When I ascend to power, on Day 1 I’m going to declare an open-ended investigation into the whole conduct of both my government and my personal life. Then I’ll just refuse to answer any questions about any alleged misconduct as it will all be subject to the ongoing investigation. https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1480826310788362241
1/13 Put bluntly the most senior Judges in Scotland have delivered @scotgov a devastating indictment on its consultation on Legal Services Regulation Reform- essentially accusing Scottish Govt of interference with the rule of law & an independent judiciary
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
I think that is maybe an exaggeration - most people are not political obsessives to that extent
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 English parliament is perfectly compatible with the Union, just a Union based on equality that treats England the same as the other 3 home nations
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
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.
Lift all restriction enshrined in law. They were only guidelines in the first place weren't they really? Individuals would comply to varying degrees - but so what the aim of increasing social distancing generally was achieved. This was always their policy.
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.
The government has set itself up hasn't it.
Absolutely, they were very silly rules. I think the Governments whole idea was to keep people 2 metres apart and that you could do whatever you liked as long as you did that. The police were hardly going to ask people who were 2 metres apart if they knew the people that they were 2 metres apart from beacuse if they did they were breaking the rules, if they didn't then it was ok. This email about socially distanced drinks, they thought "socially distanced" made it ok. Well if they didn't know each other then it was ok.
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.
Well I think Swindon would be a fine place to spend the rest of your life. The magnificent County Ground, the magic roundabout, the er, er...
I'm a Swindon Town and I wouldn't wish living in Swindon on anyone (except perhaps that ghastly RachelSwindon, or whoever she is...)
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 English parliament is perfectly compatible with the Union, just a Union based on equality that treats England the same as the other 3 home nations
We Scttish independistas have been saying that since before 1997!
But it's not compatible with Conservative party policy. And never has been. You'd be better joining PC and campaigning for an English parliament from there.
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
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.
Well I think Swindon would be a fine place to spend the rest of your life. The magnificent County Ground, the magic roundabout, the er, er...
I'm a Swindon Town and I wouldn't wish living in Swindon on anyone (except perhaps that ghastly RachelSwindon, or whoever she is...)
I had a day out in Swindon once!! To the Railway Village.
And I also walked in over the Roundabout one day as a student when hiking in from the Ridgeway to the train station.
HY, take advice meant in a friendly fashion. Step away from the keyboard. Switch off the computer and all other electronic devices, and the router. Go for a long walk. Read a comic. Snog your wife. Observe children laughing and playing. Enjoy yourself. Life is for living.
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
Not mine - most people talk about politics far less than PBers think.
There was plenty of anger towards anti-vaxxers though from both family and work colleagues.
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 English parliament is perfectly compatible with the Union, just a Union based on equality that treats England the same as the other 3 home nations
We Scttish independistas have been saying that since before 1997!
But it's not compatible with Conservative party policy. And never has been. You'd be better joining PC and campaigning for an English parliament from there.
Most Tory voters and members already back an English parliament.
If and when we go back into opposition the party will likely shift to that position or at least backing EVEL again as the first route back to power
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.
I think there may be several further levels to go. It surely was Boris' idea, but there's probably evidence of him overruling objections too.
Photos of him drinking champagne? Perhaps. And then there's the cover-up line of inquiry.
Did Boris really just sit their twiddling his thumbs while the shark circled? Or were certain phone calls made.
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
This gets better. So there were 6 Councillors being elected. And you voted in favour of two councillors to oppose your party. Literally voting against your own party!
I understand being a party hack. People usually vote for their own party, and if that means not voting for additional candidates who when elected will oppose your own candidates then yeah, don't vote for them.
You can't vote against the Conservative Party and then haughtily screech at all other Tory party supporters, members and former members that they are not proper Tories because they haven't always supported their own party. YOU haven't always supported your own party.
That plank in your eye must be longer that Peppa's nose by now.
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.
For most MPs all they care about is whether their party is ahead or whether an alternative leader would do significantly better if behind
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 English parliament is perfectly compatible with the Union, just a Union based on equality that treats England the same as the other 3 home nations
We Scttish independistas have been saying that since before 1997!
But it's not compatible with Conservative party policy. And never has been. You'd be better joining PC and campaigning for an English parliament from there.
Most Tory voters and members already back an English parliament.
If and when we go back into opposition the party will likely shift to that position or at least backing EVEL again as the first route back to power
In other words, the Tories don't care about principle - only about themselves.
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.
Yes, my Dad's funeral was around that time, so I remember the restrictions quite well.
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
What if the only other candidates had been from the BNP. Would you have used your votes to vote for them?
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.
It's a good job I didn't get stopped by the police whilst walking. I'd have probably ended up in a cell because I'd have told the scumbags what I think of them.
A further point I would make (and I agree this whole story isn’t going away and I don’t see a satisfactory outcome for the Govt) is that what this demonstrates is how destructive a lot of the rules were for effective functioning of organisations with large workforces, with cross working/communication necessary across those organisations.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
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.
Well I think Swindon would be a fine place to spend the rest of your life. The magnificent County Ground, the magic roundabout, the er, er...
I'm a Swindon Town and I wouldn't wish living in Swindon on anyone (except perhaps that ghastly RachelSwindon, or whoever she is...)
I had a day out in Swindon once!! To the Railway Village.
