSM on your iPhone at the same age?
I once went to a talk that Ted Simon gave about his motorcycle travels, and bought both the Jupiter books on the back of it. They’re not works of literature but the first one is an engaging story of a young guy who sets off round the world on his motorcycle, all his adventures and the friendship and hospitality he receives.
In the second one, he tries to retrace his steps in middle age. It’s quite a poignant read; of course, the world isn’t the same, much that he enjoyed has gone or changed beyond recognition - and the world isn’t open to the middle aged in the way that it is to the young. So it’s a sad read from the aspect of his ageing, and his own transformation in outlook, well on the way toward becoming victor meldrew, but it’s also reflection on how much of the wonder, and relative safety, of the world has disappeared over recent decades. Indeed since the second book was written, it probably isn’t safe for a westerner to make the trip any more, thanks to terrorism and various local crises.
I read the first Ted Simon, and enjoyed it; didn't know about the second. I think one is possibly less likely to be treated as an interesting curiosity, as Simon was able to be, nowadays, and part of that is because there are more people doing, if not exactly what he did, something similar. Simon wrote not too long after the end of National Service, a time when many young men had had their fill of foreign travel. My fiancée and I were considered quite adventurous when, in 1961, we used the last of our college cash to have a couple of weeks in Guernsey before starting work.
Yes, I think that valid. Even in the heyday of "the Hippie Trail" it was very small numbers and a few definite meeting points such as the Istanbul Pudding Shop.
Very small numbers then in Khao San Road, Bangkok, I believe. Crowded the last time we had a look.
I stopped by there in 1990, but even then it was very crowded, with travellers clutching their copies of "SE Asia on a Shoestring" as if deviating from the yellow book would leave them lost. It was handy though for booking onward journeys.
It's a different travel experience now, as @IanB2 says of his experience of Rwanda. The isolation of travel has gone with the rise of smartphones and social media. That isolation, and even boredom, was part of the experience of self discovery.
Agree; both sons went 'abroad' as part of their degrees (late 80's, Germany and the US) and while we had email for the younger, contacts with Eldest Granddaughter, who went round the world in 2015 or so were much much more frequent.
The converse of that, is that today’s parents are expecting to hear from their travelling kids every couple of days, rather than every few weeks in the days before we had ubiquitous personal communications.
Very fair point; I went to what is now Sunderland Uni in the 50's and the most my mother, in SE Essex, expected was a letter a couple of times a month.
The idea of a computer built using an array of processors may have first arisen in 1952.
Today, the world's most powerful supercomputer has a processing capacity of 442 petaFLOPS, 442,000,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second.
The first operational computer weather forecast produced by the Met Office in 1965 was run on a computer called Comet that could perform 60,000 arithmetic operations per second.
However, the first experimental forecast was produced in 1952, on EDSAC, which could manage 167 multiplications per second, or 667 other operations.
The current Met Office supercomputer is due for replacement, but can still manage a creditable 16 petaflops - about 100 million million times faster than the machine they borrowed use of in 1952.
I had a tour of the Met Office sometime around 1993, when it was at the old location in Bracknell. They had a couple of “supercomputers” there, known affectionately as “The Cray Twins”, which had less processing power than my phone does now, 30 years later.
As for time to be alive, maybe born in the 1920s or 30s, and going from electricity being novel to the internet being ubiquitous.
If you were born in the early to mid 1920s, and were male, you stood a good chance of fighting in WWII. No thanks. If you were born in the 1930s, you faced living through the war as a child or teenager. No thanks. In the 1990s, I knew a youngish lady who had had polio that had affected her walking. Heck, I believe my mum got polio, fortunately with no long-term effects. No thanks. My grandparents were using an outside toilet into their eighties, in the 1990s (despite my dad and their other kids offering to build one attached to the house for them). (They had an indoors toilet upstairs, but if downstairs would go to the outside one.) No thanks.
We look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Much of the past was sh*t.
Here's a prediction: worldwide, in the long term, the Covid outbreak will end up saving more lives than it has cost, as the progress in vaccination and treatment technology will end up saving lives.
I see a better future for my little 'un than I, or any of my ancestors, had. Despite Covid (*), the time to be alive is now.
(*) After all, influenza-style outbreaks, and of other diseases, were hardly unknown.
Oh indeed, the very best time to be alive is right now - despite what we might read every day, about how awful everything in the world is at the moment.
Fascinating thread, and I'm sure Big G and I could share memories.
I'm not quite sure, though, now IS the best time to be alive; our adult (or nearly adult) grandchildren seem to have more concerns than Mrs C and I did. It's our 60th anniversary later this year and I think that, while life is materially better for our two elder grandchildren (one married, one in what appears to be pretty stable relationship), the optimism isn't quite there. Climate change is going to bring about something of a 'reset' in living patterns!
There was an innocence and simplicity about past times that has been lost, for sure. And a human peculiarity is that living through shared hardship tends to make people quite happy, at least in retrospect.
Surely it was more exciting, and less damaging, to be aged 11 and find a picture from Playboy in the school toilet than to be watching some hardcore BDSM on your iPhone at the same age?
I once went to a talk that Ted Simon gave about his motorcycle travels, and bought both the Jupiter books on the back of it. They’re not works of literature but the first one is an engaging story of a young guy who sets off round the world on his motorcycle, all his adventures and the friendship and hospitality he receives.
In the second one, he tries to retrace his steps in middle age. It’s quite a poignant read; of course, the world isn’t the same, much that he enjoyed has gone or changed beyond recognition - and the world isn’t open to the middle aged in the way that it is to the young. So it’s a sad read from the aspect of his ageing, and his own transformation in outlook, well on the way toward becoming victor meldrew, but it’s also reflection on how much of the wonder, and relative safety, of the world has disappeared over recent decades. Indeed since the second book was written, it probably isn’t safe for a westerner to make the trip any more, thanks to terrorism and various local crises.
I read the first Ted Simon, and enjoyed it; didn't know about the second. I think one is possibly less likely to be treated as an interesting curiosity, as Simon was able to be, nowadays, and part of that is because there are more people doing, if not exactly what he did, something similar. Simon wrote not too long after the end of National Service, a time when many young men had had their fill of foreign travel. My fiancée and I were considered quite adventurous when, in 1961, we used the last of our college cash to have a couple of weeks in Guernsey before starting work.
Yes, I think that valid. Even in the heyday of "the Hippie Trail" it was very small numbers and a few definite meeting points such as the Istanbul Pudding Shop.
Very small numbers then in Khao San Road, Bangkok, I believe. Crowded the last time we had a look.
I stopped by there in 1990, but even then it was very crowded, with travellers clutching their copies of "SE Asia on a Shoestring" as if deviating from the yellow book would leave them lost. It was handy though for booking onward journeys.
It's a different travel experience now, as @IanB2 says of his experience of Rwanda. The isolation of travel has gone with the rise of smartphones and social media. That isolation, and even boredom, was part of the experience of self discovery.
Agree; both sons went 'abroad' as part of their degrees (late 80's, Germany and the US) and while we had email for the younger, contacts with Eldest Granddaughter, who went round the world in 2015 or so were much much more frequent.
The converse of that, is that today’s parents are expecting to hear from their travelling kids every couple of days, rather than every few weeks in the days before we had ubiquitous personal communications.
Yes, I preferred it as it was. "Are you OK?" "Yes...must go, the pips are going..I will try and find a phone next week"
The idea of a computer built using an array of processors may have first arisen in 1952.
Today, the world's most powerful supercomputer has a processing capacity of 442 petaFLOPS, 442,000,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second.
The first operational computer weather forecast produced by the Met Office in 1965 was run on a computer called Comet that could perform 60,000 arithmetic operations per second.
However, the first experimental forecast was produced in 1952, on EDSAC, which could manage 167 multiplications per second, or 667 other operations.
The current Met Office supercomputer is due for replacement, but can still manage a creditable 16 petaflops - about 100 million million times faster than the machine they borrowed use of in 1952.
