I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
European disunity is driven by those who would sacrifice anything Ukrainian rather than have any kind of conflict/dispute with Russia.
In German the reasons for this are
1) WWII 2) Pacifism (related to above) 3) Fear of the gas supply being cut off in winter & the economy in general 4) East Politics 4) People who have taken Putin's Shilling
It's more about 1-4, with silly noises from 5 - my German acquaintances made rude jokes about the obvious Putin puppets.
The PM of the UK is not of interest in any of that.
I agree and don't agree with that. Those are certainly the German domestic reasons, but Britain's role since World War II in these situations, even now after Brexit, has always been as an international link player. Therefore it matters if the traditional transatlantic player is persona non grata in Europe.
Even if it was Maggie Thatcher in No. 10, I don't think you could get the Germans to move. It's too big a coalition of interests within Germany.
The other option - helping Ukraine - doesn't have much tangible benefit for Germany. Do that, and it's economic problems from sanctions on Russia (a big trading partner) at the very least.
Germany (the collective summation of politics, that is) won't move, unless Russia does something like take all of Ukraine to the river, or shoots down another airliner - something massive, like that.
I roughly agree with all this, but Putin's perceptions of the weak links in the Western Alliance might be different, however.
He served in Germany and probably has a pretty good feel for the place. He certainly hasn't made many misjudgements in relations with Germany to date....
Yes, Germany was his KGB training ground, but I meant more in the links or otherwise between Britain and Germany.
It's not a well known fact that the female haggis has its 3 left legs shorter than its 3 right legs and the male is the reverse of this. This means they run around hills in opposite directions so meet up regularly to mate.
Mail: Sue Gray 'has new photos of Boris next to wine bottles at lockdown parties': Damning verdict could be revealed TOMORROW after day of shambles saw No10 fail in attempt to use police partygate probe to delay report.
Is it just me or is that quite odd wording. Is that they don't want to say at a party or is it the photos are going to be like the photo we have already seen i.e. not really a "party" party?
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
Again, whatever works for you, but as a general principle going without meals really isn't necessary.
But intermittent fasting is how we evolved. It’s what our bodies are designed for. What they are not designed for is an endless, plentiful supply of fats, sugars and carbs, with extra yummy things like MSG, chocolate and cheese
Hence the entire world getting fat
And you really don’t need three meals a day, That’s what coal miners need. Or harvesters with scythes
One serious meal plus a light snack/salad at some other time makes much more sense. To me
Hmmm, I'm still not convinced. I'd find (and have found in the past) going without pretty miserable.
Although, then again, I don't spend 95% of my working life sat on my arse, and I do quite a lot of heavy exercise, both of which help.
All the same, dinner once a day supplemented by starvation or the occasional lettuce leaf doesn't sound like much fun.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky · 1h Sky News understands that officials have handed over to investigators photos of parties in Downing Street which include images of Boris Johnson
Sue Gray was given the pictures of people close together with wine bottles.
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
There are several really decent Haggis Neeps and Tatties ready meals in Lidl which I eat when can't be arsed making anything. Haven't bothered tonight and think Burns like all poetry is tedious. May have a wee dram though because its a day with a Y on the end...
Good idea.
I think I’ll go and buy some whiskey, make a tiny contribution to the Scottish economy.
Plus, something in the house for if/when Boris finally fucks off.
Whisky. Not whiskey.
You may need to finish the bottle to drown your sorrows. The Big Dog is going nowhere.
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
I read your previous post with interest and it would be wise for posters to read it in full
The great risk for unionists is that Sinn Fein governs well and appears to be non-mental, attracting votes from SDLP/Alliance etc.
See SNP for details.
It won't, first NI has 2 nationalist parties as there is also the SDLP and second NI has full STV PR without even any constituencies at Stormont so a divided Unionist vote still produces a lot of Unionist MLAs.
Protestants would never consider voting for SF regardless of how competent it was, though of course SF is not economically competent anyway, its manifesto is basically Corbynite
I was raised as a Unionist. If the choice was only DUP or SF, I would have to vote SF, because the Unionist parties are either confrontational idiots or a bunch of 18th century bigots who have no place in a modern society. Luckily for me, the Alliance Party is around
SF seem to have got the message that politics is the way forward. That is a huge step for Ulster politicians.
It's also an issue that is almost 50 years old. There is a story from the Maze where Republican prisoners quickly realised that reading and learning was a way to advance themselves (and their cause) while Loyalists contained to hit the gym and tried to work out who was "hardest".
That same logic has continued ever since with Loyalists continually losing out as SF and others make rational choices that help push their arguments forward inch by inch.
When I was a teen (1970/80s) it was generally acknowledged even in my peer group of the time, that the Republican prisoners were smarter than the Loyalist ones.
Looking back with the advantage of age, it seems to me that a lot of politically motivated violence the world over seems to stop when the talking starts. Religiously motivated violence seems to go on until one side nearly exterminates the other. It has long been acknowledged that religion and politics do not mix which is why the DUP are, for me, unelectable.
Mail: Sue Gray 'has new photos of Boris next to wine bottles at lockdown parties': Damning verdict could be revealed TOMORROW after day of shambles saw No10 fail in attempt to use police partygate probe to delay report.
Is it just me or is that quite odd wording. Is that they don't want to say at a party or is it the photos are going to be like the photo we have already seen i.e. not really a "party" party?
Why is she relying on photos handed over to her? Those clearly come with an agenda, whether pro or anti the PMs interests. It is one of the most cctv'd up buildings in the country, just look at that.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 22m Another (losing count now) problem for Boris. Needs strong mobilisation from Ministers tomorrow. But number still furious from this morning’s cabinet. View is they simply can’t trust him to tell them the whole story. Fear if they go in to bat for him he’ll pull the rug from them.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
Again, whatever works for you, but as a general principle going without meals really isn't necessary.
But intermittent fasting is how we evolved. It’s what our bodies are designed for. What they are not designed for is an endless, plentiful supply of fats, sugars and carbs, with extra yummy things like MSG, chocolate and cheese
Hence the entire world getting fat
And you really don’t need three meals a day, That’s what coal miners need. Or harvesters with scythes
One serious meal plus a light snack/salad at some other time makes much more sense. To me
Hmmm, I'm still not convinced. I'd find (and have found in the past) going without pretty miserable.
Although, then again, I don't spend 95% of my working life sat on my arse, and I do quite a lot of heavy exercise, both of which help.
All the same, dinner once a day supplemented by starvation or the occasional lettuce leaf doesn't sound like much fun.