And I also walked in over the Roundabout one day as a student when hiking in from the Ridgeway to the train station.
Ok - very off topic, but I will say this. The magic roundabout is brilliant if you know how it works. I've used it many times. For someone who has never seen it before I imagine its a tad confusing...
Unhelpful intervention for Lady Mone from a fellow Scottish unionist (but then there won't be any SNP peers anyway):
"The House of Lords commissioners for standards are considering a complaint against the Conservative peer Michelle Mone, relating to the PPE business awarded £203m government contracts after she referred it to the Cabinet Office in May 2020.
The Labour peer George Foulkes complained to the commissioners on 6 January after the Guardian reported that leaked files appear to suggest Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based financier Douglas Barrowman, were secretly involved in the company, PPE Medpro."
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
What if the only other candidates had been from the BNP. Would you have used your votes to vote for them?
If there were 6 Council places and the only party to put up 6 candidates were the BNP then some of them would have been elected anyway however I voted, even if I only voted for 4 non BNP candidates
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
Im sure you are right, they were and are a bit thick. they just thought " we were socially distanced" meant that they could stand in the garden. Boris said in Parliament that all the social distancing rules were followed at any gathering he went to. Unfortunately the rules state that if you knew the people then you could not meet them even if you were 2 metres apart, if you didn't know them you could.
The other daft thing is that these people we were working in a poorly ventilated office with each other all day every 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
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.
For most MPs all they care about is whether their party is ahead or whether an alternative leader would do significantly better if behind
So you are saying that in the hypothetical situation of a leader planning a coup then that would be ok if they ahead in the polls. That is exactly how many dictatorships come about. And you approve of this?
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 English parliament is perfectly compatible with the Union, just a Union based on equality that treats England the same as the other 3 home nations
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
We have heard little more of the supposed November 13th 2020 Downing Street flat party so far. The details of that, should anyone possess them, seem to be a logical next revelation, perhaps in a week or two.
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
What if the only other candidates had been from the BNP. Would you have used your votes to vote for them?
If there were 6 Council places and the only party to put up 6 candidates were the BNP then some of them would have been elected anyway however I voted, even if I only voted for 4 non BNP candidates
But would you have voted for the BNP if it was only the four Tories and two BNP candidates and you had six votes?
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 English parliament is perfectly compatible with the Union, just a Union based on equality that treats England the same as the other 3 home nations
Agreed.
Quite, which begs the quesiton why it isn't Tory policy.
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
It's worse than that; people are making jokes about it. That's the kind of thing that sticks.
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?
Surely it is! Leon in all his incarnations, Casino, Phillip, Max, TSE, possibly Sunil, Topping - there's no shortage of Tory voters here. Even Big_G overcame a year of reservations to do so.
Most of whom were telling us that Boris's poll leads would go on and on, as recently as November.
A further point I would make (and I agree this whole story isn’t going away and I don’t see a satisfactory outcome for the Govt) is that what this demonstrates is how destructive a lot of the rules were for effective functioning of organisations with large workforces, with cross working/communication necessary across those organisations.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
WFH is a disaster for many organisations, we deal with many LAs who have basically stopped operating for many of their functions and their staff are getting very frustrated.
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.
For most MPs all they care about is whether their party is ahead or whether an alternative leader would do significantly better if behind
So you are saying that in the hypothetical situation of a leader planning a coup then that would be ok if they ahead in the polls. That is exactly how many dictatorships come about. And you approve of this?
Remember most Republican members of the House of Representatives voted to overturn the EC results in 2020 in favour of Trump.
I am not saying I approve, just pointing out most elected representatives care most about what their party's voters think with a few exceptions
Did it not occur to these uber political animals that one day it would leak?
We have here what arises from people who think they are cleverer than they are, who are too connected to each other and who indulge in group think. The Paterson fiasco is another example.
And at the top is someone who is too self-indulgent, isn't interested in details and lacks patience.
What they need is an outsider who is able and willing to say NO.
If Boris is such an admirer of Churchill he should be aware of how important Alanbrooke was to him.
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
'Davidson, a Tory peer and former Scottish Conservative leader, condemned the alleged drinks party in May 2020, saying “People are (rightly) furious.”[...] Baroness Davidson said: “This line won’t survive 48 hrs. Nobody needs an official to tell them if they were at a boozy shindig in their own garden. People are (rightly) furious. They sacrificed so much – visiting sick or grieving relatives, funerals. What tf were any of these people thinking?”
Meanwhile, Scottish Tory representatives from the Commons and Holyrood were accused of being in “hiding” by SNP figures as they failed to appear on morning news to answer questions on the allegations.'
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
Im sure you are right, they were and are a bit thick. they just thought " we were socially distanced" meant that they could stand in the garden. Boris said in Parliament that all the social distancing rules were followed at any gathering he went to. Unfortunately the rules state that if you knew the people then you could not meet them even if you were 2 metres apart, if you didn't know them you could.
The other daft thing is that these people we were working in a poorly ventilated office with each other all day every day.
Back in May 2020, the Tories had double digit poll leads and thought they could do whatever they wanted. I think it's as simple as that really.
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.