I had a tour of the Met Office sometime around 1993, when it was at the old location in Bracknell. They had a couple of “supercomputers” there, known affectionately as “The Cray Twins”, which had less processing power than my phone does now, 30 years later.
As for time to be alive, maybe born in the 1920s or 30s, and going from electricity being novel to the internet being ubiquitous.
If you were born in the early to mid 1920s, and were male, you stood a good chance of fighting in WWII. No thanks. If you were born in the 1930s, you faced living through the war as a child or teenager. No thanks. In the 1990s, I knew a youngish lady who had had polio that had affected her walking. Heck, I believe my mum got polio, fortunately with no long-term effects. No thanks. My grandparents were using an outside toilet into their eighties, in the 1990s (despite my dad and their other kids offering to build one attached to the house for them). (They had an indoors toilet upstairs, but if downstairs would go to the outside one.) No thanks.
We look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Much of the past was sh*t.
Here's a prediction: worldwide, in the long term, the Covid outbreak will end up saving more lives than it has cost, as the progress in vaccination and treatment technology will end up saving lives.
I see a better future for my little 'un than I, or any of my ancestors, had. Despite Covid (*), the time to be alive is now.
(*) After all, influenza-style outbreaks, and of other diseases, were hardly unknown.
Oh indeed, the very best time to be alive is right now - despite what we might read every day, about how awful everything in the world is at the moment.
Fascinating thread, and I'm sure Big G and I could share memories.
I'm not quite sure, though, now IS the best time to be alive; our adult (or nearly adult) grandchildren seem to have more concerns than Mrs C and I did. It's our 60th anniversary later this year and I think that, while life is materially better for our two elder grandchildren (one married, one in what appears to be pretty stable relationship), the optimism isn't quite there. Climate change is going to bring about something of a 'reset' in living patterns!
Good morning
Life seemed to be much more carefree 50 plus years ago than today and maybe that is because we had less and certainly did not have 24/7 social media and the complexity of todays world
My wife and I have decided to start sorting out the huge amount of old photos and memorabilia from years ago and we have been reading the wonderful love letters between my grandparents circa the late 1870 to WW1 and the pure romance in the letters is charming and of course were sent daily between each other. I should say my grandfather was a professional soldier and was away from my grandmother quite often.
We also came across a wedding photo of my parents in 1935 with a copy of my mothers wedding dress invoice in the amount of £2 7s 6p
Our first home, a flat over an 'open all hours' shop half way up the Pennines cost us £2 per week! Did have an outside toilet though; a step across from the back door. My mother was a pharmacist who, in the 30's opened her own pharmacy, and I've got her cash book. Meticulous accounting, down the ha'penny!
I had a chat with my lettings agent last week about rents for students in a Midlands' city near here.
The University is charging self-catering rents of between about 160-225 per week in student halls, typically on ~45 week contracts. Towards the expensive end, or a bit more expensive, there are things like inclusive private gyms. Apparently 7-8 years after some of these were built, they are still having to give cashbacks to fill the later rooms.
For me, my self-catering accommodation on campus in West Yorkshire was £17 a week in the first year - mid 1980s.
Nine grand a year, per person, for a self catering hall of residence? That’s nuts, and so many of the students are borrowing money that will never be paid back for this.
Surely that amount rents a three-bed house, anywhere north of about Milton Keynes?
TBF the scheme was designed with the intention that many would never make full repayment.
Miliband, who was a cabinet minister, says principal private secretaries don’t organise things “behind their masters’ back” which was the excuse given for the press office party… https://twitter.com/tamcohen/status/1480813515900428288
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Yes, if those same key workers set the rules saying that anyone else who does it risks a visit from the police. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
"A government minister" will be on R4 in ten minutes to explain everything. Doesn't sound like it's a big name. Or they are still in the Green Room arguing who it will be?
Ed Argar
Might as well be Shergar... The Tories have the stench of death on this one. "When Elizabeth II had to sit alone at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.." Well put it this way, I don't think she would oppose criminal charges being put to those who did not match her own high standards. I think the Tories may suddenly find that their destiny is no longer under their own control.
The idea of a computer built using an array of processors may have first arisen in 1952.
Today, the world's most powerful supercomputer has a processing capacity of 442 petaFLOPS, 442,000,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second.
The first operational computer weather forecast produced by the Met Office in 1965 was run on a computer called Comet that could perform 60,000 arithmetic operations per second.
However, the first experimental forecast was produced in 1952, on EDSAC, which could manage 167 multiplications per second, or 667 other operations.
The current Met Office supercomputer is due for replacement, but can still manage a creditable 16 petaflops - about 100 million million times faster than the machine they borrowed use of in 1952.
I had a tour of the Met Office sometime around 1993, when it was at the old location in Bracknell. They had a couple of “supercomputers” there, known affectionately as “The Cray Twins”, which had less processing power than my phone does now, 30 years later.
As for time to be alive, maybe born in the 1920s or 30s, and going from electricity being novel to the internet being ubiquitous.
If you were born in the early to mid 1920s, and were male, you stood a good chance of fighting in WWII. No thanks. If you were born in the 1930s, you faced living through the war as a child or teenager. No thanks. In the 1990s, I knew a youngish lady who had had polio that had affected her walking. Heck, I believe my mum got polio, fortunately with no long-term effects. No thanks. My grandparents were using an outside toilet into their eighties, in the 1990s (despite my dad and their other kids offering to build one attached to the house for them). (They had an indoors toilet upstairs, but if downstairs would go to the outside one.) No thanks.
We look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Much of the past was sh*t.
Here's a prediction: worldwide, in the long term, the Covid outbreak will end up saving more lives than it has cost, as the progress in vaccination and treatment technology will end up saving lives.
I see a better future for my little 'un than I, or any of my ancestors, had. Despite Covid (*), the time to be alive is now.
(*) After all, influenza-style outbreaks, and of other diseases, were hardly unknown.
Oh indeed, the very best time to be alive is right now - despite what we might read every day, about how awful everything in the world is at the moment.
Fascinating thread, and I'm sure Big G and I could share memories.
I'm not quite sure, though, now IS the best time to be alive; our adult (or nearly adult) grandchildren seem to have more concerns than Mrs C and I did. It's our 60th anniversary later this year and I think that, while life is materially better for our two elder grandchildren (one married, one in what appears to be pretty stable relationship), the optimism isn't quite there. Climate change is going to bring about something of a 'reset' in living patterns!
There was an innocence and simplicity about past times that has been lost, for sure. And a human peculiarity is that living through shared hardship tends to make people quite happy, at least in retrospect.
Surely it was more exciting, and less damaging, to be aged 11 and find a picture from Playboy in the school toilet than to be watching some hardcore BDSM on your iPhone at the same age?
I once went to a talk that Ted Simon gave about his motorcycle travels, and bought both the Jupiter books on the back of it. They’re not works of literature but the first one is an engaging story of a young guy who sets off round the world on his motorcycle, all his adventures and the friendship and hospitality he receives.
In the second one, he tries to retrace his steps in middle age. It’s quite a poignant read; of course, the world isn’t the same, much that he enjoyed has gone or changed beyond recognition - and the world isn’t open to the middle aged in the way that it is to the young. So it’s a sad read from the aspect of his ageing, and his own transformation in outlook, well on the way toward becoming victor meldrew, but it’s also reflection on how much of the wonder, and relative safety, of the world has disappeared over recent decades. Indeed since the second book was written, it probably isn’t safe for a westerner to make the trip any more, thanks to terrorism and various local crises.
I read the first Ted Simon, and enjoyed it; didn't know about the second. I think one is possibly less likely to be treated as an interesting curiosity, as Simon was able to be, nowadays, and part of that is because there are more people doing, if not exactly what he did, something similar. Simon wrote not too long after the end of National Service, a time when many young men had had their fill of foreign travel. My fiancée and I were considered quite adventurous when, in 1961, we used the last of our college cash to have a couple of weeks in Guernsey before starting work.