Once you get into the habit of IF you don't feel hungry. I normally go 16hrs without eating and I never even really think about eating during that time let alone be sitting there starving.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 22m Another (losing count now) problem for Boris. Needs strong mobilisation from Ministers tomorrow. But number still furious from this morning’s cabinet. View is they simply can’t trust him to tell them the whole story. Fear if they go in to bat for him he’ll pull the rug from them.
Very good interview with Lord Sumption that I've just got round to hearing.
Makes perfect sense. Law is obscure so good luck with proving an actual offence under the ordinance, and of all the reasons to get rid of Boris having a birthday party is one of the more trivial.
Denmark's Epidemic Committee says COVID-19 should no longer be categorized as a "socially critical disease," recommends the lifting of nearly all restrictions - DR
It's not a well known fact that the female haggis has its 3 left legs shorter than its 3 right legs and the male is the reverse of this. This means they run around hills in opposite directions so meet up regularly to mate.
You cannot say this without mentioning that Schiehalion is near perfectly round and thus the ideal habitat for haggis, can you?
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I have a few thoughts on this too 🙂
Firstly, wasn’t Churchill responsible for the Norway fiasco - in echoes of the fall of Afghanistan he was side tracked not by dogs but a nephew?
Secondly, I think there is some mileage wondering where the attack on Boris, destabilising UK government is actually coming from at this particular time, so we sure Putin isn’t mugging us all.
This is what Cummings said yesterday “One such thing involved discussing the security services. Only me and two officials knew what I said. They briefed the PM. Within minutes, one of the lobby infamous for being a stooge was calling the Cabinet Office making claims about MI5 and me.”
My take - he spoke privately to security, they shared with PM, PM shared it with friendly contact in lobby to smear him. Have I misunderstood?
We don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to put Cummings MI5 and Russia into Google and learn Cummings spent three years in Russia from 1994 to 1997 after he graduated from Oxford and could have made all sorts of friends.
So I have changed Normans name to Tatiana of the SMERSH Spy ring, as we don’t know yet if the coup we are cheering on is actually sneakily helped by a Russia destabilising plan 😮
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
I read your previous post with interest and it would be wise for posters to read it in full
It was as clear as day break in the Mojave desert that the rules were if they was some kind of meeting in your own garden it was one or two other people - distanced. I can't recall the exact rules. But whatever it was it was not 30 or 100 or a dozen or 25 or the interior decorator and all her mates plus some bloke from an agency that was doing some comms for you and that young lad who is good on the decks.
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I have a few thoughts on this too 🙂
Firstly, wasn’t Churchill responsible for the Norway fiasco - in echoes of the fall of Afghanistan he was side tracked not by dogs but a nephew?
Secondly, I think there is some mileage wondering where the attack on Boris, destabilising UK government is actually coming from at this particular time, so we sure Putin isn’t mugging us all.
This is what Cummings said yesterday “One such thing involved discussing the security services. Only me and two officials knew what I said. They briefed the PM. Within minutes, one of the lobby infamous for being a stooge was calling the Cabinet Office making claims about MI5 and me.”
My take - he spoke privately to security, they shared with PM, PM shared it with friendly contact in lobby to smear him. Have I misunderstood?
We don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to put Cummings MI5 and Russia into Google and learn Cummings spent three years in Russia from 1994 to 1997 after he graduated from Oxford and could have made all sorts of friends.
So I have changed Normans name to Tatiana of the SMERSH Spy ring, as we don’t know yet if the coup we are cheering on is actually sneakily helped by a Russia destabilising plan 😮
We just don’t know?
Where the Tories put out a flawed report about Moscow’s plans for Ukraine regime change last weekend, how ironic if Moscow was working on regime chaos in UK at the same time? 😲
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
I read your previous post with interest and it would be wise for posters to read it in full
RobD made the same argument here last week. Not sure if it will hold or not.
If it is correct in my view that is politically worse for the government as it is explicitly making restrictive laws that they themselves are exempt from. Most people won't even get that far and assume an establishment cover up. The number of people who think actually, 10DS is a private place so it was quite right to arrange some conga parties during a pandemic, especially when the nation is asked to be in mourning for the Queen will be very few.
Denmark's Epidemic Committee says COVID-19 should no longer be categorized as a "socially critical disease," recommends the lifting of nearly all restrictions - DR
Denmark's Epidemic Committee says COVID-19 should no longer be categorized as a "socially critical disease," recommends the lifting of nearly all restrictions - DR
Denmark's Epidemic Committee says COVID-19 should no longer be categorized as a "socially critical disease," recommends the lifting of nearly all restrictions - DR
Denmark has probably had the best pandemic of any country: minimal economic damage, good risk segmentation with fairly well targeted restrictions, almost no excess deaths over the period.
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
There are several really decent Haggis Neeps and Tatties ready meals in Lidl which I eat when can't be arsed making anything. Haven't bothered tonight and think Burns like all poetry is tedious. May have a wee dram though because its a day with a Y on the end...
Good idea.
I think I’ll go and buy some whiskey, make a tiny contribution to the Scottish economy.
Plus, something in the house for if/when Boris finally fucks off.
Whisky. Not whiskey.
You may need to finish the bottle to drown your sorrows. The Big Dog is going nowhere.
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I have a few thoughts on this too 🙂
Firstly, wasn’t Churchill responsible for the Norway fiasco - in echoes of the fall of Afghanistan he was side tracked not by dogs but a nephew?
Secondly, I think there is some mileage wondering where the attack on Boris, destabilising UK government is actually coming from at this particular time, so we sure Putin isn’t mugging us all.
This is what Cummings said yesterday “One such thing involved discussing the security services. Only me and two officials knew what I said. They briefed the PM. Within minutes, one of the lobby infamous for being a stooge was calling the Cabinet Office making claims about MI5 and me.”
My take - he spoke privately to security, they shared with PM, PM shared it with friendly contact in lobby to smear him. Have I misunderstood?
We don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to put Cummings MI5 and Russia into Google and learn Cummings spent three years in Russia from 1994 to 1997 after he graduated from Oxford and could have made all sorts of friends.
So I have changed Normans name to Tatiana of the SMERSH Spy ring, as we don’t know yet if the coup we are cheering on is actually sneakily helped by a Russia destabilising plan 😮
We just don’t know?
The timing is interesting. Someone with links to Russia bringing down the PM at the same time as Russia are escalating the new cold war. The problem is so many of our politicians have links to Russia nowadays it is most likely coincidental.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
100%. I've had a serious lecture from the company dietician (Japanese companies, they care about this stuff) about skipping breakfast a few times, yet I just don't feel hungry and my black filter coffee does me just fine until about half 12ish.