There's an element of hubris about it. Johnson's career has shown him that if you deny issues and if they persist then shrug them off with a cheery laugh, people will forgive you. And so they usually will, if it doesn't affect them personally - they're just not that interested. The unusual issue here is that everyone in the country was affected personally, and while some of us personally found lockdown no big deal, many really didn't.
I imagine that Downing Street hopes that Sue Grey's report will be very uncomfortable reading but not damning enough to force resignations, merely an apology, and from then on Ministers will say "This was all addressed in the report". They may be correct, but it's a mistake to conclude that it won't do lasting damage to the whole agenda, as the absence of public trust is as crippling to government as it is for a private business.
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.
And if there were a general election tomorrow, to use the opinion polls' formulation, I probably would again, because my Tory MP is sensible about the virus and whoever the Labour lobby fodder against him would be almost certainly wouldn't.
That said, the next election won't be come until the virus is no longer a major political consideration. And it's Starmer over Boris for me.
Even if this hypothetical éminence grise de nos jours existed what on Earth makes you think Johnson would either listen to them or modify his conduct as a result? All the evidence we have is that he would continue to not give a fuck.
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.
The government has set itself up hasn't it.
Absolutely, they were very silly rules. I think the Governments whole idea was to keep people 2 metres apart and that you could do whatever you liked as long as you did that. The police were hardly going to ask people who were 2 metres apart if they knew the people that they were 2 metres apart from beacuse if they did they were breaking the rules, if they didn't then it was ok. This email about socially distanced drinks, they thought "socially distanced" made it ok. Well if they didn't know each other then it was ok.
Remember the Stratton video. That it wasn't socially distanced was an in-joke.
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
Nah, only Tories have enough time on their hands to post here.
On top of the morals of sticking to your own rules, these May parties were only a month after Boris nearly died from COVID....you would have thought that would have the effect of thinking oh shit this thing deadly, we need to do everything possible not to be spreading it.
Do we believe he nearly died from it? Like most people I hardly believe a word he says and I remember one of the nurses at the time demurring when an interviewer asked how she felt about saving the Prime Minister's life.
I hope he does stay on till next October. The more people who are exposed to him the less chance they'll make a similar mistake again
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?
Surely it is! Leon in all his incarnations, Casino, Phillip, Max, TSE, possibly Sunil, Topping - there's no shortage of Tory voters here. Even Big_G overcame a year of reservations to do so.
Most of whom were telling us that Boris's poll leads would go on and on, as recently as November.
Speaking of which, has Isam been banned again or just become tired of defending the indefensible? I miss those polls saying personality trumps(!) everything.
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.
For most MPs all they care about is whether their party is ahead or whether an alternative leader would do significantly better if behind
I like to think that most MPs would care if their leader were plotting a coup, even Tories. But perhaps I am being naive.
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
This gets better. So there were 6 Councillors being elected. And you voted in favour of two councillors to oppose your party. Literally voting against your own party!
I understand being a party hack. People usually vote for their own party, and if that means not voting for additional candidates who when elected will oppose your own candidates then yeah, don't vote for them.
You can't vote against the Conservative Party and then haughtily screech at all other Tory party supporters, members and former members that they are not proper Tories because they haven't always supported their own party. YOU haven't always supported your own party.
That plank in your eye must be longer that Peppa's nose by now.
I tried to explain this to @HYUFD before. Maybe an example will do it. Let's assume Tories get 100 votes each and Plaid 80 each so all 4 Tories get elected. Now let's assume all Tory voters do what HYUFD did. Assume they split their votes equally each Plaid candidate will get an extra 33 votes so every Tory candidate will now lose.
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
We must be getting close to triggering A16 in order for all this to go away.
A further point I would make (and I agree this whole story isn’t going away and I don’t see a satisfactory outcome for the Govt) is that what this demonstrates is how destructive a lot of the rules were for effective functioning of organisations with large workforces, with cross working/communication necessary across those organisations.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
If a few drinks after work is a party then I'm a party animal! Yeah.
Unhelpful intervention for Lady Mone from a fellow Scottish unionist (but then there won't be any SNP peers anyway):
"The House of Lords commissioners for standards are considering a complaint against the Conservative peer Michelle Mone, relating to the PPE business awarded £203m government contracts after she referred it to the Cabinet Office in May 2020.
The Labour peer George Foulkes complained to the commissioners on 6 January after the Guardian reported that leaked files appear to suggest Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based financier Douglas Barrowman, were secretly involved in the company, PPE Medpro."
When you incorporate a company you can generate - and claim for - expenses incurred before incorporation. I had no idea that another thing you could do before incorporation was submit your company through the fast-track VIP lane so that once created you could immediately be awarded £203m of PPE contracts.
Shows what a crap business owner I am for not realising this obvious gimme.
A further point I would make (and I agree this whole story isn’t going away and I don’t see a satisfactory outcome for the Govt) is that what this demonstrates is how destructive a lot of the rules were for effective functioning of organisations with large workforces, with cross working/communication necessary across those organisations.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
There's a lot of truth in this. I've WFH throughout the pandemic. It wasn't too bad at first, I already knew everyone related to my job. Last year I started a new job, in the same place but in a different part of it (a large local authority). A big part of my new job is building relationships with people, getting to know them, what they do. I have found that incredibly difficult to do when you just cannot see people face to face and just chat, be it about work or anything else. It's no substitute having meetings online, seeing little heads in a boxes on your screen - no chance to build up a rapport with people really.
