We have a general election in exactly 4 weeks time. I haven’t got the faintest scoobie who to vote for. I don’t even know which bloc to vote for. Ditto the council and regional elections on the same day.
We’ve got eight parliamentary parties, and I could seriously consider voting for six of them.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
We’re having to import a significant amount of gas from abroad. What do people think is going to happen to energy companies if we prevent them from receving at least the market rate for their gas: Sunshine & roses?
I didnt say we should, i said a furlough type solution rather than capping the cap whilst we get more control over production and wholesale. If we freeze the csp and wholesale prices remain high we are committing to long term bailout of private energy companies whilst everyone continues to struggle to make ends meet
The problem isn't the Tory party, its the voters. People want contradictory things but refuse to accept there is a contradiction. A series of events have empowered them to believe their genuine ignorance on a subject holds the same weight as actual knowledge and experience. They aren't wrong, the experts are wrong.
There is a way through though - find us a new Blair or Thatcher, someone who does know what they are talking about and has political umph. People said "that is Boris" but as all but the remaining holdouts now accept Boris stood for nothing, with no great policies delivered and settled in his time.
Ummm, BoZo was the politician more than any other in my lifetime that told voters they could have contradictory things. Denied the contradictions. That experts were to be derided.
He was the problem
The fact his opponents failed to make their case shows how poor they were
Not entirely.
If you are in a debate with someone shameless and dishonest enough, it can be really hard to persuade an audience.
It tends to go this;
BORIS-ALIKE Something involving cake and eat it
RORY-ALIKE (because he at least tried) That's not possible- once you have eaten your cake, it's gone...
BORIS-ALIKE There you go, with your doomy gloomy negativity. Remember we are Great Britain! We are being held back by your fears... (Continues ad nauseum.)
Boris style cakeism is a really attractive prospectus. It's awfully hard to argue against, because deep down we want it to be true, and want to believe that there's some meanie stopping it being true for us. That's been the case since the apple/snake/Eve fiasco in Genesis.
It would have been better for the UK had someone successfully argued us out of Borisism, but I'm not convinced that was possible.
It would have been better for the Conservatives and the UK to have not fallen for Borisism, but that required human nature to be something it isn't.
The culpability for (gestures round) all of this belongs with the clique who proposed it, who lied to the public about it, who smeared and deposed those who questioned it.
Not particularly with those who fell for it, and certainly not with those who did their best to argue against it.
Unless you had a better plan to argue against Boris, in which case I'm all ears.
And unless he didn't vote for the Conservatives when Mr Johnson was their leader.
I want to make this clear
I supported Johnson on brexit, covid and Ukraine but he lost me from Paterson onwards
Starmer would have had our economy in lockdown forever if he could, and it is to Johnson's credit he opened the economy when he did
That's a very silly thing to write. Starmer wanted us "in lockdown forever"?
Profoundly stupid read of the situation that isn't worthy of yours usual sage analysis.
Forever is a stretch, but Starmer was ALWAYS on the side of more and longer restrictions.
I accept forever was one of my rather exaggerated comments but there is no doubt Starmer favoured a much stricter and longer lockdown and it was Johnson who made the correct decision and it has been proven as the right thing to do
It is rather hot and I apologise for my exaggeration
Boris caused longer lockdowns by always being slow to initiate a lockdown. Had we acted promptly, we would have better controlled infection rates and could’ve come out of lockdown sooner. It’s yet more short term thinking.
Oh what nonsense. Claimed by people who want to justify lockdowns. Taking away civil liberties as a precautionary measure is unacceptable and the virus would still be prevalent on our continent after any lockdown it wasn't a magic pill that would get rid of it.
What country in Europe successfully had a short, sharp lockdown that was rapidly ended and not repeated?
I can in hindsight point at a country and say we should have done that, Sweden. Can you name any country that had a rapid premature lockdown that worked, fixed things and meant coming out of lockdown sooner?