That allows me to eat a bit less carefully, plus 3 gym sessions a week and a 90 minute football match every Sunday and it's kept me in fairly good condition for the last 10 or so years. But if you listened to the dieticians you'd assume I was on my death bed from malnutrition.
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
Thank you for your answer.
My fear this morning when it looked like Gray had been scuppered was that Johnson's police case would not pass the conviction probability tests and he would claim full exoneration. The cash for peerages case a decade ago confirms that notion.
Politically any other politician would have called it a day. Johnson however has more resolve than his hand-wringing simpering MPs and will hold out for his pyrrhic victory. Who knows? Out of adversity our Churchillian war hero thrives. Big Dog lives!
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
This particular argument relies on whether it is a public place or not, rather than a workplace.
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
I read your previous post with interest and it would be wise for posters to read it in full
It was as clear as day break in the Mojave desert that the rules were if they was some kind of meeting in your own garden it was one or two other people - distanced. I can't recall the exact rules. But whatever it was it was not 30 or 100 or a dozen or 25 or the interior decorator and all her mates plus some bloke from an agency that was doing some comms for you and that young lad who is good on the decks.
People were actually fined £10 000. If it turns out they'd have got off if only they could afford Mr Loophole, that doesn't make things better
Ukraine Live Updates: U.S. to Bolster Europe’s Fuel Supply to Blunt Threat of Russian Cutoff
"The Biden Administration announced on Tuesday that it was working with gas and crude oil suppliers from the Middle East, North Africa and Asia to bolster supplies to Europe in coming weeks, in an effort to blunt the threat that Russia could cut off fuel shipments in the escalating conflict over Ukraine."
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
Getting Turkey on board, home of some of Boris' ancestors, is more important to NATO than Germany in military terms.
The Turks have a far bigger military than Germany
Um, Turkey still has conscription, given the choice between Professional German soldiers and Turks NATO always went for the Germans.
Most other countries got rid of conscription decades ago as it results in an oversized poorly trained and terribly poorly motivated army for this day and age.
The main European military powers are Russia, France, Turkey, Italy and the UK. Germany is not even in the top 5 now. Even Poland has a bigger navy than Germany.
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
I read your previous post with interest and it would be wise for posters to read it in full
It was as clear as day break in the Mojave desert that the rules were if they was some kind of meeting in your own garden it was one or two other people - distanced. I can't recall the exact rules. But whatever it was it was not 30 or 100 or a dozen or 25 or the interior decorator and all her mates plus some bloke from an agency that was doing some comms for you and that young lad who is good on the decks.
People were actually fined £10 000. If it turns out they'd have got off if only they could afford Mr Loophole, that doesn't make things better
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
Thank you for your answer.
My fear this morning when it looked like Gray had been scuppered was that Johnson's police case would not pass the conviction probability tests and he would claim full exoneration. The cash for peerages case a decade ago confirms that notion.
Politically any other politician would have called it a day. Johnson however has more resolve than his hand-wringing simpering MPs and will hold out for his pyrrhic victory. Who knows? Out of adversity our Churchillian war hero thrives. Big Dog lives!
And Labour celebrate because with Boris sat there the sleaze continues to grind the Tory party down bit by bit.
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
I read your previous post with interest and it would be wise for posters to read it in full
It was as clear as day break in the Mojave desert that the rules were if they was some kind of meeting in your own garden it was one or two other people - distanced. I can't recall the exact rules. But whatever it was it was not 30 or 100 or a dozen or 25 or the interior decorator and all her mates plus some bloke from an agency that was doing some comms for you and that young lad who is good on the decks.
People were actually fined £10 000. If it turns out they'd have got off if only they could afford Mr Loophole, that doesn't make things better
There was the story of the pensioner who was fined for meeting acquaintances at his allotment because of mental health concerns from isolation. Pretty sure a good lawyer would have got him off under the reasonable excuse of " to avoid injury or illness or to escape a risk of harm".
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky · 1h Sky News understands that officials have handed over to investigators photos of parties in Downing Street which include images of Boris Johnson
Sue Gray was given the pictures of people close together with wine bottles.
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
Cyclefree is obviously the lawyer here, but as I understood it beyond the issue of home or workplace food and drink for "a social rather than work reason" was expressly prohibited. As was singing together. That would make these concrete breaches, which other people were fined for, if I have the law right.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
Hey, I know. Why don't we all go around to Downing Street and celebrate Burns with a massive piss up? Or do they only happen when it is actually illegal?
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
It's not a well known fact that the female haggis has its 3 left legs shorter than its 3 right legs and the male is the reverse of this. This means they run around hills in opposite directions so meet up regularly to mate.
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
Vivid imagery. What about a sedate, workmanlike orgy?
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
Thank you for your answer.
My fear this morning when it looked like Gray had been scuppered was that Johnson's police case would not pass the conviction probability tests and he would claim full exoneration. The cash for peerages case a decade ago confirms that notion.
Politically any other politician would have called it a day. Johnson however has more resolve than his hand-wringing simpering MPs and will hold out for his pyrrhic victory. Who knows? Out of adversity our Churchillian war hero thrives. Big Dog lives!
And Labour celebrate because with Boris sat there the sleaze continues to grind the Tory party down bit by bit.
The worst bit for me is not the parties themselves but the lack of political judgement and competence. How could anyone believe that they could 'party' every week and it wouldn't leak? This is all after Barnard Castle so they could hardly say they didn't know how it would play out!
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
Very good interview with Lord Sumption that I've just got round to hearing.
Makes perfect sense. Law is obscure so good luck with proving an actual offence under the ordinance, and of all the reasons to get rid of Boris having a birthday party is one of the more trivial.
Good to see one Eton and Oxford educated Tory making a dispassionate and objective case in defence of another... The Establishment protecting its own as per bloody usual.
It's not a well known fact that the female haggis has its 3 left legs shorter than its 3 right legs and the male is the reverse of this. This means they run around hills in opposite directions so meet up regularly to mate.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
This particular argument relies on whether it is a public place or not, rather than a workplace.
I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps misunderstand. But I beleive that the regulations both prohibited gathering in public places (which I agree Number 10 is not) and prohibited visiting private places except if necessary for work. Let's say that the staff did go in for work - they wrote various reports, perhaps, studied the news, etc. At some point, they then had something remarkably like a party. Was their presence still "necessary for work"? Surely not.
The birthday event might actually be an exception. If they were all beavering away and briefly stopped to give BJ a cake, then resuming work, then you can make a case that they were indeed at work. But some of the other events, not so much.