I was going into the office once or twice a week before Omicron but I'm in weird position of not really being based in any one team, I kind of flit across a wide area. So I'd be in a big office but with very few, if any, people I knew there. I might as well have stopped at home.
I have so much sympathy for young people entering the workplace now and having to do everything online. They are missing out on 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
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
This gets better. So there were 6 Councillors being elected. And you voted in favour of two councillors to oppose your party. Literally voting against your own party!
I understand being a party hack. People usually vote for their own party, and if that means not voting for additional candidates who when elected will oppose your own candidates then yeah, don't vote for them.
You can't vote against the Conservative Party and then haughtily screech at all other Tory party supporters, members and former members that they are not proper Tories because they haven't always supported their own party. YOU haven't always supported your own party.
That plank in your eye must be longer that Peppa's nose by now.
I tried to explain this to @HYUFD before. Maybe an example will do it. Let's assume Tories get 100 votes each and Plaid 80 each so all 4 Tories get elected. Now let's assume all Tory voters do what HYUFD did. Assume they split their votes equally each Plaid candidate will get an extra 33 votes so every Tory candidate will now lose.
A further point I would make (and I agree this whole story isn’t going away and I don’t see a satisfactory outcome for the Govt) is that what this demonstrates is how destructive a lot of the rules were for effective functioning of organisations with large workforces, with cross working/communication necessary across those organisations.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
WFH is a disaster for many organisations, we deal with many LAs who have basically stopped operating for many of their functions and their staff are getting very frustrated.
Tell me about it. I work for a local authority and it’s a feckin nightmare.
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?
Surely it is! Leon in all his incarnations, Casino, Phillip, Max, TSE, possibly Sunil, Topping - there's no shortage of Tory voters here. Even Big_G overcame a year of reservations to do so.
Most of whom were telling us that Boris's poll leads would go on and on, as recently as November.
Speaking of which, has Isam been banned again or just become tired of defending the indefensible? I miss those polls saying personality trumps(!) everything.
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.
Your framing is ridiculous. Your semantic quibbling is tragic.
Cummon, you know very well that the word "party" is deliberately being injected in to try to magnify things. Ditto describing 20 May as the "height of lockdown".
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.
For most MPs all they care about is whether their party is ahead or whether an alternative leader would do significantly better if behind
So you are saying that in the hypothetical situation of a leader planning a coup then that would be ok if they ahead in the polls. That is exactly how many dictatorships come about. And you approve of this?
Remember most Republican members of the House of Representatives voted to overturn the EC results in 2020 in favour of Trump.
I am not saying I approve, just pointing out most elected representatives care most about what their party's voters think with a few exceptions
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
Im sure you are right, they were and are a bit thick. they just thought " we were socially distanced" meant that they could stand in the garden. Boris said in Parliament that all the social distancing rules were followed at any gathering he went to. Unfortunately the rules state that if you knew the people then you could not meet them even if you were 2 metres apart, if you didn't know them you could.
The other daft thing is that these people we were working in a poorly ventilated office with each other all day every day.
The rules were contradictory, illogical and baffling. But they absolutely were the rules, were being broadcasted at us by the government (including a presser that very afternoon) and enforced publicly and harshly by the police.
So there is nowhere to hide. Caught bang to rights, the BYOB party was illegal. And Peppa has already lied to parliament about it and had a succession of ministers lie to the public about it.
We had a fun discussion on here yesterday about the whys and wherefores of the word lockdown. What we all agreed on was that 2020 was largely tortuous, and though I had a breakdown I was spared the true horror of not being able to hug a dying parent or trying to do a teams funeral.
The idea that nobody will be bothered by this is baffling to me. People generally don't like the notion of one rule for me, one rule for them. Especially when the rule that affects 99% of us is an egregious repeated kick in the knackers.
March 27th: Cummings goes to Barnard Castle, against lockdown rules. May 20th: Email from No10 for "Drinks!" May 22nd: Cummings' trip make the news. May 23rd: Ministers defend Cummings. May 25th: Rose Garden press conference. Wonder no more why Cummings wasn't fired on the spot. https://twitter.com/MikeHolden42/status/1480831234657988611
Unhelpful intervention for Lady Mone from a fellow Scottish unionist (but then there won't be any SNP peers anyway):
"The House of Lords commissioners for standards are considering a complaint against the Conservative peer Michelle Mone, relating to the PPE business awarded £203m government contracts after she referred it to the Cabinet Office in May 2020.
The Labour peer George Foulkes complained to the commissioners on 6 January after the Guardian reported that leaked files appear to suggest Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based financier Douglas Barrowman, were secretly involved in the company, PPE Medpro."
When you incorporate a company you can generate - and claim for - expenses incurred before incorporation. I had no idea that another thing you could do before incorporation was submit your company through the fast-track VIP lane so that once created you could immediately be awarded £203m of PPE contracts.
Shows what a crap business owner I am for not realising this obvious gimme.
Apols. I see I made a technical error. Lady Mone is no longer a Scottish unionist in the sense of being a voter in Scotland. She left Scotland after threatening to close down her company and move it to England if Scotland vboted Yes in 2014.