Following the Swedish model would have been utterly catastrophic. Look at their death rates compared to their immediate neighbours. Thousands of additional people died in Sweden who did not need to because of the route they chose. And that is in spite of the fact that far more people in Sweden work from home anyway so the effects of a lockdown would have been considerably less on their economy.
Many - if not all - European countries got their policies wrong in the pandemic in one way or another. Sweden is certainly no exception.
Thousands extra dying, almost all of whom would have died soon anyway, is better than stripping tens of millions of two years of civil liberties, trashing education and development for years that will have consequences for generations to come, spending hundreds of billions and creating NHS waiting lists for years to come.
The price we paid to keep people alive was not a price worth paying. There's more to life than a mortuary league table.
If the vulnerable wishes to shield that should be there prerogative but not at the price of trashing children's education etc
Bolded: incorrect, and pointed out to you repeatedly before.
Half of those in ICUs were under 60. A quarter were under 50.
Using averages of deaths is as irrelevant as using the average age of people locked down (which was over 40, so why are we worrying about childrens education when none of them are anywhere near 40. Which would be an absurd argument, but is just as true).
Over 13,000 children lost a parent to covid. Under your plan, that number would be several times higher. And we'd still have had a large (if not larger) economic impact.
In ICU doesn't mean dead.
Some extra casualties is still better than the alternative. Life is for living, even if some people die, we all die eventually.
Shutting down life in fear of death was not a price worth paying. Simply saying "more would die" isn't an argument winner against someone saying death is acceptable.
People go to ICU when there's a very significant chance that they could die without the assistance. Should there be no more capacity in ICU, no-one else could go to ICU. Those who would have survived with ICU assistance would therefore be dead.
Even "lesser" hospitalisation would see far more dead without hospital assistance. It's a key reason we have hospitals and healthcare in the first place.
Both ICUs and hospitals were maxed out and beyond maxed out. It was the hospital loadings and ICU loadings that governed the call for lockdowns.
Yes, it's true that everyone dies. We do consider it civilized to minimize avoidable deaths. We could close the deficit and cut taxes hugely at a stroke by abolishing all healthcare spending and pension spending, for example, on the grounds that yes, loads of people would die due to lack of healthcare and/or starve to death in old age, but hey - people die, right?
That is, to me, an absurd case to make, but not far off of your argument.
You're right its not far off the argument and make it less ridiculous and its not unreasonable either.
A budget should be available to the NHS for healthcare and the best available treatment based upon what is affordable - the NHS should not have a blank cheque.
If the NHS not having a blank cheque means more die and fewer receive pensions, then so be it. We can't afford to keep everyone alive forever, nor should we.
The NHS has never had a blank cheque and is never going to, so why this straw man argument?
Because Andy made the extreme argument of abolishing the budget entirely, so I retorted with the opposite extreme.
So is it fair to say we both agree that a budget is acceptable and we both agree that it is acceptable for avoidable deaths to occur if they're not viably avoidable within the budget.
Well if so, I consider the lockdown an unacceptable price to pay and if that means extra deaths then so be it, that's the price you pay for not having a blank cheque.
When it comes to what the NHS should spend money on, we have agreed cut-offs used by NICE in terms of £ per quality-adjusted life year gained. Have you or anyone else tried to systematise this argument you are making in terms of what was gained by lockdown in terms of QALYs saved and what it cost, turning all the costs of lockdown into a monetary equivalent amount?
Or are you just saying that lockdown was so awful that no number of QALYs saved would ever justify it?
The former would be interesting to read. The latter seems somewhat absolutist. Your insistence that lockdown should never be done again in any circumstance seems to either assign too much cost to lockdown or to suggest a lack of epidemiological imagination in terms of future pandemics.
I would absolutely love to see a QALY-style calculation, with the cost of lockdowns economically combined with as you suggest a monetary equivalent amount for the loss of liberty and disruption to education. I would assign a very high monetary equivalent 'cost' for education, liberty etc to be curtailed.
This is not my area of expertise but I fully expect that such a QALY calculation would categorically show that lockdown was not remotely "worth" it by pre-existing standards.