Hey, I know. Why don't we all go around to Downing Street and celebrate Burns with a massive piss up? Or do they only happen when it is actually illegal?
Lot of bollocks mind. one of the finest Scotch poets who ever lived, nae doot, but I could put together four rugby teams of better English language poets without having to think about it.
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
Thank you for your answer.
My fear this morning when it looked like Gray had been scuppered was that Johnson's police case would not pass the conviction probability tests and he would claim full exoneration. The cash for peerages case a decade ago confirms that notion.
Politically any other politician would have called it a day. Johnson however has more resolve than his hand-wringing simpering MPs and will hold out for his pyrrhic victory. Who knows? Out of adversity our Churchillian war hero thrives. Big Dog lives!
And Labour celebrate because with Boris sat there the sleaze continues to grind the Tory party down bit by bit.
Indeed.
This is one of the most unedifying spectacles in British politics that I've witnessed. I'm struggling to think of another that eclipses it.
Today has been yet another utter shambles by No.10
And it will go on being so until his tory MPs have the gumption to boot him out. He's not up to the job. Geddit?
Very good interview with Lord Sumption that I've just got round to hearing.
Makes perfect sense. Law is obscure so good luck with proving an actual offence under the ordinance, and of all the reasons to get rid of Boris having a birthday party is one of the more trivial.
Good to see one Eton and Oxford educated Tory making a dispassionate and objective case in defence of another... The Establishment protecting its own as per bloody usual.
Eton certainly hasn't given a good account of itself over the last few years.
I have to get out of this hotel. NOW. It has the best food per dollar I have ever encountered. Superb, freshly made curries for £4
I need to check into a hostel above a weirdly expensive McDonalds.
I recommend Geneva.
Where some of the cheaper dishes involve piles of bread dipped into a vast vat of melted cheese... or lake fish swamped in butter sauce with a pile of chips.
But yes, the worst value for money hotel I ever stayed in was in Geneva. £250 a night for something hovering around student halls of residence standards.
I had great food in Switzerland last summer, especially in the Italian bit, but my God, it was fucking expensive, luckily I wasn’t paying
For a diet surely the best place in the advanced world is Norway. Obscenely pricey AND it’s shit? Iceland close behind
If the only options were rotting shark then you would lose five stone in a month.
True story: when I was a young man doing my first gigs for the Flint Knappers Gazette I was sent to Iceland with a photographer friend (those were the days), My commission was: Oh just go and find something interesting . Literally (as I say those were the days!)
So I went and had a laugh and we met girls and it was all great and then we got a boat over the Arctic Ocean to the Vestman Islands, and we climbed a live volcano and I took out the two early Ecstasy tablet sI had smuggled in, via my sheepskin coat, and me and my tog friend had one each - this is when E was brilliant, late 80s - and we literally danced on the volcano until we were utterly exhausted with laughter and then we stomped down the lava off the volcano with an appetite like Daniel Lambert after a diet and we marched into the only restaurant to discover that the ONLY dish they were serving was…. Puffin
Two puffin each. Boiled. Beaks and claws on, and heads, everything.
Despite our ravenous hunger we could not eat a morsel. Puffin is disgusting. Like fishy liver, gone rancid.
I think we found a pizzeria the next day and forced them to open at about 10am
Rotted shark (Iceland) Snake blood (China) Snake bile (China) Drunken shrimp [ie live shrimp in a soup] (China)
= the worst culinary experiences of my life although I can taste each of those right this minute so I can't say they weren't memorable.
Tripe and onions in milk (UK)
My gran's house would smell of shit for a couple of days afterwards, and despite having refused to eat it the tripe would nevertheless refuse to release me from its grip.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
100%. I've had a serious lecture from the company dietician (Japanese companies, they care about this stuff) about skipping breakfast a few times, yet I just don't feel hungry and my black filter coffee does me just fine until about half 12ish.
That allows me to eat a bit less carefully, plus 3 gym sessions a week and a 90 minute football match every Sunday and it's kept me in fairly good condition for the last 10 or so years. But if you listened to the dieticians you'd assume I was on my death bed from malnutrition.
Lots of evidence that skipping breakfast causes more obesity than not doing so.
I have a hearty but extremely healthy breakfast and a much smaller lunch. Works well for me.
Very good interview with Lord Sumption that I've just got round to hearing.
Makes perfect sense. Law is obscure so good luck with proving an actual offence under the ordinance, and of all the reasons to get rid of Boris having a birthday party is one of the more trivial.
Good to see one Eton and Oxford educated Tory making a dispassionate and objective case in defence of another... The Establishment protecting its own as per bloody usual.
We are playing Boris's game if the conversation devolves into whether he did or did not break any laws. This is about arrogance and hypocrisy and always had been. Everyone was exhorted to obey the letter and spirit of the law to protect the NHS and save lives.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
This particular argument relies on whether it is a public place or not, rather than a workplace.
I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps misunderstand. But I beleive that the regulations both prohibited gathering in public places (which I agree Number 10 is not) and prohibited visiting private places except if necessary for work. Let's say that the staff did go in for work - they wrote various reports, perhaps, studied the news, etc. At some point, they then had something remarkably like a party. Was their presence still "necessary for work"? Surely not.
The birthday event might actually be an exception. If they were all beavering away and briefly stopped to give BJ a cake, then resuming work, then you can make a case that they were indeed at work. But some of the other events, not so much.
Anyway, we'll know more soon.
If there is a loophole, it's arisen because Downing Street is both the Johnsons' home and a workplace, and given how few places that can be said of, it's unsurprising that they weren't taken into consideration with the drafting.
That said, it remains irrelevant. As I've said before, if a politician's defence is "it was technically legal", they're screwed in the court of public opinion.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
100%. I've had a serious lecture from the company dietician (Japanese companies, they care about this stuff) about skipping breakfast a few times, yet I just don't feel hungry and my black filter coffee does me just fine until about half 12ish.
That allows me to eat a bit less carefully, plus 3 gym sessions a week and a 90 minute football match every Sunday and it's kept me in fairly good condition for the last 10 or so years. But if you listened to the dieticians you'd assume I was on my death bed from malnutrition.
Lots of evidence that skipping breakfast causes more obesity than not doing so.
I have a hearty but extremely healthy breakfast and a much smaller lunch. Works well for me.
Skipping dinner is the key. Big breakfast. Big lunch. No dinner.
Thangam Debbonaire has been reselected without a full selection process, after winning all branches and affiliates that returned a quorate vote before the deadline, I'm told. Bristol West one of the first seats to complete their trigger ballot process.