'Davidson, a Tory peer and former Scottish Conservative leader, condemned the alleged drinks party in May 2020, saying “People are (rightly) furious.”[...] Baroness Davidson said: “This line won’t survive 48 hrs. Nobody needs an official to tell them if they were at a boozy shindig in their own garden. People are (rightly) furious. They sacrificed so much – visiting sick or grieving relatives, funerals. What tf were any of these people thinking?”
Meanwhile, Scottish Tory representatives from the Commons and Holyrood were accused of being in “hiding” by SNP figures as they failed to appear on morning news to answer questions on the allegations.'
Its official - after the Gathering we had leaked photos of where Peppa and Carrie and the baby were in the No10 garden, we now have BYOB as a Shindig. When the November "I sacked Dom" party thrown by NutNut is revealed to have been a Hootenanny then we know it truly is all over.
A further point I would make (and I agree this whole story isn’t going away and I don’t see a satisfactory outcome for the Govt) is that what this demonstrates is how destructive a lot of the rules were for effective functioning of organisations with large workforces, with cross working/communication necessary across those organisations.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
There's a lot of truth in this. I've WFH throughout the pandemic. It wasn't too bad at first, I already knew everyone related to my job. Last year I started a new job, in the same place but in a different part of it (a large local authority). A big part of my new job is building relationships with people, getting to know them, what they do. I have found that incredibly difficult to do when you just cannot see people face to face and just chat, be it about work or anything else. It's no substitute having meetings online, seeing little heads in a boxes on your screen - no chance to build up a rapport with people really.
I was going into the office once or twice a week before Omicron but I'm in weird position of not really being based in any one team, I kind of flit across a wide area. So I'd be in a big office but with very few, if any, people I knew there. I might as well have stopped at home.
I have so much sympathy for young people entering the workplace now and having to do everything online. They are missing out on a lot.
Same here. I continue to go into the office. But it’s to split my working and home life, not in expectation of meeting anyone.
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
Im sure you are right, they were and are a bit thick. they just thought " we were socially distanced" meant that they could stand in the garden. Boris said in Parliament that all the social distancing rules were followed at any gathering he went to. Unfortunately the rules state that if you knew the people then you could not meet them even if you were 2 metres apart, if you didn't know them you could.
The other daft thing is that these people we were working in a poorly ventilated office with each other all day every day.
The rules were contradictory, illogical and baffling. But they absolutely were the rules, were being broadcasted at us by the government (including a presser that very afternoon) and enforced publicly and harshly by the police.
So there is nowhere to hide. Caught bang to rights, the BYOB party was illegal. And Peppa has already lied to parliament about it and had a succession of ministers lie to the public about it.
We had a fun discussion on here yesterday about the whys and wherefores of the word lockdown. What we all agreed on was that 2020 was largely tortuous, and though I had a breakdown I was spared the true horror of not being able to hug a dying parent or trying to do a teams funeral.
The idea that nobody will be bothered by this is baffling to me. People generally don't like the notion of one rule for me, one rule for them. Especially when the rule that affects 99% of us is an egregious repeated kick in the knackers.
My Dad died the previous month, none of us able to visit him, in his care home the month before this particular social event. His funeral was a severely restricted affair. I don't think many in the family are particularly amused by this.
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 English parliament is perfectly compatible with the Union, just a Union based on equality that treats England the same as the other 3 home nations
We Scttish independistas have been saying that since before 1997!
But it's not compatible with Conservative party policy. And never has been. You'd be better joining PC and campaigning for an English parliament from there.
Most Tory voters and members already back an English parliament.
If and when we go back into opposition the party will likely shift to that position or at least backing EVEL again as the first route back to power
In other words, the Tories don't care about principle - only about themselves.
That is unbecoming of you. Not all "Tories" are the same. Not all Tories are selfish scumbags anymore than all Scottish Nationalists are closet (and not so closet) anti-English racists.
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
We must be getting close to triggering A16 in order for all this to go away.
Government by dead cat.
It is the closest the current Junta can get to invading a an island somewhere.
A further point I would make (and I agree this whole story isn’t going away and I don’t see a satisfactory outcome for the Govt) is that what this demonstrates is how destructive a lot of the rules were for effective functioning of organisations with large workforces, with cross working/communication necessary across those organisations.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
There's a lot of truth in this. I've WFH throughout the pandemic. It wasn't too bad at first, I already knew everyone related to my job. Last year I started a new job, in the same place but in a different part of it (a large local authority). A big part of my new job is building relationships with people, getting to know them, what they do. I have found that incredibly difficult to do when you just cannot see people face to face and just chat, be it about work or anything else. It's no substitute having meetings online, seeing little heads in a boxes on your screen - no chance to build up a rapport with people really.
I was going into the office once or twice a week before Omicron but I'm in weird position of not really being based in any one team, I kind of flit across a wide area. So I'd be in a big office but with very few, if any, people I knew there. I might as well have stopped at home.
I have so much sympathy for young people entering the workplace now and having to do everything online. They are missing out on a lot.
Same here. I continue to go into the office. But it’s to split my working and home life, not in expectation of meeting anyone.
I'd say that for a large majority of workers things haven't changed.
But for some there's been a huge change.
And for those people caught in the change some have gained and some have lost out.
I wonder how much job changing will occur in the next few years as people adapt to those sectors with significant wfh.
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
We must be getting close to triggering A16 in order for all this to go away.