Indeed. My dad, born in 1920s, considered a holiday in the Channel Islands to be an exotic and exciting event. Now folk would consider you barking mad if you raved about the wonders of Jersey.
The most “exotic” place I’ve ever been is Bali, and it was pretty rubbish. Jam packed full of Aussies, for whom it seems to be their equivalent of Tenerife.
How far did you explore Bali? It's easy to escape Australia's "Benidorm" (Kuta/Legian)
Fair point: we were only in the south. North much better apparently. But I’ll never be going back. Complete waste of time and money IMHO. The maddest aspect is that we went with three children including an infant.
However, if Bali was ok if wildly overrated, I can tell you the worst place on the planet (and I’ve been to Egypt): the nearby island of Gili Trawangan. I *HATE* that place. An utter cesspit. I’d rather spend the rest of my allotted time in Swindon than spend a single minute in Gili Fecking Trawangan.
Bali with young children could be challenging - especially as the traffic to escape the south can be tedious. What it does have going for it is a reasonably competent tourist infrastructure, so knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia not really required.
The idea of a computer built using an array of processors may have first arisen in 1952.
Today, the world's most powerful supercomputer has a processing capacity of 442 petaFLOPS, 442,000,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second.
The first operational computer weather forecast produced by the Met Office in 1965 was run on a computer called Comet that could perform 60,000 arithmetic operations per second.
However, the first experimental forecast was produced in 1952, on EDSAC, which could manage 167 multiplications per second, or 667 other operations.
The current Met Office supercomputer is due for replacement, but can still manage a creditable 16 petaflops - about 100 million million times faster than the machine they borrowed use of in 1952.
I had a tour of the Met Office sometime around 1993, when it was at the old location in Bracknell. They had a couple of “supercomputers” there, known affectionately as “The Cray Twins”, which had less processing power than my phone does now, 30 years later.
As for time to be alive, maybe born in the 1920s or 30s, and going from electricity being novel to the internet being ubiquitous.
If you were born in the early to mid 1920s, and were male, you stood a good chance of fighting in WWII. No thanks. If you were born in the 1930s, you faced living through the war as a child or teenager. No thanks. In the 1990s, I knew a youngish lady who had had polio that had affected her walking. Heck, I believe my mum got polio, fortunately with no long-term effects. No thanks. My grandparents were using an outside toilet into their eighties, in the 1990s (despite my dad and their other kids offering to build one attached to the house for them). (They had an indoors toilet upstairs, but if downstairs would go to the outside one.) No thanks.
We look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Much of the past was sh*t.
Here's a prediction: worldwide, in the long term, the Covid outbreak will end up saving more lives than it has cost, as the progress in vaccination and treatment technology will end up saving lives.
I see a better future for my little 'un than I, or any of my ancestors, had. Despite Covid (*), the time to be alive is now.
(*) After all, influenza-style outbreaks, and of other diseases, were hardly unknown.
Oh indeed, the very best time to be alive is right now - despite what we might read every day, about how awful everything in the world is at the moment.
Fascinating thread, and I'm sure Big G and I could share memories.
I'm not quite sure, though, now IS the best time to be alive; our adult (or nearly adult) grandchildren seem to have more concerns than Mrs C and I did. It's our 60th anniversary later this year and I think that, while life is materially better for our two elder grandchildren (one married, one in what appears to be pretty stable relationship), the optimism isn't quite there. Climate change is going to bring about something of a 'reset' in living patterns!
Good morning
Life seemed to be much more carefree 50 plus years ago than today and maybe that is because we had less and certainly did not have 24/7 social media and the complexity of todays world
My wife and I have decided to start sorting out the huge amount of old photos and memorabilia from years ago and we have been reading the wonderful love letters between my grandparents circa the late 1870 to WW1 and the pure romance in the letters is charming and of course were sent daily between each other. I should say my grandfather was a professional soldier and was away from my grandmother quite often.
We also came across a wedding photo of my parents in 1935 with a copy of my mothers wedding dress invoice in the amount of £2 7s 6p
Our first home, a flat over an 'open all hours' shop half way up the Pennines cost us £2 per week! Did have an outside toilet though; a step across from the back door. My mother was a pharmacist who, in the 30's opened her own pharmacy, and I've got her cash book. Meticulous accounting, down the ha'penny!
I had a chat with my lettings agent last week about rents for students in a Midlands' city near here.
The University is charging self-catering rents of between about 160-225 per week in student halls, typically on ~45 week contracts. Towards the expensive end, or a bit more expensive, there are things like inclusive private gyms. Apparently 7-8 years after some of these were built, they are still having to give cashbacks to fill the later rooms.
For me, my self-catering accommodation on campus in West Yorkshire was £17 a week in the first year - mid 1980s.
Nine grand a year, per person, for a self catering hall of residence? That’s nuts, and so many of the students are borrowing money that will never be paid back for this.
Surely that amount rents a three-bed house, anywhere north of about Milton Keynes?
TBF the scheme was designed with the intention that many would never make full repayment.
I should have noted that that is inclusive of services such as heating and water, which varies by city by city.
I don't have a handle on current national figures for student rent, but this will not be the most expensive by a long chalk.
The thing that rather boosts it is the longer contracts. But that is mainly a feature of local markets.
Miliband, who was a cabinet minister, says principal private secretaries don’t organise things “behind their masters’ back” which was the excuse given for the press office party… https://twitter.com/tamcohen/status/1480813515900428288
Yep - it's like Parliamentary Private Secretaries - they don't do things without (at a minimum) tacit approval
Might as well be Shergar... The Tories have the stench of death on this one. "When Elizabeth II had to sit alone at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.." Well put it this way, I don't think she would oppose criminal charges being put to those who did not match her own high standards. I think the Tories may suddenly find that their destiny is no longer under their own control.
Already noted this morning, either the Tories remove BoZo, or the voters do.
Except letting the voters do it gives them a couple more years at the trough.
For anyone in a nostalgic for the 1990's, check out this video of Metallica playing in Moscow in 1991. 1.6 million people. No smartphones or safety features, aside from the hundreds of soldiers trying to police the event. First minute or two of the video and you get the idea.
And a tweet from the Met Police saying meeting more than 1 person its a crime and you need to remain 2 metres apart.
So apart from admitting to breaking the rules in May 2020 I'm not sure what you are saying there.
I don't think that the government will bring in lockdown again - at least not one which is in law rather than guidelines - the risk that it gets caught out breaking its own pronouncements is clear. The truth is that life was always in practice more flexible that the laws implied. They should never have made the guidelines laws - they've not really been enforced as laws apart from rare exceptions.
The objective was always to increase social distancing in general, which they did, not to turn us into authoritarian curtain-twitchers.
Health minister Edward Argar tells @BBCr4today that if Covid rules broken by May 2020 No10 garden drinks, he would "expect disciplinary action" Sounds like PM gearing up to take action against the civil servant who sent the BYOBooze invite https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1480815762608738305
Might as well be Shergar... The Tories have the stench of death on this one. "When Elizabeth II had to sit alone at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.." Well put it this way, I don't think she would oppose criminal charges being put to those who did not match her own high standards. I think the Tories may suddenly find that their destiny is no longer under their own control.
Already noted this morning, either the Tories remove BoZo, or the voters do.
Except letting the voters do it gives them a couple more years at the trough.
No contest...
The question is can Boris get through the next 3-4 weeks - if he can he is home and dry.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Might as well be Shergar... The Tories have the stench of death on this one. "When Elizabeth II had to sit alone at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.." Well put it this way, I don't think she would oppose criminal charges being put to those who did not match her own high standards. I think the Tories may suddenly find that their destiny is no longer under their own control.
Already noted this morning, either the Tories remove BoZo, or the voters do.
Except letting the voters do it gives them a couple more years at the trough.
No contest...
The question is can Boris get through the next 3-4 weeks - if he can he is home and dry.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 4% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameeon midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you
You missed the subsamples.
They have Labour on a 11 or more point lead over the Tories in Red Wall areas. Which scared Ben Houchen so much that he was in yesterdays Times begging for money and the extended unedited version is asking for £470m to fix the A19 Tees Crossing (Philip will love that as it's a Road).