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
Cyclefree is obviously the lawyer here, but as I understood it beyond the issue of home or workplace food and drink for "a social rather than work reason" was expressly prohibited. As was singing together. That would make these concrete breaches, which other people were fined for, if I have the law right.
I think we have the complication that the law was different during the winter lockdown than during the spring. So some of the parties, that may seem like more egregious breaches of the spirit of the rules, may not pose a legal problem because of the time at which they took place, whereas other events, taking place at a time when the letter of the law was written more tightly, may be more problematic for those involved, despite on the face of it being less serious transgressions.
Very good interview with Lord Sumption that I've just got round to hearing.
Makes perfect sense. Law is obscure so good luck with proving an actual offence under the ordinance, and of all the reasons to get rid of Boris having a birthday party is one of the more trivial.
Good to see one Eton and Oxford educated Tory making a dispassionate and objective case in defence of another... The Establishment protecting its own as per bloody usual.
We are playing Boris's game if the conversation devolves into whether he did or did not break any laws. This is about arrogance and hypocrisy and always had been. Everyone was exhorted to obey the letter and spirit of the law to protect the NHS and save lives.
THIS. 100x This.
He is the only person in Britain who thinks he did not break the rules.
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
I read your previous post with interest and it would be wise for posters to read it in full
It was as clear as day break in the Mojave desert that the rules were if they was some kind of meeting in your own garden it was one or two other people - distanced. I can't recall the exact rules. But whatever it was it was not 30 or 100 or a dozen or 25 or the interior decorator and all her mates plus some bloke from an agency that was doing some comms for you and that young lad who is good on the decks.
Having read @Cyclefree and just heard Lord Sumption it is not at all certain Boris broke the law mainly due to it being his home and also his workplace
Sumption indicated it was a legal minefield and it dis seem so as he explained it
Have to say listening to the Prime Minister of Latvia earlier, I didn't get the sense of a man staring down the gun barrel of armageddon. Indeed, he was positively calm and relaxed.
Perhaps we are over-reacting ourselves into an unnecessary crisis - well, I can see why weak leaders like Biden and Johnson might want a crisis to enhance their waning popularity with disaffected electorates but back in the real world the fact remains Putin doesn't have to do anything it seems to obtain some form of concession or notice.
I'm quite certain Putin doesn't want to get into a proper shooting match in Ukraine - if he can achieve his political objectives without firing a shot he'll take that all day and every day. That may be getting rid of Zelensky in favour of Akhmetov who would almost certainly be more amenable to Putin and had connections (allegedly) with the last American administration.
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
Thank you for your answer.
My fear this morning when it looked like Gray had been scuppered was that Johnson's police case would not pass the conviction probability tests and he would claim full exoneration. The cash for peerages case a decade ago confirms that notion.
Politically any other politician would have called it a day. Johnson however has more resolve than his hand-wringing simpering MPs and will hold out for his pyrrhic victory. Who knows? Out of adversity our Churchillian war hero thrives. Big Dog lives!
And Labour celebrate because with Boris sat there the sleaze continues to grind the Tory party down bit by bit.
Part of me thinks let's roll with your narrative. Mostly, I am thinking just get rid of this wretched man. Few could be worse
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
This particular argument relies on whether it is a public place or not, rather than a workplace.
I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps misunderstand. But I beleive that the regulations both prohibited gathering in public places (which I agree Number 10 is not) and prohibited visiting private places except if necessary for work. Let's say that the staff did go in for work - they wrote various reports, perhaps, studied the news, etc. At some point, they then had something remarkably like a party. Was their presence still "necessary for work"? Surely not.
The birthday event might actually be an exception. If they were all beavering away and briefly stopped to give BJ a cake, then resuming work, then you can make a case that they were indeed at work. But some of the other events, not so much.
Anyway, we'll know more soon.
When we went through this last week the argument put forward was the restrictions on gatherings did not apply as not a private place. That left the restrictions on movement. Someone going to work, for essential reasons, had the reasonable excuse to do so, but there was no law mandating that they leave afterwards, even if that was a common sense assumption.
I can't remember who (apologies), but a regular lawyer posted argued that workplaces are often actually considered public places in much employment law.
I don't think this flies at all politically, even if it might avoid the police or CPS taking it further.
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I have a few thoughts on this too 🙂
Firstly, wasn’t Churchill responsible for the Norway fiasco - in echoes of the fall of Afghanistan he was side tracked not by dogs but a nephew?
Secondly, I think there is some mileage wondering where the attack on Boris, destabilising UK government is actually coming from at this particular time, so we sure Putin isn’t mugging us all.
This is what Cummings said yesterday “One such thing involved discussing the security services. Only me and two officials knew what I said. They briefed the PM. Within minutes, one of the lobby infamous for being a stooge was calling the Cabinet Office making claims about MI5 and me.”
My take - he spoke privately to security, they shared with PM, PM shared it with friendly contact in lobby to smear him. Have I misunderstood?
We don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to put Cummings MI5 and Russia into Google and learn Cummings spent three years in Russia from 1994 to 1997 after he graduated from Oxford and could have made all sorts of friends.
So I have changed Normans name to Tatiana of the SMERSH Spy ring, as we don’t know yet if the coup we are cheering on is actually sneakily helped by a Russia destabilising plan 😮
We just don’t know?
The timing is interesting. Someone with links to Russia bringing down the PM at the same time as Russia are escalating the new cold war. The problem is so many of our politicians have links to Russia nowadays it is most likely coincidental.
Yes I agree, though you said in jest i said in old thread I feel sorry for our security authorities - there’s allegations that money has flowed into British politics from the highly organised and sneaky Russians - meanwhile there’s politicians from all party’s who love a drink, money, and sex! and poor security forces have to keep our politics out of trouble and our democracy and elections as clean as possible ☹️
Anyway, I’ve been told I am on this site all day everyday, and I have an addiction reading it and posting - that got my back up I am determinedly defiant to prove is wrong!
So I’ll only be posting when no one is watching, if you want to know where I am and missing me.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky · 1h Sky News understands that officials have handed over to investigators photos of parties in Downing Street which include images of Boris Johnson
Sue Gray was given the pictures of people close together with wine bottles.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
This particular argument relies on whether it is a public place or not, rather than a workplace.
I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps misunderstand. But I beleive that the regulations both prohibited gathering in public places (which I agree Number 10 is not) and prohibited visiting private places except if necessary for work. Let's say that the staff did go in for work - they wrote various reports, perhaps, studied the news, etc. At some point, they then had something remarkably like a party. Was their presence still "necessary for work"? Surely not.
The birthday event might actually be an exception. If they were all beavering away and briefly stopped to give BJ a cake, then resuming work, then you can make a case that they were indeed at work. But some of the other events, not so much.