Comparing what happened with the range of what might have happened without lockdowns could be done in terms of QALYs without any reference to money, bearing in mind that being locked down reduces the quality of life measurably similarly to how it can be reduced due to physical weakness etc. - at least for most people. Personally I still ran 5km every day outside which was lawful throughout.
Compared with a lingering death through debilitating illness and chronic pain, not being allowed to sit on a park bench for a couple of months during lockdown is of nothing. Check your privilege, as the Wokeists say. Remember David Cameron's remark, after Ivan's death, that he did not know if his son had ever been happy for a single day.
I take your point, @DecrepiterJohnL . I am not complaining about my own experience. And there is something brutal about the whole idea of society-wide QALY calculations. But a calculation can nonetheless be done, and the effects of lockdown for some people included not just a decrease in their QOL by 0.001% for a few months but a deterioration in their health such as to lop an appreciable amount of time off their life expectancy, e.g. as a result of depression. So if Britain's per capita QALY score in 2020 was say 50.0y (??), one could make a few assumptions and say that lockdown "in itself" reduced it by say 0.20y (??), and that had lockdown not been imposed then that 0.20y drop would not have occurred but an estimated drop of ???y +/- ###y would have occurred because of the trouble that would have been caused by a greater spread of SARSCoV2, and it would be interesting to know if ??? was smaller than or greater than 0.20. Someone should do that calculation, and there is no need to bring money into it.
It would be interesting, if complex, to try and put the calculation all together, although perhaps Bart has already made up his mind as to the answer.
The mental health of the country has been poor since the pandemic, but it’s hard to tease apart what of that was caused by lockdowns or other restrictions, and what of that could have been ameliorated by simple tweaks to the rules or the provision of better support for people, versus what of the deterioration in mental health was caused by the pandemic itself, the anxiety associated with it, the morbidity and mortality caused.
The likes of Sajid Javid when Health Secretary offered a rather simplistic take that mental health would improve when all the restrictions were removed, a position some here endorsed. Yet that definitely hasn’t happened: see our recent paper, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395622003466
Yesterday I went into boots opticians and every member of staff was wearing a mask and there were signs up saying wear a mask (no members of the public were doing so). That is far from the only example. In our local hospital people are still only allowed one visitor by appointment.
All the restrictions haven't been removed so your paper is premature.
You will need to write it in five or 10 years time as there will of course be aftershocks even when all restrictions are removed. If they ever will be. Because even months after that happens there will be scares (monkeypox, you name it) which will provoke deep anxiety in many people with the thought that there will be further lockdowns.
Unfortunately the Government has ceased the data collection and ended our funding, although we have been funded to do some separate work on monkeypox, and there are other data collection exercises, e.g. by the ONS. More research will, I’m sure, shed more light on what is driving this phenomenon.
I should’ve said all Government restrictions have been lifted. Boots is a private company and can do what it wants.
There's quite an aggressive message on our Surgery answerphone to the fact that changes to mask wearing do not (by implication capital letters) apply at our surgery. Masks still have to be worn. Furthermore I've been making quite frequent visits to far too many other Health professionals premises recently and generally speaking masks are required.
My sympathies that you’re having to have so many experiences of healthcare premises of late!
I am sceptical that continuing precautions at health premises are what’s driving continued poor mental health in the country.
To be honest, getting sick people (we can assume GP surgeries and hospital admissions contain them) to wear masks around others when in a confined space is not the worst piece of public policy whatever they are sick with.
You could make the same argument for disposable gloves given surface contamination. People in any case shouldnt be visiting the GP for feeling 'under the weather' which is the most likely communicable threat at a GPs surgery. Thats what 111 etc is for.
What do 111 tell you if you ring them to say you feel under the weather?
They give generic advice unless your symptoms red flag anything and give you a timescale to seek further adbuce if it diesnt improve. It keeps hypochondriacs, people with a sniffle and the worried well out of the way whilst checking for anything more sinister symptoms wise
Yes. The thing is they don’t know they are worried well do they, now, or they would know they were well and there was nothing to worry about? What a silly expression that is.