Care to guess what's Ben's problem is? He was promised that the money for the work was there and some it has disappeared.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
That plank sticking out of your eye is truly blinding.
LauraK: "the minister couldn't deny the event took place; he kept referring to the investigation taking place but that isn't going to make this go away"
"there is a very serious political risk here for the PM"
says a member of the government told her late last night that a Met Police criminal investigation is a real possibility.
says government has been running its own deadpool on who would get sacked at the end of this!
says people in government challenged the party invite and the email at the time - yet 30 people attended, and Downing Street hasn't denied eye witness reports that the clown and Mrs clown went along
Might as well be Shergar... The Tories have the stench of death on this one. "When Elizabeth II had to sit alone at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.." Well put it this way, I don't think she would oppose criminal charges being put to those who did not match her own high standards. I think the Tories may suddenly find that their destiny is no longer under their own control.
Already noted this morning, either the Tories remove BoZo, or the voters do.
Except letting the voters do it gives them a couple more years at the trough.
No contest...
The question is can Boris get through the next 3-4 weeks - if he can he is home and dry.
Why? Its not as if this is the last of the shocks to come. Each one of these pushes him closer to the edge twice - first the stupid action itself second the stupid lie he tells that so quickly gets uncovered.
The momentum is pushing him to the edge. He's done.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 4% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameeon midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you
You missed the subsamples.
They have Labour on a 11 or more point lead over the Tories in Red Wall areas. Which scared Ben Houchen so much that he was in yesterdays Times begging for money and the extended unedited version is asking for £470m to fix the A19 Tees Crossing (Philip will love that as it's a Road).
Care to guess what's Ben's problem is? He was promised that the money for the work was there and some it has disappeared.
Most of the redwall voted for Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017. The Tories can still win most seats at least without the redwall. They just needed the redwall in 2019 to get the big majority needed to get Brexit done.
Though the Tories best chance of retaining seats in the redwall is still likely Boris. Sunak of course already holds the purse strings
My thought is that a lot of the cause of the "parties" was that the Government didn't really expect most people to comply with a lot of the rules in place (and indeed probably didn't think it was reasonable for people to comply with a lot of the rules in place). Obviously there were a lot of people that did, although mostly the ones that were actually enforceable (such as access to hospitals, care homes etc. In addition to where things were just shut). Anything behind closed doors in workplaces or private homes, not so much. Or at least there was a lot of bending and stretching going on.
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike. And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
Health minister Edward Argar tells @BBCr4today that if Covid rules broken by May 2020 No10 garden drinks, he would "expect disciplinary action" Sounds like PM gearing up to take action against the civil servant who sent the BYOBooze invite https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1480815762608738305
Johnson is a classic coward: letting others take the blame for his own actions.
Health minister Edward Argar tells @BBCr4today that if Covid rules broken by May 2020 No10 garden drinks, he would "expect disciplinary action" Sounds like PM gearing up to take action against the civil servant who sent the BYOBooze invite https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1480815762608738305
Whilst I understand the play its just impossible. If the BYOB party was illegal - and it was - then how can the PM throw the civil servant under the bus for organising it when it was in his own garden with himself in attendance?
The "we have to let Sue Grey investigate" line will not hold. It happened. With his knowledge. Because he was there. He's already lied to the house about it, if Starmer has a brain he will keep asking "were you there, yes or no" questions and let Peppa flail about refusing to answer.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 4% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameeon midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you
You missed the subsamples.
They have Labour on a 11 or more point lead over the Tories in Red Wall areas. Which scared Ben Houchen so much that he was in yesterdays Times begging for money and the extended unedited version is asking for £470m to fix the A19 Tees Crossing (Philip will love that as it's a Road).
Care to guess what's Ben's problem is? He was promised that the money for the work was there and some it has disappeared.
Th Redwall voted for Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017. The Tories can win without the redwall. They just needed the redwall in 2019 to get the big majority needed to get Brexit done
Though the Toeies best chance of retaining seats in the redwall is still likely Boris
2017 - you didn't exactly win - and you won't have the DUP to help prop the party up.
Worse there are a whole set of southern seats that you are likely to lose. Boris is destroying both the new frontier he gave your party and continuing the lose of Southern Seats that are trending Lib Dem / Labour as the locals get priced out so end up renting rather than buying.
If you think the Red Wall will vote for Boris you really have another thing coming. Every seat will have desired projects that the Tory MP championed that in most cases won't have arrived in time. Heck Darlington is now slated as a Labour Gain and that is after we've got 2000 Treasury Jobs in the Northern Campus.
Health minister Edward Argar tells @BBCr4today that if Covid rules broken by May 2020 No10 garden drinks, he would "expect disciplinary action" Sounds like PM gearing up to take action against the civil servant who sent the BYOBooze invite https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1480815762608738305
Sarah Churchwell @sarahchurchwell · 4m “I will need to wait until a third-party investigator can ascertain whether I attended a party at my house thrown by my private secretary” is really quite a move.
Health minister Edward Argar tells @BBCr4today that if Covid rules broken by May 2020 No10 garden drinks, he would "expect disciplinary action" Sounds like PM gearing up to take action against the civil servant who sent the BYOBooze invite https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1480815762608738305
Whilst I understand the play its just impossible. If the BYOB party was illegal - and it was - then how can the PM throw the civil servant under the bus for organising it when it was in his own garden with himself in attendance?
The "we have to let Sue Grey investigate" line will not hold. It happened. With his knowledge. Because he was there. He's already lied to the house about it, if Starmer has a brain he will keep asking "were you there, yes or no" questions and let Peppa flail about refusing to answer.
Breaking News: @BorisJohnson confirms Downing St opened a gin distillery during the pandemic, and the May 20 party - and indeed all the other 47 parties - were in fact working taster meetings.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 4% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameeon midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you
You missed the subsamples.
They have Labour on a 11 or more point lead over the Tories in Red Wall areas. Which scared Ben Houchen so much that he was in yesterdays Times begging for money and the extended unedited version is asking for £470m to fix the A19 Tees Crossing (Philip will love that as it's a Road).
Care to guess what's Ben's problem is? He was promised that the money for the work was there and some it has disappeared.
Th Redwall voted for Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017. The Tories can win without the redwall. They just needed the redwall in 2019 to get the big majority needed to get Brexit done
Though the Toeies best chance of retaining seats in the redwall is still likely Boris
2017 - you didn't exactly win - and you won't have the DUP to help prop the party up.
Worse there are a whole set of southern seats that you are likely to lose. Boris is destroying both the new frontier he gave your party and continuing the lose of Southern Seats that are trending Lib Dem / Labour as the locals get priced out so end up renting rather than buying.
If you think the Red Wall will vote for Boris you really have another thing coming. Every seat will have desired projects that the Tory MP championed that in most cases won't have arrived in time. Heck Darlington is now slated as a Labour Gain and that is after we've got 2000 Treasury Jobs in the Northern Campus.
In 2017 the Tories won almost 50 more seats than Labour and yes the DUP would back the Tories again if they initiated Article 16, which they would if they needed DUP support. Even if the DUP were still not enough the Tories would still likely have a majority in England if they won most seats and therefore could prevent a Starmer minority government passing England only legislation as the SNP would abstain on that.
The current polling all suggests the Tories are still very close to most seats again even if Starmer did become PM
My thought is that a lot of the cause of the "parties" was that the Government didn't really expect most people to comply with a lot of the rules in place (and indeed probably didn't think it was reasonable for people to comply with a lot of the rules in place). Obviously there were a lot of people that did, although mostly the ones that were actually enforceable (such as access to hospitals, care homes etc. In addition to where things were just shut). Anything behind closed doors in workplaces or private homes, not so much. Or at least there was a lot of bending and stretching going on.