Anyway, we'll know more soon.
If there is a loophole, it's arisen because Downing Street is both the Johnsons' home and a workplace, and given how few places that can be said of, it's unsurprising that they weren't taken into consideration with the drafting.
That said, it remains irrelevant. As I've said before, if a politician's defence is "it was technically legal", they're screwed in the court of public opinion.
Surely under that categorisation, every resident publican in the land could have held endless parties throughout lockdown?
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
Cyclefree is obviously the lawyer here, but as I understood it beyond the issue of home or workplace food and drink for "a social rather than work reason" was expressly prohibited. As was singing together. That would make these concrete breaches, which other people were fined for, if I have the law right.
Well, here are the relevant regulations from spring 2020.
I cannot find anywhere in there anything which says that "food and drink for a social rather than work reason" was expressly prohibited.
Not trying to be snarky or difficult. Just saying that the law - as opposed to the guidance or the spirit of the restrictions - was not, as fas I can tell, what was and still is generally assumed.
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
Thank you for your answer.
My fear this morning when it looked like Gray had been scuppered was that Johnson's police case would not pass the conviction probability tests and he would claim full exoneration. The cash for peerages case a decade ago confirms that notion.
Politically any other politician would have called it a day. Johnson however has more resolve than his hand-wringing simpering MPs and will hold out for his pyrrhic victory. Who knows? Out of adversity our Churchillian war hero thrives. Big Dog lives!
And Labour celebrate because with Boris sat there the sleaze continues to grind the Tory party down bit by bit.
Part of me thinks let's roll with your narrative. Mostly, I am thinking just get rid of this wretched man. Few could be worse
Agreed. You would have to be nakedly partisan in the extreme to wish this ongoing fiasco on the country. It’s embarrassing and damaging.
A former SPAD has messaged me to remind me that, apropos of absolutely nothing, a speeding ticket is normally dealt with a fine (and points), so how'd that turn out for Chris Huhne?
All just fussy patterns quarrelling with other fussy patterns
A friend of mine bought a pub a bit ago and took me there, and I said I bet you can't wait to get rid of all this grotty mismatched furniture. Turned out to be an ensemble carefully curated by him personally from the most expensive auction houses in the country.
Mask-wearing at about 80 per cent plus at Sainsbury's today. That's how desperate everyone was to abandon face nappies.
Still legally required (unless exempt), though. I don't think we can judge until, at the very least, the legal mandate is removed and shops have updated their signage/tannoy announcements.
Less anecdotal, but broadly in agreement with the Sainsburys observation: https://osf.io/yfmxu/
Have to say listening to the Prime Minister of Latvia earlier, I didn't get the sense of a man staring down the gun barrel of armageddon. Indeed, he was positively calm and relaxed.
Perhaps we are over-reacting ourselves into an unnecessary crisis - well, I can see why weak leaders like Biden and Johnson might want a crisis to enhance their waning popularity with disaffected electorates but back in the real world the fact remains Putin doesn't have to do anything it seems to obtain some form of concession or notice.
I'm quite certain Putin doesn't want to get into a proper shooting match in Ukraine - if he can achieve his political objectives without firing a shot he'll take that all day and every day. That may be getting rid of Zelensky in favour of Akhmetov who would almost certainly be more amenable to Putin and had connections (allegedly) with the last American administration.
Lyndsey the Channel 4 news expert in Kiev said it’s all calm there and they are a little surprised UK and US bigging it up so much (her words not mine) meanwhile Ukraine Parliament lady with great hair naively said Putin not interested in Kiev, just going to destabilise other parts of the country.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
This particular argument relies on whether it is a public place or not, rather than a workplace.
I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps misunderstand. But I beleive that the regulations both prohibited gathering in public places (which I agree Number 10 is not) and prohibited visiting private places except if necessary for work. Let's say that the staff did go in for work - they wrote various reports, perhaps, studied the news, etc. At some point, they then had something remarkably like a party. Was their presence still "necessary for work"? Surely not.
The birthday event might actually be an exception. If they were all beavering away and briefly stopped to give BJ a cake, then resuming work, then you can make a case that they were indeed at work. But some of the other events, not so much.
Anyway, we'll know more soon.
If there is a loophole, it's arisen because Downing Street is both the Johnsons' home and a workplace, and given how few places that can be said of, it's unsurprising that they weren't taken into consideration with the drafting.
That said, it remains irrelevant. As I've said before, if a politician's defence is "it was technically legal", they're screwed in the court of public opinion.
Surely under that categorisation, every resident publican in the land could have held endless parties throughout lockdown?
Not in the periods when the pubs were shut anyway.
Have to say listening to the Prime Minister of Latvia earlier, I didn't get the sense of a man staring down the gun barrel of armageddon. Indeed, he was positively calm and relaxed.
Perhaps we are over-reacting ourselves into an unnecessary crisis - well, I can see why weak leaders like Biden and Johnson might want a crisis to enhance their waning popularity with disaffected electorates but back in the real world the fact remains Putin doesn't have to do anything it seems to obtain some form of concession or notice.
I'm quite certain Putin doesn't want to get into a proper shooting match in Ukraine - if he can achieve his political objectives without firing a shot he'll take that all day and every day. That may be getting rid of Zelensky in favour of Akhmetov who would almost certainly be more amenable to Putin and had connections (allegedly) with the last American administration.
Well, it probably helps that the Canadians just brought an entire column of new Abrams tanks through Riga on the way to Adazi, so there is a bit more calm, now it is clear that NATO will reinforce the Eastern flank, and several thousand new troops on the way.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
Oh, I agree. One reason my parents sent me to comprehensive schools was their view that if ambitious parents won't push for schools to be better, then no one else would. My folks are hardly Marxists either, my mum has been a member of the Conservative Party for about 65 years.
There are comprehensive schools and comprehensive schools. A church comprehensive school or academy in a leafy suburban catchment area will get far better results on average than a comprehensive school or academy in a poor part of an inner city or a seaside town.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
I would disagree (as usual over Grammar Schools) having been to an excellent Comprehensive and dreadful Grammar, but you only tell half the story.
At the Comp the top three groups out of seven were pushed academically. At the Grammar, the top class out of two was pushed, really pushed, academically. The second group were considered less able. If you went to most Secondary Moderns the majority were finished at aged 11. The route was CSEs and an technical apprenticeship, albeit a proper time served, debentured apprenticeship... so maybe you have a point, if only a small one.
Thangam Debbonaire has been reselected without a full selection process, after winning all branches and affiliates that returned a quorate vote before the deadline, I'm told. Bristol West one of the first seats to complete their trigger ballot process.