We have a general election in exactly 4 weeks time. I haven’t got the faintest scoobie who to vote for. I don’t even know which bloc to vote for. Ditto the council and regional elections on the same day.
We’ve got eight parliamentary parties, and I could seriously consider voting for six of them.
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
I suppose you can refuse to compensate and renationalise as they fail? I’m only half joking because if we now agree, as a nation, to a centrally set price, then the “market” for energy has become even more artificial than it always was and nationalisation makes the most sense.
Its a really tough question. I think long term we need to be taking control of the production and wholesale of 100% of our needs. British energy plc with protectionist priorities. Short term it requires something like furlough specifically aimed at energy, and at all costs no compensation to any providers. Also, a solution to businesses being fleeced by the providers as they are outside the cap
You're sounding quite Trotskyite there - nationalisation without compensation would definitely be thrown out by the courts, unless we threw out various safeguards. But I do think that "natural monopolies should be publicly owned" is an idea whose time has returned, especially where they affect everyone's standard of living. I have no desire to nationalise Kelloggs - if I don't like Rice Krispies, there are ,lots of alternatives. But I don't see the point of Southern Water being private - no competition, and no way to blame/vote against them if they don't bother to build any new reservoirs (presumably because they'd be beneficial beyond their franchise).
A private monopoly is no better than a state one. Northumbria water increased their charges this year, rinsing us, by 15%. I cannot shop around for water services. It’s just tough !
The problem isn't the Tory party, its the voters. People want contradictory things but refuse to accept there is a contradiction. A series of events have empowered them to believe their genuine ignorance on a subject holds the same weight as actual knowledge and experience. They aren't wrong, the experts are wrong.
There is a way through though - find us a new Blair or Thatcher, someone who does know what they are talking about and has political umph. People said "that is Boris" but as all but the remaining holdouts now accept Boris stood for nothing, with no great policies delivered and settled in his time.
Ummm, BoZo was the politician more than any other in my lifetime that told voters they could have contradictory things. Denied the contradictions. That experts were to be derided.
He was the problem
The fact his opponents failed to make their case shows how poor they were
Not entirely.
If you are in a debate with someone shameless and dishonest enough, it can be really hard to persuade an audience.
It tends to go this;
BORIS-ALIKE Something involving cake and eat it
RORY-ALIKE (because he at least tried) That's not possible- once you have eaten your cake, it's gone...
BORIS-ALIKE There you go, with your doomy gloomy negativity. Remember we are Great Britain! We are being held back by your fears... (Continues ad nauseum.)
Boris style cakeism is a really attractive prospectus. It's awfully hard to argue against, because deep down we want it to be true, and want to believe that there's some meanie stopping it being true for us. That's been the case since the apple/snake/Eve fiasco in Genesis.
It would have been better for the UK had someone successfully argued us out of Borisism, but I'm not convinced that was possible.
It would have been better for the Conservatives and the UK to have not fallen for Borisism, but that required human nature to be something it isn't.
The culpability for (gestures round) all of this belongs with the clique who proposed it, who lied to the public about it, who smeared and deposed those who questioned it.
Not particularly with those who fell for it, and certainly not with those who did their best to argue against it.
Unless you had a better plan to argue against Boris, in which case I'm all ears.
And unless he didn't vote for the Conservatives when Mr Johnson was their leader.
I want to make this clear
I supported Johnson on brexit, covid and Ukraine but he lost me from Paterson onwards
Starmer would have had our economy in lockdown forever if he could, and it is to Johnson's credit he opened the economy when he did
That's a very silly thing to write. Starmer wanted us "in lockdown forever"?
Profoundly stupid read of the situation that isn't worthy of yours usual sage analysis.
Forever is a stretch, but Starmer was ALWAYS on the side of more and longer restrictions.