Government by dead cat.
It is the closest the current Junta can get to invading a an island somewhere.
Well A16 pertains to an island we invaded a while back, so close enough.
A further point I would make (and I agree this whole story isn’t going away and I don’t see a satisfactory outcome for the Govt) is that what this demonstrates is how destructive a lot of the rules were for effective functioning of organisations with large workforces, with cross working/communication necessary across those organisations.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
There's a lot of truth in this. I've WFH throughout the pandemic. It wasn't too bad at first, I already knew everyone related to my job. Last year I started a new job, in the same place but in a different part of it (a large local authority). A big part of my new job is building relationships with people, getting to know them, what they do. I have found that incredibly difficult to do when you just cannot see people face to face and just chat, be it about work or anything else. It's no substitute having meetings online, seeing little heads in a boxes on your screen - no chance to build up a rapport with people really.
I was going into the office once or twice a week before Omicron but I'm in weird position of not really being based in any one team, I kind of flit across a wide area. So I'd be in a big office but with very few, if any, people I knew there. I might as well have stopped at home.
I have so much sympathy for young people entering the workplace now and having to do everything online. They are missing out on a lot.
Same here. I continue to go into the office. But it’s to split my working and home life, not in expectation of meeting anyone.
I'd say that for a large majority of workers things haven't changed.
But for some there's been a huge change.
And for those people caught in the change some have gained and some have lost out.
I wonder how much job changing will occur in the next few years as people adapt to those sectors with significant wfh.
Depends whether you can or not. For some of my time as a pharmacist I could, but for much of it I couldn't. Even in my mother's early days, when she lived over the shop, she used to have to interact with the public. For some time, too, I worked with Care Homes and while I could 'flit in an out' a lot of the staff obviously couldn't. Could have done my teaching and discussions by Zoom of course.
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
This gets better. So there were 6 Councillors being elected. And you voted in favour of two councillors to oppose your party. Literally voting against your own party!
I understand being a party hack. People usually vote for their own party, and if that means not voting for additional candidates who when elected will oppose your own candidates then yeah, don't vote for them.
You can't vote against the Conservative Party and then haughtily screech at all other Tory party supporters, members and former members that they are not proper Tories because they haven't always supported their own party. YOU haven't always supported your own party.
That plank in your eye must be longer that Peppa's nose by now.
I tried to explain this to @HYUFD before. Maybe an example will do it. Let's assume Tories get 100 votes each and Plaid 80 each so all 4 Tories get elected. Now let's assume all Tory voters do what HYUFD did. Assume they split their votes equally each Plaid candidate will get an extra 33 votes so every Tory candidate will now lose.
Err, pedantically, two of them would.
Ok I am probably going to embarrass myself here but isn't it 100x2/6= 33 added to all Plaid giving each 113 votes meaning all 6 rather 2 get elected.
To understand Johnson it is instructive to read Peter Oborne about him over the past few years.
Or read Sonia Purnell's biography. I read it years before he became PM, and subsequently nothing he has done has surprised me.
Interesting. Not read it. There is only so much detail I want about the solipsistic twat, frankly.
PO is interesting not least because they were best buds at one point and hence it is all the more telling that he (Oborne) has his current view.
Purnell was a fellow journalist who worked with Johnson and clearly finds him personally charming but also horrifying. I found it a very interesting read and it is the foundation of my long-standing belief that he is one of the last people who should have 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.
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
Im sure you are right, they were and are a bit thick. they just thought " we were socially distanced" meant that they could stand in the garden. Boris said in Parliament that all the social distancing rules were followed at any gathering he went to. Unfortunately the rules state that if you knew the people then you could not meet them even if you were 2 metres apart, if you didn't know them you could.
The other daft thing is that these people we were working in a poorly ventilated office with each other all day every day.
The rules were contradictory [...] the BYOB party was illegal.
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.
Even in that town council election 4 of the 6 candidates I voted for were Tory, just there were only 4 Tory candidates
This gets better. So there were 6 Councillors being elected. And you voted in favour of two councillors to oppose your party. Literally voting against your own party!
I understand being a party hack. People usually vote for their own party, and if that means not voting for additional candidates who when elected will oppose your own candidates then yeah, don't vote for them.
You can't vote against the Conservative Party and then haughtily screech at all other Tory party supporters, members and former members that they are not proper Tories because they haven't always supported their own party. YOU haven't always supported your own party.
That plank in your eye must be longer that Peppa's nose by now.
I tried to explain this to @HYUFD before. Maybe an example will do it. Let's assume Tories get 100 votes each and Plaid 80 each so all 4 Tories get elected. Now let's assume all Tory voters do what HYUFD did. Assume they split their votes equally each Plaid candidate will get an extra 33 votes so every Tory candidate will now lose.
Err, pedantically, two of them would.
Ok I am probably going to embarrass myself here but isn't it 100x2/6= 33 added to all Plaid giving each 113 votes meaning all 6 rather 2 get elected.
I didn't think Plaid put up six in this particular case?
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
I think that is maybe an exaggeration - most people are not political obsessives to that extent
But that's the point. This is a story that has broken through and has been discussed by everyone, not just the political obsessives, and they aren't happy about it.
But it is about the past, more than the present, so there's potential for the anger to fade.
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.