All just fussy patterns quarrelling with other fussy patterns
A friend of mine bought a pub a bit ago and took me there, and I said I bet you can't wait to get rid of all this grotty mismatched furniture. Turned out to be an ensemble carefully curated by him personally from the most expensive auction houses in the country.
You're clearly right that it's not a slam-dunk. But there comes a point when celebratory activities - eating cake, singing, drinking wine and going to buy more, playing loud music, playing games on a swing - make it difficult to maintain that those involved are still at work at all. The fact that it's a workplace is not sufficient - if I go into work with others and we have a frenzied orgy on our desks, it's still a place of work but we're clearly not working (in the usual sense of the term...).
This particular argument relies on whether it is a public place or not, rather than a workplace.
I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps misunderstand. But I beleive that the regulations both prohibited gathering in public places (which I agree Number 10 is not) and prohibited visiting private places except if necessary for work. Let's say that the staff did go in for work - they wrote various reports, perhaps, studied the news, etc. At some point, they then had something remarkably like a party. Was their presence still "necessary for work"? Surely not.
The birthday event might actually be an exception. If they were all beavering away and briefly stopped to give BJ a cake, then resuming work, then you can make a case that they were indeed at work. But some of the other events, not so much.
Anyway, we'll know more soon.
If there is a loophole, it's arisen because Downing Street is both the Johnsons' home and a workplace, and given how few places that can be said of, it's unsurprising that they weren't taken into consideration with the drafting.
That said, it remains irrelevant. As I've said before, if a politician's defence is "it was technically legal", they're screwed in the court of public opinion.
Surely under that categorisation, every resident publican in the land could have held endless parties throughout lockdown?
Not in the periods when the pubs were shut anyway.
You can still run a business from a pub (take outs and the like) without the bar being open. Many did.
"The police investigation into Downing Street parties is set to uncover evidence which has not yet been submitted to the Sue Gray inquiry, according to former No 10 staffers.
The prime minister’s ex-chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, had previously warned that officials were deeply uncomfortable with handing over some evidence to the inquiry, believing they could face retribution for damaging information.
But one senior Tory with knowledge of the inquiry said the announcement of a criminal inquiry on Tuesday made it a “different ballgame”, adding: “Officials who don’t tell Sue Gray the whole truth will not hold back from the cops.”
A former SPAD has messaged me to remind me that, apropos of absolutely nothing, a speeding ticket is normally dealt with a fine (and points), so how'd that turn out for Chris Huhne?
BorisJohnsonIsAPoundShopNixon
So far Boris hasn't lied to a court or the police - he's merely got incredibly close* to doing so within Parliament.
* it may turn out tomorrow that the careful half lies Boris has so far told end up being total lies when Sue Gray's report is published.
Very good interview with Lord Sumption that I've just got round to hearing.
Makes perfect sense. Law is obscure so good luck with proving an actual offence under the ordinance, and of all the reasons to get rid of Boris having a birthday party is one of the more trivial.
Good to see one Eton and Oxford educated Tory making a dispassionate and objective case in defence of another... The Establishment protecting its own as per bloody usual.
We are playing Boris's game if the conversation devolves into whether he did or did not break any laws. This is about arrogance and hypocrisy and always had been. Everyone was exhorted to obey the letter and spirit of the law to protect the NHS and save lives.
THIS. 100x This.
He is the only person in Britain who thinks he did not break the rules.
All this 101x.
It is his attitude and disrespect to Parliament and process central to all of this. Lie outside the chamber if you chose to, but Our Democracy relies on the country’s leaders setting the example of probity and respect within it.
I think Labour's criticism is absolutely valid. Why trust someone to run the NHS if they don't rely on it themselves? The argument that the private health insurance was provided by his employer is bogus because I am sure he could have turned it down (as I have). For similar reasons, nobody with power over the state education system should use private schools. You want people in charge of things to have personal skin in the game, not to have demonstrated that they think that the service they are in charge of isn't good enough for them.
On the other hand, could he not use his experience of the private sector to copy some of the best bits into the NHS?
Yes maybe he will have noticed that if you put more money in you get a better service.
Haven’t we tried that? Simply putting more money in is not the answer.
Indeed. The answer is putting more money in complicatedly.
Comments
Although, then again, I don't spend 95% of my working life sat on my arse, and I do quite a lot of heavy exercise, both of which help.
All the same, dinner once a day supplemented by starvation or the occasional lettuce leaf doesn't sound like much fun.
@SamCoatesSky
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1h
Sky News understands that officials have handed over to investigators photos of parties in Downing Street which include images of Boris Johnson
Sue Gray was given the pictures of people close together with wine bottles.
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1486029913387933697
Looking back with the advantage of age, it seems to me that a lot of politically motivated violence the world over seems to stop when the talking starts. Religiously motivated violence seems to go on until one side nearly exterminates the other. It has long been acknowledged that religion and politics do not mix which is why the DUP are, for me, unelectable.
Makes perfect sense. Law is obscure so good luck with proving an actual offence under the ordinance, and of all the reasons to get rid of Boris having a birthday party is one of the more trivial.
Denmark's Epidemic Committee says COVID-19 should no longer be categorized as a "socially critical disease," recommends the lifting of nearly all restrictions - DR
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1486016125943037965
This is what Cummings said yesterday
“One such thing involved discussing the security services. Only me and two officials knew what I said. They briefed the PM. Within minutes, one of the lobby infamous for being a stooge was calling the Cabinet Office making claims about MI5 and me.”
My take - he spoke privately to security, they shared with PM, PM shared it with friendly contact in lobby to smear him. Have I misunderstood?
We don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to put Cummings MI5 and Russia into Google and learn Cummings spent three years in Russia from 1994 to 1997 after he graduated from Oxford and could have made all sorts of friends.
So I have changed Normans name to Tatiana of the SMERSH Spy ring, as we don’t know yet if the coup we are cheering on is actually sneakily helped by a Russia destabilising plan 😮
We just don’t know?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/22/confusion-over-uk-claim-that-putin-plans-coup-in-ukraine
If it is correct in my view that is politically worse for the government as it is explicitly making restrictive laws that they themselves are exempt from. Most people won't even get that far and assume an establishment cover up. The number of people who think actually, 10DS is a private place so it was quite right to arrange some conga parties during a pandemic, especially when the nation is asked to be in mourning for the Queen will be very few.
However, my memory is that he has now abandoned the BA2 train and is now frantically searching for other options.