I accept forever was one of my rather exaggerated comments but there is no doubt Starmer favoured a much stricter and longer lockdown and it was Johnson who made the correct decision and it has been proven as the right thing to do
It is rather hot and I apologise for my exaggeration
Boris caused longer lockdowns by always being slow to initiate a lockdown. Had we acted promptly, we would have better controlled infection rates and could’ve come out of lockdown sooner. It’s yet more short term thinking.
Oh what nonsense. Claimed by people who want to justify lockdowns. Taking away civil liberties as a precautionary measure is unacceptable and the virus would still be prevalent on our continent after any lockdown it wasn't a magic pill that would get rid of it.
What country in Europe successfully had a short, sharp lockdown that was rapidly ended and not repeated?
I can in hindsight point at a country and say we should have done that, Sweden. Can you name any country that had a rapid premature lockdown that worked, fixed things and meant coming out of lockdown sooner?
Following the Swedish model would have been utterly catastrophic. Look at their death rates compared to their immediate neighbours. Thousands of additional people died in Sweden who did not need to because of the route they chose. And that is in spite of the fact that far more people in Sweden work from home anyway so the effects of a lockdown would have been considerably less on their economy.
Many - if not all - European countries got their policies wrong in the pandemic in one way or another. Sweden is certainly no exception.
Thousands extra dying, almost all of whom would have died soon anyway, is better than stripping tens of millions of two years of civil liberties, trashing education and development for years that will have consequences for generations to come, spending hundreds of billions and creating NHS waiting lists for years to come.
The price we paid to keep people alive was not a price worth paying. There's more to life than a mortuary league table.
If the vulnerable wishes to shield that should be there prerogative but not at the price of trashing children's education etc
Bolded: incorrect, and pointed out to you repeatedly before.
Half of those in ICUs were under 60. A quarter were under 50.
Using averages of deaths is as irrelevant as using the average age of people locked down (which was over 40, so why are we worrying about childrens education when none of them are anywhere near 40. Which would be an absurd argument, but is just as true).
Over 13,000 children lost a parent to covid. Under your plan, that number would be several times higher. And we'd still have had a large (if not larger) economic impact.
In ICU doesn't mean dead.
Some extra casualties is still better than the alternative. Life is for living, even if some people die, we all die eventually.
Shutting down life in fear of death was not a price worth paying. Simply saying "more would die" isn't an argument winner against someone saying death is acceptable.
People go to ICU when there's a very significant chance that they could die without the assistance. Should there be no more capacity in ICU, no-one else could go to ICU. Those who would have survived with ICU assistance would therefore be dead.
Even "lesser" hospitalisation would see far more dead without hospital assistance. It's a key reason we have hospitals and healthcare in the first place.
Both ICUs and hospitals were maxed out and beyond maxed out. It was the hospital loadings and ICU loadings that governed the call for lockdowns.
Yes, it's true that everyone dies. We do consider it civilized to minimize avoidable deaths. We could close the deficit and cut taxes hugely at a stroke by abolishing all healthcare spending and pension spending, for example, on the grounds that yes, loads of people would die due to lack of healthcare and/or starve to death in old age, but hey - people die, right?
That is, to me, an absurd case to make, but not far off of your argument.
You're right its not far off the argument and make it less ridiculous and its not unreasonable either.
A budget should be available to the NHS for healthcare and the best available treatment based upon what is affordable - the NHS should not have a blank cheque.
If the NHS not having a blank cheque means more die and fewer receive pensions, then so be it. We can't afford to keep everyone alive forever, nor should we.
The NHS has never had a blank cheque and is never going to, so why this straw man argument?
Because Andy made the extreme argument of abolishing the budget entirely, so I retorted with the opposite extreme.
So is it fair to say we both agree that a budget is acceptable and we both agree that it is acceptable for avoidable deaths to occur if they're not viably avoidable within the budget.
Well if so, I consider the lockdown an unacceptable price to pay and if that means extra deaths then so be it, that's the price you pay for not having a blank cheque.
When it comes to what the NHS should spend money on, we have agreed cut-offs used by NICE in terms of £ per quality-adjusted life year gained. Have you or anyone else tried to systematise this argument you are making in terms of what was gained by lockdown in terms of QALYs saved and what it cost, turning all the costs of lockdown into a monetary equivalent amount?