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike. And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
I was challenged by the Police as to why I was out walking in the park on my own, with the dog. Thankfully having a dog was always a get out of jail card for exercise, and it was friendly and simply intended to underline the new rules. Obviously the Police left it there and went on their way, having made the intended point - but that sort of experience will be in many people's memories.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Yes, if those same key workers set the rules saying that anyone else who does it risks a visit from the police. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
I’m afraid I’m still not outraged. I know this is the sort of crap that the Lobby hacks love almost as much as their own parties, but I think most people are more interested in what’s happening with restrictions and viruses this week, rather than anything that happened a year and a half ago.
Here are average student rents by region in 2020-21. Increases seem to be of the order of 10-12% this year - but some places have not yet published figures for 21-22. The numbers I quoted above were increased for 21-22.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 4% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameeon midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you
You missed the subsamples.
They have Labour on a 11 or more point lead over the Tories in Red Wall areas. Which scared Ben Houchen so much that he was in yesterdays Times begging for money and the extended unedited version is asking for £470m to fix the A19 Tees Crossing (Philip will love that as it's a Road).
Care to guess what's Ben's problem is? He was promised that the money for the work was there and some it has disappeared.
Th Redwall voted for Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017. The Tories can win without the redwall. They just needed the redwall in 2019 to get the big majority needed to get Brexit done
Though the Toeies best chance of retaining seats in the redwall is still likely Boris
2017 - you didn't exactly win - and you won't have the DUP to help prop the party up.
Worse there are a whole set of southern seats that you are likely to lose. Boris is destroying both the new frontier he gave your party and continuing the lose of Southern Seats that are trending Lib Dem / Labour as the locals get priced out so end up renting rather than buying.
If you think the Red Wall will vote for Boris you really have another thing coming. Every seat will have desired projects that the Tory MP championed that in most cases won't have arrived in time. Heck Darlington is now slated as a Labour Gain and that is after we've got 2000 Treasury Jobs in the Northern Campus.
2017 the Tories won almost 50 more seats than Labour and yes the DUP would back the Toried again if they initiated Article 16, which they would if they needed DUP support. Even if the DUP were still not enough the Tories would still likely have a majority in England if they won most seats and therefore could prevent a Starmer minority government passing England only legislation as the SNP would abstain on that.
The current polling all suggests the Tories are still very close to most seats again even if Starmer did become PM
Is there any scenario where you would acknowledge that things are going badly for your party?
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
They're not even lagging. The polls show the Tories lose the election based on national numbers. Red Wall numbers show they losing swathes of seats back to Labour. Scotland numbers show them losing all their seats to the SNP. So there is no "the polls" defence when they show his party losing already.
He is quick to attack Theresa May - who piled 20% more onto Cameron's majority-winning vote remember - for losing seats, yet in the same breath denies that Peppa will see a collapse in Tory seats despite the evidence being clear.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
That hypothetical Opinium poll you quoted above had the Labour lead 9 points less with Sunak than with Johnson.
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Yes, if those same key workers set the rules saying that anyone else who does it risks a visit from the police. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
I’m afraid I’m still not outraged. I know this is the sort of crap that the Lobby hacks love almost as much as their own parties, but I think most people are more interested in what’s happening with restrictions and viruses this week, rather than anything that happened a year and a half ago.
People may not be talking about it down the souk, but they are here. I doubt there's a family in the land that didn't chat about the PM's party goings on over the Xmas meal
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 4% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameeon midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you
You missed the subsamples.
They have Labour on a 11 or more point lead over the Tories in Red Wall areas. Which scared Ben Houchen so much that he was in yesterdays Times begging for money and the extended unedited version is asking for £470m to fix the A19 Tees Crossing (Philip will love that as it's a Road).
Care to guess what's Ben's problem is? He was promised that the money for the work was there and some it has disappeared.
Th Redwall voted for Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017. The Tories can win without the redwall. They just needed the redwall in 2019 to get the big majority needed to get Brexit done
Though the Toeies best chance of retaining seats in the redwall is still likely Boris
2017 - you didn't exactly win - and you won't have the DUP to help prop the party up.
Worse there are a whole set of southern seats that you are likely to lose. Boris is destroying both the new frontier he gave your party and continuing the lose of Southern Seats that are trending Lib Dem / Labour as the locals get priced out so end up renting rather than buying.
If you think the Red Wall will vote for Boris you really have another thing coming. Every seat will have desired projects that the Tory MP championed that in most cases won't have arrived in time. Heck Darlington is now slated as a Labour Gain and that is after we've got 2000 Treasury Jobs in the Northern Campus.
2017 the Tories won almost 50 more seats than Labour and yes the DUP would back the Toried again if they initiated Article 16, which they would if they needed DUP support. Even if the DUP were still not enough the Tories would still likely have a majority in England if they won most seats and therefore could prevent a Starmer minority government passing England only legislation as the SNP would abstain on that.
The current polling all suggests the Tories are still very close to most seats again even if Starmer did become PM
Is there any scenario where you would acknowledge that things are going badly for your party?
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Wasn't this during the period where the law was that you couldn't *leave* home except for a few reasons, but that if you had left home for work then there was no legal requirement to go home as soon as work was finished? In that case they might be claiming that it was technically legal...
Dom’s flight into Durham is beginning to look like an understandable if misguided action compared to the shenanigans that BYOB Boris indulged in at the same time. No wonder BJ expended so much energy and capital in defending him.
Here are average student rents by region in 2020-21. Increases seem to be of the order of 10-12% this year - but some places have not yet published figures for 21-22. The numbers I quoted above were increased for 21-22.
My thought is that a lot of the cause of the "parties" was that the Government didn't really expect most people to comply with a lot of the rules in place (and indeed probably didn't think it was reasonable for people to comply with a lot of the rules in place). Obviously there were a lot of people that did, although mostly the ones that were actually enforceable (such as access to hospitals, care homes etc. In addition to where things were just shut). Anything behind closed doors in workplaces or private homes, not so much. Or at least there was a lot of bending and stretching going on.
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike. And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
I was challenged by the Police as to why I was out walking in the park on my own, with the dog. Thankfully having a dog was always a get out of jail card for exercise, and it was friendly and simply intended to underline the new rules. Obviously the Police left it there and went on their way, having made the intended point - but that sort of experience will be in many people's memories.
I think he may get away with this beacuse of the date of May 20th. Listening to the radio news they say that the party took place during lockdown, and ITV refer to it as the height of lockdown. May 20th was a very warm day and Bournemouth beach was very busy as you were allowed to go to the beach, it was not really the height of lockdown. It was a time when there the silly rule that you were not allowed to meet 2 people that you knew socially distanced only one, but you could sit on a beach 2 metres from people that you did not know.
My thought is that a lot of the cause of the "parties" was that the Government didn't really expect most people to comply with a lot of the rules in place (and indeed probably didn't think it was reasonable for people to comply with a lot of the rules in place). Obviously there were a lot of people that did, although mostly the ones that were actually enforceable (such as access to hospitals, care homes etc. In addition to where things were just shut). Anything behind closed doors in workplaces or private homes, not so much. Or at least there was a lot of bending and stretching going on.
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike. And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
I was challenged by the Police as to why I was out walking in the park on my own, with the dog. Thankfully having a dog was always a get out of jail card for exercise, and it was friendly and simply intended to underline the new rules. Obviously the Police left it there and went on their way, having made the intended point - but that sort of experience will be in many people's memories.
And not being able to travel or see loved ones before they died, prematurely due to hospital backlogs caused by Covid. 5 people allowed at the funeral. No wake permitted afterwards. Some got it worse. Sons buried without family in attendance by workers in Hamzat suits.
Tap in to this type of sentiment, as people inevitably will, and you can see just how fucked the government are. This wasn't bending the rules, it was an egregious breach of them. They thought they were invincible and could get away with it; of course they couldn't.
My thought is that a lot of the cause of the "parties" was that the Government didn't really expect most people to comply with a lot of the rules in place (and indeed probably didn't think it was reasonable for people to comply with a lot of the rules in place). Obviously there were a lot of people that did, although mostly the ones that were actually enforceable (such as access to hospitals, care homes etc. In addition to where things were just shut). Anything behind closed doors in workplaces or private homes, not so much. Or at least there was a lot of bending and stretching going on.