If he had not consistently lied about these parties and about following the rules at all times he might well have a far better chance of getting away with this in the court of public opinion.
Im sure you are right, they were and are a bit thick. they just thought " we were socially distanced" meant that they could stand in the garden. Boris said in Parliament that all the social distancing rules were followed at any gathering he went to. Unfortunately the rules state that if you knew the people then you could not meet them even if you were 2 metres apart, if you didn't know them you could.
The other daft thing is that these people we were working in a poorly ventilated office with each other all day every day.
The rules were contradictory, illogical and baffling. But they absolutely were the rules, were being broadcasted at us by the government (including a presser that very afternoon) and enforced publicly and harshly by the police.
So there is nowhere to hide. Caught bang to rights, the BYOB party was illegal. And Peppa has already lied to parliament about it and had a succession of ministers lie to the public about it.
We had a fun discussion on here yesterday about the whys and wherefores of the word lockdown. What we all agreed on was that 2020 was largely tortuous, and though I had a breakdown I was spared the true horror of not being able to hug a dying parent or trying to do a teams funeral.
The idea that nobody will be bothered by this is baffling to me. People generally don't like the notion of one rule for me, one rule for them. Especially when the rule that affects 99% of us is an egregious repeated kick in the knackers.
My Dad died the previous month, none of us able to visit him, in his care home the month before this particular social event. His funeral was a severely restricted affair. I don't think many in the family are particularly amused by this.
I have this morning fired off an email to my MP expressing outrage. Nothing will be done I suspect.
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
I think that is maybe an exaggeration - most people are not political obsessives to that extent
But that's the point. This is a story that has broken through and has been discussed by everyone, not just the political obsessives, and they aren't happy about it.
But it is about the past, more than the present, so there's potential for the anger to fade.
I am not disagreeing generally but the idea that every family in the land was talking about it over their Christmas lunch is an exaggeration
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?
Who was it who said "I understand and share the anger up and down the country at seeing No 10 staff seeming to make light of lockdown measures, and I can understand how infuriating it must be to think that people who have been setting the rules have not been following the rules because I was also furious..." ?
So not only do you need an expensivish car; the self-driving suite alone costs half the cost of a decent good-selling car in the US (Toyota Camry), for capability that's currently essentially non-existent (and behind their other competitors).
If self-driving is going to be this expensive, it's going to be very fringe.
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.
For most MPs all they care about is whether their party is ahead or whether an alternative leader would do significantly better if behind
Joy of sex Page 57 - the Moroccan Sandwich.
Look - there is only the one news story of importance this morning - has Scott Morrison government cut up Novaks visa yet?
So not only do you need an expensivish car; the self-driving suite alone costs half the cost of a decent good-selling car in the US (Toyota Camry), for capability that's currently essentially non-existent (and behind their other competitors).
If self-driving is going to be this expensive, it's going to be very fringe.
And it still doesn’t self drive, requires a licenced and sober person sitting in the driver’s seat, ready to assume liability half a second before the crash.
Comments
https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1480826310788362241
https://twitter.com/AamerAnwar/status/1480678022722334728?s=20
This email about socially distanced drinks, they thought "socially distanced" made it ok. Well if they didn't know each other then it was ok.
I'm a Swindon Town and I wouldn't wish living in Swindon on anyone (except perhaps that ghastly RachelSwindon, or whoever she is...)
But it's not compatible with Conservative party policy. And never has been. You'd be better joining PC and campaigning for an English parliament from there.
And I also walked in over the Roundabout one day as a student when hiking in from the Ridgeway to the train station.
There was plenty of anger towards anti-vaxxers though from both family and work colleagues.
If and when we go back into opposition the party will likely shift to that position or at least backing EVEL again as the first route back to power
It surely was Boris' idea, but there's probably evidence of him overruling objections too.
Photos of him drinking champagne? Perhaps.
And then there's the cover-up line of inquiry.
Did Boris really just sit their twiddling his thumbs while the shark circled?
Or were certain phone calls made.
I understand being a party hack. People usually vote for their own party, and if that means not voting for additional candidates who when elected will oppose your own candidates then yeah, don't vote for them.
You can't vote against the Conservative Party and then haughtily screech at all other Tory party supporters, members and former members that they are not proper Tories because they haven't always supported their own party. YOU haven't always supported your own party.
That plank in your eye must be longer that Peppa's nose by now.
Whilst everything is being badged as “parties” by view is that informal communication of the sort that is enabled best by such events is fundamental to the effective working of many organisations. It is often at such events that you can really find out what is going on, things that many simply won’t become aware of during the normal course of a working day; where stresses and problems are building up within individual teams etc etc.
Whilst we hear people continually (often for selfish reasons) continue to claim the benefits and effectiveness of widespread WFH it is these sorts of informal events (and indeed more low level informal communication (“water cooler”) that is missed. Few people seem to mention how after decades of organisations everywhere moving towards open plan offices, where everything is visible, we have at a stroke reverted in effect to a world of individual offices and people hidden behind closed doors. And in fact an extreme version compared to whatever existed before. Communication has plummeted (you can’t just have random chats with people outside of your immediate teams over zoom), and no doubt many people are experiencing extreme stress and worry, largely going completely unnoticed.
I love it.