Or are you just saying that lockdown was so awful that no number of QALYs saved would ever justify it?
The former would be interesting to read. The latter seems somewhat absolutist. Your insistence that lockdown should never be done again in any circumstance seems to either assign too much cost to lockdown or to suggest a lack of epidemiological imagination in terms of future pandemics.
I would absolutely love to see a QALY-style calculation, with the cost of lockdowns economically combined with as you suggest a monetary equivalent amount for the loss of liberty and disruption to education. I would assign a very high monetary equivalent 'cost' for education, liberty etc to be curtailed.
This is not my area of expertise but I fully expect that such a QALY calculation would categorically show that lockdown was not remotely "worth" it by pre-existing standards.
Comparing what happened with the range of what might have happened without lockdowns could be done in terms of QALYs without any reference to money, bearing in mind that being locked down reduces the quality of life measurably similarly to how it can be reduced due to physical weakness etc. - at least for most people. Personally I still ran 5km every day outside which was lawful throughout.
Compared with a lingering death through debilitating illness and chronic pain, not being allowed to sit on a park bench for a couple of months during lockdown is of nothing. Check your privilege, as the Wokeists say. Remember David Cameron's remark, after Ivan's death, that he did not know if his son had ever been happy for a single day.
I take your point, @DecrepiterJohnL . I am not complaining about my own experience. And there is something brutal about the whole idea of society-wide QALY calculations. But a calculation can nonetheless be done, and the effects of lockdown for some people included not just a decrease in their QOL by 0.001% for a few months but a deterioration in their health such as to lop an appreciable amount of time off their life expectancy, e.g. as a result of depression. So if Britain's per capita QALY score in 2020 was say 50.0y (??), one could make a few assumptions and say that lockdown "in itself" reduced it by say 0.20y (??), and that had lockdown not been imposed then that 0.20y drop would not have occurred but an estimated drop of ???y +/- ###y would have occurred because of the trouble that would have been caused by a greater spread of SARSCoV2, and it would be interesting to know if ??? was smaller than or greater than 0.20. Someone should do that calculation, and there is no need to bring money into it.
It would be interesting, if complex, to try and put the calculation all together, although perhaps Bart has already made up his mind as to the answer.
The mental health of the country has been poor since the pandemic, but it’s hard to tease apart what of that was caused by lockdowns or other restrictions, and what of that could have been ameliorated by simple tweaks to the rules or the provision of better support for people, versus what of the deterioration in mental health was caused by the pandemic itself, the anxiety associated with it, the morbidity and mortality caused.
The likes of Sajid Javid when Health Secretary offered a rather simplistic take that mental health would improve when all the restrictions were removed, a position some here endorsed. Yet that definitely hasn’t happened: see our recent paper, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395622003466
Yesterday I went into boots opticians and every member of staff was wearing a mask and there were signs up saying wear a mask (no members of the public were doing so). That is far from the only example. In our local hospital people are still only allowed one visitor by appointment.
All the restrictions haven't been removed so your paper is premature.
You will need to write it in five or 10 years time as there will of course be aftershocks even when all restrictions are removed. If they ever will be. Because even months after that happens there will be scares (monkeypox, you name it) which will provoke deep anxiety in many people with the thought that there will be further lockdowns.
Unfortunately the Government has ceased the data collection and ended our funding, although we have been funded to do some separate work on monkeypox, and there are other data collection exercises, e.g. by the ONS. More research will, I’m sure, shed more light on what is driving this phenomenon.
I should’ve said all Government restrictions have been lifted. Boots is a private company and can do what it wants.
There's quite an aggressive message on our Surgery answerphone to the fact that changes to mask wearing do not (by implication capital letters) apply at our surgery. Masks still have to be worn. Furthermore I've been making quite frequent visits to far too many other Health professionals premises recently and generally speaking masks are required.
My sympathies that you’re having to have so many experiences of healthcare premises of late!