Boris Johnson: Sue Gray has received photos of parties in Downing Street which show the PM next to wine bottles, Sky News understands
That allows me to eat a bit less carefully, plus 3 gym sessions a week and a 90 minute football match every Sunday and it's kept me in fairly good condition for the last 10 or so years. But if you listened to the dieticians you'd assume I was on my death bed from malnutrition.
My fear this morning when it looked like Gray had been scuppered was that Johnson's police case would not pass the conviction probability tests and he would claim full exoneration. The cash for peerages case a decade ago confirms that notion.
Politically any other politician would have called it a day. Johnson however has more resolve than his hand-wringing simpering MPs and will hold out for his pyrrhic victory. Who knows? Out of adversity our Churchillian war hero thrives. Big Dog lives!
The rest of it is sophistry.
If it turns out it was Johnson himself who broke Wilf's swing then I think I will die laughing.
"The Biden Administration announced on Tuesday that it was working with gas and crude oil suppliers from the Middle East, North Africa and Asia to bolster supplies to Europe in coming weeks, in an effort to blunt the threat that Russia could cut off fuel shipments in the escalating conflict over Ukraine."
NY Times
Is Bozza going to bound to the dispatch box all bushy tailed? Or with sunken eyes?
Does Starmer ask 6 questions on the report or hold fire entirely knowing he can ask them in the session straight after and focus on Ukraine instead.
Do Tory MPs pack the benches and boorishly cheer their man (while privately writing their letters)? Or do we get multiple David Davis type speeches?
Should be a fun day.
The Ukraine has a bigger military than Germany
Somebody pass the mind bleach please.
Boris was tucked up in bed at Chequers, and Wilfred is his witness.
If these alibis don't hold up, Johnson misled Parliament, which, if he goes, is why he will go.
Middle class parents will still choose an outstanding comprehensive over an inadequate comprehensive, just as they would choose an Outstanding private school or grammar school over an inadequate comprehensive
@NadineDorries
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4h
Tonight is a chance to celebrate a Scottish cultural icon, Robert Burns — one of the finest poets who ever lived.
So let’s raise a glass to a great evening, a great poet and the great chieftain o' the puddin'-race.
Have a fantastic Burns Night! Flag of ScotlandTumbler glass
https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1485990641595203597
===
Hey, I know. Why don't we all go around to Downing Street and celebrate Burns with a massive piss up? Or do they only happen when it is actually illegal?
It's almost like Boris was too lazy to actually write the book and paid a ghost writer some of his advance to do all the hard work.
The birthday event might actually be an exception. If they were all beavering away and briefly stopped to give BJ a cake, then resuming work, then you can make a case that they were indeed at work. But some of the other events, not so much.
Anyway, we'll know more soon.
This is one of the most unedifying spectacles in British politics that I've witnessed. I'm struggling to think of another that eclipses it.
Today has been yet another utter shambles by No.10
And it will go on being so until his tory MPs have the gumption to boot him out. He's not up to the job. Geddit?
My gran's house would smell of shit for a couple of days afterwards, and despite having refused to eat it the tripe would nevertheless refuse to release me from its grip.
I have a hearty but extremely healthy breakfast and a much smaller lunch. Works well for me.
That said, it remains irrelevant. As I've said before, if a politician's defence is "it was technically legal", they're screwed in the court of public opinion.
Sienna Rodgers
@siennamarla
Thangam Debbonaire has been reselected without a full selection process, after winning all branches and affiliates that returned a quorate vote before the deadline, I'm told. Bristol West one of the first seats to complete their trigger ballot process.
https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1486015987673673736
He is the only person in Britain who thinks he did not break the rules.
Sumption indicated it was a legal minefield and it dis seem so as he explained it
Have to say listening to the Prime Minister of Latvia earlier, I didn't get the sense of a man staring down the gun barrel of armageddon. Indeed, he was positively calm and relaxed.
Perhaps we are over-reacting ourselves into an unnecessary crisis - well, I can see why weak leaders like Biden and Johnson might want a crisis to enhance their waning popularity with disaffected electorates but back in the real world the fact remains Putin doesn't have to do anything it seems to obtain some form of concession or notice.
I'm quite certain Putin doesn't want to get into a proper shooting match in Ukraine - if he can achieve his political objectives without firing a shot he'll take that all day and every day. That may be getting rid of Zelensky in favour of Akhmetov who would almost certainly be more amenable to Putin and had connections (allegedly) with the last American administration.
I can't remember who (apologies), but a regular lawyer posted argued that workplaces are often actually considered public places in much employment law.
I don't think this flies at all politically, even if it might avoid the police or CPS taking it further.
Anyway, I’ve been told I am on this site all day everyday, and I have an addiction reading it and posting - that got my back up I am determinedly defiant to prove is wrong!
So I’ll only be posting when no one is watching, if you want to know where I am and missing me.
https://quintessenceblog.com/at-home-in-london-with-lulu-lytle/
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/pdfs/uksi_20200350_en.pdf
I cannot find anywhere in there anything which says that "food and drink for a social rather than work reason" was expressly prohibited.
Not trying to be snarky or difficult. Just saying that the law - as opposed to the guidance or the spirit of the restrictions - was not, as fas I can tell, what was and still is generally assumed.
Happy to be corrected.
BorisJohnsonIsAPoundShopNixon
A friend of mine bought a pub a bit ago and took me there, and I said I bet you can't wait to get rid of all this grotty mismatched furniture. Turned out to be an ensemble carefully curated by him personally from the most expensive auction houses in the country.
At the Comp the top three groups out of seven were pushed academically. At the Grammar, the top class out of two was pushed, really pushed, academically. The second group were considered less able. If you went to most Secondary Moderns the majority were finished at aged 11. The route was CSEs and an technical apprenticeship, albeit a proper time served, debentured apprenticeship... so maybe you have a point, if only a small one.
Erm. Maybe you do in Johnson's Drowning Street?
The prime minister’s ex-chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, had previously warned that officials were deeply uncomfortable with handing over some evidence to the inquiry, believing they could face retribution for damaging information.
But one senior Tory with knowledge of the inquiry said the announcement of a criminal inquiry on Tuesday made it a “different ballgame”, adding: “Officials who don’t tell Sue Gray the whole truth will not hold back from the cops.”
Guardian
The feds are coming kids...
* it may turn out tomorrow that the careful half lies Boris has so far told end up being total lies when Sue Gray's report is published.
It is his attitude and disrespect to Parliament and process central to all of this. Lie outside the chamber if you chose to, but Our Democracy relies on the country’s leaders setting the example of probity and respect within it.
That’s me in Lady Thatcher mode. 🤗
We are going to ambush Putin with a cake