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike. And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
I was challenged by the Police as to why I was out walking in the park on my own, with the dog. Thankfully having a dog was always a get out of jail card for exercise, and it was friendly and simply intended to underline the new rules. Obviously the Police left it there and went on their way, having made the intended point - but that sort of experience will be in many people's memories.
I think he may get away with this beacuse of the date of May 20th. Listening to the radio news they say that the party took place during lockdown, and ITV refer to it as the height of lockdown. May 20th was a very warm day and Bournemouth beach was very busy as you were allowed to go to the beach, it was not really the height of lockdown. It was a time when there the silly rule that you were not allowed to meet 2 people that you knew socially distanced only one, but you could sit on a beach 2 metres from people that you did not know.
You're saying that those working in number ten don't know each other?
The other problem here is that the chronology about what lockdown rule existed when doesn't matter. People can, and will, see the conduct of No.10 in whatever way they want.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
That hypothetical Opinium poll you quoted above had the Labour lead 9 points less with Sunak than with Johnson.
The actual poll had Labour with a 7% lead. A Sunak led Tories cut that to a 4% Labour lead. All the current polls this year have Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead now anyway.
Only if Labour got a consistent 10%+ lead would Boris be in trouble. Replacing Boris with Sunak would likely make as much difference for the Tories as replacing Brown with David Miliband would have done for Labour pre 2010 ie not a lot
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
Yebbut as HYUFD keeps saying mostd of that 60% - indeed also that 20% - aren't Real Tories anyway.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
Yes, looks about right.
This all just confirms what most of us have long known: FUDHY lacks political antennae.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
They're not even lagging. The polls show the Tories lose the election based on national numbers. Red Wall numbers show they losing swathes of seats back to Labour. Scotland numbers show them losing all their seats to the SNP. So there is no "the polls" defence when they show his party losing already.
He is quick to attack Theresa May - who piled 20% more onto Cameron's majority-winning vote remember - for losing seats, yet in the same breath denies that Peppa will see a collapse in Tory seats despite the evidence being clear.
As the film said, Don't Look Up!
Actually the latest polls Scottish subsamples have the SCons on 24 to 28% and holding several of their Scottish seats
My thought is that a lot of the cause of the "parties" was that the Government didn't really expect most people to comply with a lot of the rules in place (and indeed probably didn't think it was reasonable for people to comply with a lot of the rules in place). Obviously there were a lot of people that did, although mostly the ones that were actually enforceable (such as access to hospitals, care homes etc. In addition to where things were just shut). Anything behind closed doors in workplaces or private homes, not so much. Or at least there was a lot of bending and stretching going on.
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike. And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
They're not even lagging. The polls show the Tories lose the election based on national numbers. Red Wall numbers show they losing swathes of seats back to Labour. Scotland numbers show them losing all their seats to the SNP. So there is no "the polls" defence when they show his party losing already.
He is quick to attack Theresa May - who piled 20% more onto Cameron's majority-winning vote remember - for losing seats, yet in the same breath denies that Peppa will see a collapse in Tory seats despite the evidence being clear.
As the film said, Don't Look Up!
Actually the latest polls Scottish subsamples have the SCons on 24 to 28% and holding several of their Scottish seats
If soneone is driven to quote selected Scottish subsamples ...
[edit] I'd quietly note them with interest, if I saw them, but I wouldn't waste PBers' time and OGH's space and money on them when we have had recent proper polls.
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Yes, if those same key workers set the rules saying that anyone else who does it risks a visit from the police. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
I’m afraid I’m still not outraged. I know this is the sort of crap that the Lobby hacks love almost as much as their own parties, but I think most people are more interested in what’s happening with restrictions and viruses this week, rather than anything that happened a year and a half ago.
I'n not outraged either. But I disagree about people being not interested. This stuff is cutting through.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
OK.
Can we do a Strawpoll then, how many of this site voted Tory in 2019?
My thought is that a lot of the cause of the "parties" was that the Government didn't really expect most people to comply with a lot of the rules in place (and indeed probably didn't think it was reasonable for people to comply with a lot of the rules in place). Obviously there were a lot of people that did, although mostly the ones that were actually enforceable (such as access to hospitals, care homes etc. In addition to where things were just shut). Anything behind closed doors in workplaces or private homes, not so much. Or at least there was a lot of bending and stretching going on.
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike. And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
I was challenged by the Police as to why I was out walking in the park on my own, with the dog. Thankfully having a dog was always a get out of jail card for exercise, and it was friendly and simply intended to underline the new rules. Obviously the Police left it there and went on their way, having made the intended point - but that sort of experience will be in many people's memories.
I think he may get away with this beacuse of the date of May 20th. Listening to the radio news they say that the party took place during lockdown, and ITV refer to it as the height of lockdown. May 20th was a very warm day and Bournemouth beach was very busy as you were allowed to go to the beach, it was not really the height of lockdown. It was a time when there the silly rule that you were not allowed to meet 2 people that you knew socially distanced only one, but you could sit on a beach 2 metres from people that you did not know.
You're saying that those working in number ten don't know each other?
Not at all, just pointing out one of the daft rules at the time. If they did not know each other and remained socially distanced then they would not be breaking the silly rules. May 20th was not at "the height of lockdown" that the press are saying. You could go to the beach, buy fish and chips and sit 2 metres from someone you didn't know, but not 2 people that you did know who were not in your household.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
OK.
Can we do a Strawpoll then, how many of this site voted Tory in 2019?
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
OK.
Can we do a Strawpoll then, how many of this site voted Tory in 2019?
I did
One person, the majority did not.
I would guess most of PB voted Labour, LD or SNP in 2019
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
Yebbut as HYUFD keeps saying mostd of that 60% - indeed also that 20% - aren't Real Tories anyway.
If they ever do an opinion poll of “real” party support, it’ll be:
Real Tories 2% Real Labour 5% Real Liberals 1% Real SNP 0 Real Greens 5% Real fascists 1% Real communists 1% They’re all a bunch of lying, cheating hypocrites 85%
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
OK.
Can we do a Strawpoll then, how many of this site voted Tory in 2019?
I did
One person, the majority did not.
I would guess most of PB voted Labour, LD or SNP in 2019
Are you sure that isn't a slip of the keyboard, even counting Leon as one?
My thought is that a lot of the cause of the "parties" was that the Government didn't really expect most people to comply with a lot of the rules in place (and indeed probably didn't think it was reasonable for people to comply with a lot of the rules in place). Obviously there were a lot of people that did, although mostly the ones that were actually enforceable (such as access to hospitals, care homes etc. In addition to where things were just shut). Anything behind closed doors in workplaces or private homes, not so much. Or at least there was a lot of bending and stretching going on.
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike. And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
I was challenged by the Police as to why I was out walking in the park on my own, with the dog. Thankfully having a dog was always a get out of jail card for exercise, and it was friendly and simply intended to underline the new rules. Obviously the Police left it there and went on their way, having made the intended point - but that sort of experience will be in many people's memories.
I think he may get away with this beacuse of the date of May 20th. Listening to the radio news they say that the party took place during lockdown, and ITV refer to it as the height of lockdown. May 20th was a very warm day and Bournemouth beach was very busy as you were allowed to go to the beach, it was not really the height of lockdown. It was a time when there the silly rule that you were not allowed to meet 2 people that you knew socially distanced only one, but you could sit on a beach 2 metres from people that you did not know.
You're saying that those working in number ten don't know each other?
Not at all, just pointing out one of the daft rules at the time. If they did not know each other and remained socially distanced then they would not be breaking the silly rules. May 20th was not at "the height of lockdown" that the press are saying. You could go to the beach, buy fish and chips and sit 2 metres from someone you didn't know, but not 2 people that you did know who were not in your household.