I am sceptical that continuing precautions at health premises are what’s driving continued poor mental health in the country.
Agree; what is depressing is having to visit so many healthcare premises rather than the fact that the staff are masked! On that point, we've had several quotes for work to be done on our bathroom in the last few days. We need to turn it into a wet room, now that I'm not as mobile as I'd like to be. However none of the plumbers or wetroom converters have been masked, but the occupational therapist, who is also visiting us, always wears a mask!
There were three people in boots yesterday, where the staff were masked, and none looked particularly vulnerable; and hundreds in Tesco's, where no one was masked.
I wore a mask on my flight from Gatwick to Inverness on the 20th, on the trains to/from Kyle on the 21st, to/from Wick on the 22nd, and the flight from Inverness to Heathrow on the 22nd. Also wore a mask when I checked out Barking Riverside on the 25th.
Thunderstorms permitting, also intend to wear a mask on the train to Birmingham and the tram to Edgbaston this coming week.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
He should have stayed Mayor of London. High profile but not that important, and where being more maverick and inconsistent works better.
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
I suppose you can refuse to compensate and renationalise as they fail? I’m only half joking because if we now agree, as a nation, to a centrally set price, then the “market” for energy has become even more artificial than it always was and nationalisation makes the most sense.
Its a really tough question. I think long term we need to be taking control of the production and wholesale of 100% of our needs. British energy plc with protectionist priorities. Short term it requires something like furlough specifically aimed at energy, and at all costs no compensation to any providers. Also, a solution to businesses being fleeced by the providers as they are outside the cap
You're sounding quite Trotskyite there - nationalisation without compensation would definitely be thrown out by the courts, unless we threw out various safeguards. But I do think that "natural monopolies should be publicly owned" is an idea whose time has returned, especially where they affect everyone's standard of living. I have no desire to nationalise Kelloggs - if I don't like Rice Krispies, there are ,lots of alternatives. But I don't see the point of Southern Water being private - no competition, and no way to blame/vote against them if they don't bother to build any new reservoirs (presumably because they'd be beneficial beyond their franchise).
No, in the short term you let the cap rise and cover the people with a furlough type solution. Cover us, not the energy companies. Otherwise if we have a decade of high wholesale prices we are funding bailouts of private companies for 10 years. Screw them, they need to adapt to survive, its us thats needs government protection/safeguards
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
In religious terms marriage is supposed to be for life, Boris has many qualities but having successful marriages is not one of them
"And thus spake Sunil unto his PB disciples: 'Know ye that the Lord God did NOT marry the baby-mama of His only begotten Son!'"
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
It's also rather a good summary of his career - a series of disasters, which for him became opportunities.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
In religious terms marriage is supposed to be for life, Boris has many qualities but having successful marriages is not one of them
"And thus spake Sunil unto his PB disciples: 'Know ye that the Lord God did NOT marry the baby-mama of His only begotten Son!'"
Hyufd, if he starts talking about Grand Ayatollah Nudistani again, we're blaming you.
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
I suppose you can refuse to compensate and renationalise as they fail? I’m only half joking because if we now agree, as a nation, to a centrally set price, then the “market” for energy has become even more artificial than it always was and nationalisation makes the most sense.
Its a really tough question. I think long term we need to be taking control of the production and wholesale of 100% of our needs. British energy plc with protectionist priorities. Short term it requires something like furlough specifically aimed at energy, and at all costs no compensation to any providers. Also, a solution to businesses being fleeced by the providers as they are outside the cap
The problem with protectionism, is what happens if everyone does it. If Biden bans O&G exports before the US mid-terms, using the same logic as you are arguing for the UK to do, then the price is irrelevant because there wil be huge supply shortages.
If youre producing enough food and energy then it doesnt matter.
The problem isn't the Tory party, its the voters. People want contradictory things but refuse to accept there is a contradiction. A series of events have empowered them to believe their genuine ignorance on a subject holds the same weight as actual knowledge and experience. They aren't wrong, the experts are wrong.