Unhelpful intervention for Lady Mone from a fellow Scottish unionist (but then there won't be any SNP peers anyway):
"The House of Lords commissioners for standards are considering a complaint against the Conservative peer Michelle Mone, relating to the PPE business awarded £203m government contracts after she referred it to the Cabinet Office in May 2020.
The Labour peer George Foulkes complained to the commissioners on 6 January after the Guardian reported that leaked files appear to suggest Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based financier Douglas Barrowman, were secretly involved in the company, PPE Medpro."
The other daft thing is that these people we were working in a poorly ventilated office with each other all day every day.
Most of whom were telling us that Boris's poll leads would go on and on, as recently as November.
I am not saying I approve, just pointing out most elected representatives care most about what their party's voters think with a few exceptions
And at the top is someone who is too self-indulgent, isn't interested in details and lacks patience.
What they need is an outsider who is able and willing to say NO.
If Boris is such an admirer of Churchill he should be aware of how important Alanbrooke was to him.
And Boris lacks his equivalent.
'Davidson, a Tory peer and former Scottish Conservative leader, condemned the alleged drinks party in May 2020, saying “People are (rightly) furious.”[...] Baroness Davidson said: “This line won’t survive 48 hrs. Nobody needs an official to tell them if they were at a boozy shindig in their own garden. People are (rightly) furious. They sacrificed so much – visiting sick or grieving relatives, funerals. What tf were any of these people thinking?”
Meanwhile, Scottish Tory representatives from the Commons and Holyrood were accused of being in “hiding” by SNP figures as they failed to appear on morning news to answer questions on the allegations.'
📈 Pre-partygate 4pt Labour lead
🌳Con 33 (+1)
🌹Lab 37 (=)
🔶LDM 11 (-2)
🌍Grn 5 (=)
🎗️SNP 4 (=)
◻️Other 10 (+1)
2,207 UK adults, 7-9 Jan
(Changes from 17-19 Dec 2021) https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1480829374865813504/photo/1
I imagine that Downing Street hopes that Sue Grey's report will be very uncomfortable reading but not damning enough to force resignations, merely an apology, and from then on Ministers will say "This was all addressed in the report". They may be correct, but it's a mistake to conclude that it won't do lasting damage to the whole agenda, as the absence of public trust is as crippling to government as it is for a private business.
And if there were a general election tomorrow, to use the opinion polls' formulation, I probably would again, because my Tory MP is sensible about the virus and whoever the Labour lobby fodder against him would be almost certainly wouldn't.
That said, the next election won't be come until the virus is no longer a major political consideration. And it's Starmer over Boris for me.
This week: things are not clear and so we really should wait for Sue Gray's report to tell us if there was any wrongdoing
https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1480816113000886273
Back to work...
I hope he does stay on till next October. The more people who are exposed to him the less chance they'll make a similar mistake again
Government by dead cat.
Shows what a crap business owner I am for not realising this obvious gimme.
I was going into the office once or twice a week before Omicron but I'm in weird position of not really being based in any one team, I kind of flit across a wide area. So I'd be in a big office but with very few, if any, people I knew there. I might as well have stopped at home.
I have so much sympathy for young people entering the workplace now and having to do everything online. They are missing out on a lot.
So there is nowhere to hide. Caught bang to rights, the BYOB party was illegal. And Peppa has already lied to parliament about it and had a succession of ministers lie to the public about it.
We had a fun discussion on here yesterday about the whys and wherefores of the word lockdown. What we all agreed on was that 2020 was largely tortuous, and though I had a breakdown I was spared the true horror of not being able to hug a dying parent or trying to do a teams funeral.
The idea that nobody will be bothered by this is baffling to me. People generally don't like the notion of one rule for me, one rule for them. Especially when the rule that affects 99% of us is an egregious repeated kick in the knackers.
May 20th: Email from No10 for "Drinks!"
May 22nd: Cummings' trip make the news.
May 23rd: Ministers defend Cummings.
May 25th: Rose Garden press conference.
Wonder no more why Cummings wasn't fired on the spot.
https://twitter.com/MikeHolden42/status/1480831234657988611
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-leaves-a-scar-on-all-who-deal-with-him-cw3l7fff0
I don't think many in the family are particularly amused by this.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/tougher-fines-ahead-of-bank-holiday-to-crack-down-on-illegal-gatherings
But for some there's been a huge change.
And for those people caught in the change some have gained and some have lost out.
I wonder how much job changing will occur in the next few years as people adapt to those sectors with significant wfh.
PO is interesting not least because they were best buds at one point and hence it is all the more telling that he (Oborne) has his current view.
For some time, too, I worked with Care Homes and while I could 'flit in an out' a lot of the staff obviously couldn't. Could have done my teaching and discussions by Zoom of course.
But it is about the past, more than the present, so there's potential for the anger to fade.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/01/telsa-increases-the-price-of-full-self-driving-yet-again/
So not only do you need an expensivish car; the self-driving suite alone costs half the cost of a decent good-selling car in the US (Toyota Camry), for capability that's currently essentially non-existent (and behind their other competitors).
If self-driving is going to be this expensive, it's going to be very fringe.
Just an hour before the BOYB bash in the garden: https://twitter.com/thejonnyreilly/status/1480839031957110789/photo/1
Look - there is only the one news story of importance this morning - has Scott Morrison government cut up Novaks visa yet?