You could sunbathe in the park. You could have a drink in the park on your own 2 meters away from others. But not if "the others" were people you knew. You could work on a building site with dozens of others. But you could not have a drink with them at the end of the day.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
Yebbut as HYUFD keeps saying mostd of that 60% - indeed also that 20% - aren't Real Tories anyway.
Exactly. You're only a real Tory if you vote Plaid Cymru to support Welsh secession from the Union.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
OK.
Can we do a Strawpoll then, how many of this site voted Tory in 2019?
I did
One person, the majority did not.
I would guess most of PB voted Labour, LD or SNP in 2019
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Yes, if those same key workers set the rules saying that anyone else who does it risks a visit from the police. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
I’m afraid I’m still not outraged. I know this is the sort of crap that the Lobby hacks love almost as much as their own parties, but I think most people are more interested in what’s happening with restrictions and viruses this week, rather than anything that happened a year and a half ago.
I'n not outraged either. But I disagree about people being not interested. This stuff is cutting through.
The party during lockdown isn't the issue - it's the backdrop - a backdrop that already has people on the edge
The issue is the lies. That we were told, by our PM, from the despatch box and on the media, that "all rules were followed". Then a "most humble and sincere" apology that, no, all rules weren't followed and he was angry and ashamed to have "found out" that this had all happened behind his back.
Now the revelation that he was actually there.
The only worse thing that can happen is evidence that he was the one who said "let's have a party!" in the first place.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
Yebbut as HYUFD keeps saying mostd of that 60% - indeed also that 20% - aren't Real Tories anyway.
Exactly. You're only a real Tory if you vote Plaid Cymru to support Welsh secession from the Union.
Oh yes, and advocate the creation of an English Parliament and the secession of Antrim from the Union whiles at it.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
You take my breath away
I voted conservative in 2019 as did many others on here and hope to do so again, but how you can even attempt to defend the indefensible is beyond me and believe you me Boris is taking the party to near certain defeat
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Yes, if those same key workers set the rules saying that anyone else who does it risks a visit from the police. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
I’m afraid I’m still not outraged. I know this is the sort of crap that the Lobby hacks love almost as much as their own parties, but I think most people are more interested in what’s happening with restrictions and viruses this week, rather than anything that happened a year and a half ago.
Of course you are not outraged, Why would someone who supports a government that is legislating to criminalise peaceful protest, restrict votes to those who hold government-approved ID and put itself beyond the rule of law be concerned that the government also believes the rules that it creates do not apply to ministers and their staffs?
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
While I agree with you to an extent, if someone had asked in May 2020 at one of the briefings "we've all been working hard at the hospital, and the weather is amazing, is it ok if we hold a socially distanced gathering in the nice garden behind the cancer wing - bring your own booze", I think I know what the answer would have been.
I don't think the police should be involved with this, but the idiots who thought this was ok need to be taken to task. The culture comes from the top in an organisation, or at least it should.
Time for Johnson to head off to the after dinner speaking bumbling through the same act circuit. Serious times need serious people.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Not true, my guess would be about 60% of the active site voted for Johnson in 2019 and sub 20% intend to next time
OK.
Can we do a Strawpoll then, how many of this site voted Tory in 2019?
I did
One person, the majority did not.
I would guess most of PB voted Labour, LD or SNP in 2019
As, indeed, did a plurality of voters.
Though even then I would be surprised if as high as 43% of PBers voted Conservative in 2019 as they did nationally.
Even PBers who do vote Tory tend to be more Cameroon Tory than Boris Tory with a few exceptions
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Yes, if those same key workers set the rules saying that anyone else who does it risks a visit from the police. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
I’m afraid I’m still not outraged. I know this is the sort of crap that the Lobby hacks love almost as much as their own parties, but I think most people are more interested in what’s happening with restrictions and viruses this week, rather than anything that happened a year and a half ago.
I'n not outraged either. But I disagree about people being not interested. This stuff is cutting through.
The party during lockdown isn't the issue - it's the backdrop - a backdrop that already has people on the edge
The issue is the lies. That we were told, by our PM, from the despatch box and on the media, that "all rules were followed". Then a "most humble and sincere" apology that, no, all rules weren't followed and he was angry and ashamed that this had all happened behind his back. Now the revelation that he was actually there.
The only worse thing that can happen is evidence that he was the one who said "let's have a party!" in the first place.
I agree completely - as I said earlier. The government has handled this poorly.
They should have said, "So what - that was months ago - we achieved the aim of generally increasing social distancing to reduce the spread of the virus - let's be positive and move on - better times ahead!".
Are we still supposed to be getting outraged, about a group of stressed key workers sitting outside in the garden for an hour after working hours?
A drink after work really isn’t a “Party”, by any definition of the term.
Yes, if those same key workers set the rules saying that anyone else who does it risks a visit from the police. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
I’m afraid I’m still not outraged. I know this is the sort of crap that the Lobby hacks love almost as much as their own parties, but I think most people are more interested in what’s happening with restrictions and viruses this week, rather than anything that happened a year and a half ago.
I'n not outraged either. But I disagree about people being not interested. This stuff is cutting through.
Perhaps people will start to think that the lockdown was not entirely about public health, and may have also had something to do with the accumulation and exercise of power on the part of government and experts who know best. Not good news.
Perhaps the only way out of this is to just to issue an apology, and lift all remaining restrictions. And just hope the pandemic goes away.
An odd thread really. HYUFD demonstrating just how wrong one man can be about so many things at the same time.
Firstly the Red Wall will not vote for Boris in 2024. Dismissing all other leaders because "they will only vote for Boris" is utterly ludicrous when the polls show they won't vote for Boris.
Secondly pretty much everyone here is lined up with the basics of right and wrong. Two months into Covid restrictions the government giving a 3pm "you will not meet with other people" instruction and a 5pm "everyone round to number 10, bring a bottle, we deserve a party" is demonstrably indefensible. Never mind the political optics, it's indefensible to anyone with a brain, a conscience or morals.
So perhaps he of the high church lecturing the rest of us about Christian values may consider the plank in his own eye. I haven't seen such screaming hypocrisy since IDS claimed to be a man of God before proceeding to smash the poor as hard as humanly possible.
Finally, what the red wall voted for. Yes Boris was a bit of a lad, the anti-politician anti-Tory. But they bought that principally because he offered the solution to their problems. Which wasn't Brexit, it was the reason why they voted for Brexit
There are many planks to this. Some voted to get rid of all the foreigners. Some because they wanted money for the NHS. Some to kick the government. And so many more because they wanted their town and their community and their family to have a chance in life that they unfairly were being denied. Fairness is something very high on the agenda of people in the red wall. So the idea they will still vote for the lying cheating mocking incompetent corrupt charlatan is breathtaking.
Boris Johnson is over. The Tory party can either accept this, replace him with someone who represents the values of both the party and the country and have a chance, or keep him and not only lose the election but smash the party into pieces.
The latest polls have the Tories on 33-35% and Labour with only a 3 to 5% lead and there were plenty of garden drinks party photos before that. That is more Cameron midterm polling, nowhere near pre 1997 polling.
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. If HYFUD prevails, then the Conservatives will face an extinction level event at the next general election. It never seems to occur to him that the opinion polls he consistently and complacently quotes are a lagging indicator.
Look most commentators on here hate Boris and did not even vote for him in 2019. Yet the 33 to 35% the Tories are still polling is still higher than the Tories got from 1997 to 2005, hardly extinction level
Let's take a hypothetical extreme position. If a party had 60% support in the polls but the PM was found to have carried out some despicable actions eg to have planned a coup, would there be any justification to say it is ok because s/he is well ahead in the polls.
Comments
However, if Bali was ok if wildly overrated, I can tell you the worst place on the planet (and I’ve been to Egypt): the nearby island of Gili Trawangan. I *HATE* that place. An utter cesspit. I’d rather spend the rest of my allotted time in Swindon than spend a single minute in Gili Fecking Trawangan.
The other 30 ...
https://twitter.com/tamcohen/status/1480813515900428288
I think the Tories may suddenly find that their destiny is no longer under their own control.
I don't have a handle on current national figures for student rent, but this will not be the most expensive by a long chalk.
The thing that rather boosts it is the longer contracts. But that is mainly a feature of local markets.
Except letting the voters do it gives them a couple more years at the trough.
No contest...
For anyone in a nostalgic for the 1990's, check out this video of Metallica playing in Moscow in 1991. 1.6 million people. No smartphones or safety features, aside from the hundreds of soldiers trying to police the event. First minute or two of the video and you get the idea.
The objective was always to increase social distancing in general, which they did, not to turn us into authoritarian curtain-twitchers.
Health minister Edward Argar tells @BBCr4today that if Covid rules broken by May 2020 No10 garden drinks, he would "expect disciplinary action"
Sounds like PM gearing up to take action against the civil servant who sent the BYOBooze invite
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1480815762608738305
The only hypothetical alternative leader polling from Opinium last month had a Truss or Gove led Tories polling worse than a Boris led Tories. Even a Sunak led Tories were only on 34% ie no better than they are polling now.
So the only one wrong on this is you. As long as Boris continues to impose no new restrictions, especially on the vaccinated, he will survive
They have Labour on a 11 or more point lead over the Tories in Red Wall areas. Which scared Ben Houchen so much that he was in yesterdays Times begging for money and the extended unedited version is asking for £470m to fix the A19 Tees Crossing (Philip will love that as it's a Road).
Care to guess what's Ben's problem is? He was promised that the money for the work was there and some it has disappeared.
"there is a very serious political risk here for the PM"
says a member of the government told her late last night that a Met Police criminal investigation is a real possibility.
says government has been running its own deadpool on who would get sacked at the end of this!
says people in government challenged the party invite and the email at the time - yet 30 people attended, and Downing Street hasn't denied eye witness reports that the clown and Mrs clown went along
The momentum is pushing him to the edge. He's done.
Though the Tories best chance of retaining seats in the redwall is still likely Boris. Sunak of course already holds the purse strings
So why were the rules as they were? Well it comes back to the old thing of "clarity of message", and also the media obsession with claiming every slight nuance in the rules was "too confusing" - as well as the focus on every minor inconsistency as suggesting that the rules were useless. So we just got the lot - rules that mattered and those that didn't alike.
And of course this was made worse by the vast majority being written into law (which arguably meant that the 'loopholes' "mattered" - and people couldn't just be asked to exercise common sense. Because in many cases exercising common sense would have actually still meant breaking the law. (and of course there was the issue that some rules were not actually law, but just guidance - but this was not a distinction that was easy for the public to follow (and of course any emphasis on this just made it sound like the things that were just guidance were things you were free to ignore)
However because many in Government knew this, and knew that some of the rules mattered more than others (or at least eg. distinction between sitting in a work meeting, and having a drink with the same people, were basically pointless in effect), combined with the expectation that some wouldn't be complied with, meant that they just operated as they thought others would (and i'm sure in many cases did).
I mean really there should be no comparison between a few people having a drink in an office with people they work with all day, and restrictions on visiting people in hospital. Clearly the latter restriction is far more important. But the comparison can be made, to the hugely damaging perception of the Government, because of the overall message put out (for "clarity") that everything was important and everyone had to do their bit. Even where the rules were frankly bloody stupid.
https://twitter.com/jessphillips/status/1480818282810818560
The "we have to let Sue Grey investigate" line will not hold. It happened. With his knowledge. Because he was there. He's already lied to the house about it, if Starmer has a brain he will keep asking "were you there, yes or no" questions and let Peppa flail about refusing to answer.
Worse there are a whole set of southern seats that you are likely to lose. Boris is destroying both the new frontier he gave your party and continuing the lose of Southern Seats that are trending Lib Dem / Labour as the locals get priced out so end up renting rather than buying.
If you think the Red Wall will vote for Boris you really have another thing coming. Every seat will have desired projects that the Tory MP championed that in most cases won't have arrived in time. Heck Darlington is now slated as a Labour Gain and that is after we've got 2000 Treasury Jobs in the Northern Campus.
Sarah Churchwell
@sarahchurchwell
·
4m
“I will need to wait until a third-party investigator can ascertain whether I attended a party at my house thrown by my private secretary” is really quite a move.
https://twitter.com/drphilhammond/status/1480816708566855681?t=hNfEyBoLT6RJg7PoT0lgVQ&s=19
The current polling all suggests the Tories are still very close to most seats again even if Starmer did become PM
These are probably inclusive.
https://www.savethestudent.org/accommodation/national-student-accommodation-survey-2021.html#student-rent
He is quick to attack Theresa May - who piled 20% more onto Cameron's majority-winning vote remember - for losing seats, yet in the same breath denies that Peppa will see a collapse in Tory seats despite the evidence being clear.
As the film said, Don't Look Up!
Leeds for reference starts at £130 for first year self catering this year - thanks to Unipol it's easy to get the figure so will use that,
It was a time when there the silly rule that you were not allowed to meet 2 people that you knew socially distanced only one, but you could sit on a beach 2 metres from people that you did not know.
Some got it worse. Sons buried without family in attendance by workers in Hamzat suits.
Tap in to this type of sentiment, as people inevitably will, and you can see just how fucked the government are. This wasn't bending the rules, it was an egregious breach of them. They thought they were invincible and could get away with it; of course they couldn't.
Only if Labour got a consistent 10%+ lead would Boris be in trouble. Replacing Boris with Sunak would likely make as much difference for the Tories as replacing Brown with David Miliband would have done for Labour pre 2010 ie not a lot
If the case went to court, the financial penalty was much bigger.
Here are extracts of police evidence when 4 people were having a drink in the sunshine in a west London park in Spring 2020. https://twitter.com/kirkkorner/status/1480822410681237509/photo/1
This all just confirms what most of us have long known: FUDHY lacks political antennae.
[edit] I'd quietly note them with interest, if I saw them, but I wouldn't waste PBers' time and OGH's space and money on them when we have had recent proper polls.
Can we do a Strawpoll then, how many of this site voted Tory in 2019?
Not at all, just pointing out one of the daft rules at the time. If they did not know each other and remained socially distanced then they would not be breaking the silly rules.
May 20th was not at "the height of lockdown" that the press are saying. You could go to the beach, buy fish and chips and sit 2 metres from someone you didn't know, but not 2 people that you did know who were not in your household.
The issue is that Boris has no-one telling him that's a stupid idea...
I would guess most of PB voted Labour, LD or SNP in 2019
Real Tories 2%
Real Labour 5%
Real Liberals 1%
Real SNP 0
Real Greens 5%
Real fascists 1%
Real communists 1%
They’re all a bunch of lying, cheating hypocrites 85%
BoZo doesn't care. Stupid ideas are his entire life.
The government has set itself up hasn't it.
The issue is the lies. That we were told, by our PM, from the despatch box and on the media, that "all rules were followed". Then a "most humble and sincere" apology that, no, all rules weren't followed and he was angry and ashamed to have "found out" that this had all happened behind his back.
Now the revelation that he was actually there.
The only worse thing that can happen is evidence that he was the one who said "let's have a party!" in the first place.
I voted conservative in 2019 as did many others on here and hope to do so again, but how you can even attempt to defend the indefensible is beyond me and believe you me Boris is taking the party to near certain defeat
Only Cabinet Ministers are stupid enough to believe BoZo didn't come up with it
I don't think the police should be involved with this, but the idiots who thought this was ok need to be taken to task. The culture comes from the top in an organisation, or at least it should.
Time for Johnson to head off to the after dinner
speakingbumbling through the same act circuit. Serious times need serious people.Even PBers who do vote Tory tend to be more Cameroon Tory than Boris Tory with a few exceptions
They should have said, "So what - that was months ago - we achieved the aim of generally increasing social distancing to reduce the spread of the virus - let's be positive and move on - better times ahead!".
Perhaps the only way out of this is to just to issue an apology, and lift all remaining restrictions. And just hope the pandemic goes away.