There is a way through though - find us a new Blair or Thatcher, someone who does know what they are talking about and has political umph. People said "that is Boris" but as all but the remaining holdouts now accept Boris stood for nothing, with no great policies delivered and settled in his time.
Ummm, BoZo was the politician more than any other in my lifetime that told voters they could have contradictory things. Denied the contradictions. That experts were to be derided.
He was the problem
The fact his opponents failed to make their case shows how poor they were
Not entirely.
If you are in a debate with someone shameless and dishonest enough, it can be really hard to persuade an audience.
It tends to go this;
BORIS-ALIKE Something involving cake and eat it
RORY-ALIKE (because he at least tried) That's not possible- once you have eaten your cake, it's gone...
BORIS-ALIKE There you go, with your doomy gloomy negativity. Remember we are Great Britain! We are being held back by your fears... (Continues ad nauseum.)
Boris style cakeism is a really attractive prospectus. It's awfully hard to argue against, because deep down we want it to be true, and want to believe that there's some meanie stopping it being true for us. That's been the case since the apple/snake/Eve fiasco in Genesis.
It would have been better for the UK had someone successfully argued us out of Borisism, but I'm not convinced that was possible.
It would have been better for the Conservatives and the UK to have not fallen for Borisism, but that required human nature to be something it isn't.
The culpability for (gestures round) all of this belongs with the clique who proposed it, who lied to the public about it, who smeared and deposed those who questioned it.
Not particularly with those who fell for it, and certainly not with those who did their best to argue against it.
Unless you had a better plan to argue against Boris, in which case I'm all ears.
And unless he didn't vote for the Conservatives when Mr Johnson was their leader.
I want to make this clear
I supported Johnson on brexit, covid and Ukraine but he lost me from Paterson onwards
Starmer would have had our economy in lockdown forever if he could, and it is to Johnson's credit he opened the economy when he did
That's a very silly thing to write. Starmer wanted us "in lockdown forever"?
Profoundly stupid read of the situation that isn't worthy of yours usual sage analysis.
Forever is a stretch, but Starmer was ALWAYS on the side of more and longer restrictions.
I accept forever was one of my rather exaggerated comments but there is no doubt Starmer favoured a much stricter and longer lockdown and it was Johnson who made the correct decision and it has been proven as the right thing to do
It is rather hot and I apologise for my exaggeration
Boris caused longer lockdowns by always being slow to initiate a lockdown. Had we acted promptly, we would have better controlled infection rates and could’ve come out of lockdown sooner. It’s yet more short term thinking.
Oh what nonsense. Claimed by people who want to justify lockdowns. Taking away civil liberties as a precautionary measure is unacceptable and the virus would still be prevalent on our continent after any lockdown it wasn't a magic pill that would get rid of it.
What country in Europe successfully had a short, sharp lockdown that was rapidly ended and not repeated?
I can in hindsight point at a country and say we should have done that, Sweden. Can you name any country that had a rapid premature lockdown that worked, fixed things and meant coming out of lockdown sooner?
Following the Swedish model would have been utterly catastrophic. Look at their death rates compared to their immediate neighbours. Thousands of additional people died in Sweden who did not need to because of the route they chose. And that is in spite of the fact that far more people in Sweden work from home anyway so the effects of a lockdown would have been considerably less on their economy.
Many - if not all - European countries got their policies wrong in the pandemic in one way or another. Sweden is certainly no exception.
Thousands extra dying, almost all of whom would have died soon anyway, is better than stripping tens of millions of two years of civil liberties, trashing education and development for years that will have consequences for generations to come, spending hundreds of billions and creating NHS waiting lists for years to come.
The price we paid to keep people alive was not a price worth paying. There's more to life than a mortuary league table.
If the vulnerable wishes to shield that should be there prerogative but not at the price of trashing children's education etc
Bolded: incorrect, and pointed out to you repeatedly before.
Half of those in ICUs were under 60. A quarter were under 50.
Using averages of deaths is as irrelevant as using the average age of people locked down (which was over 40, so why are we worrying about childrens education when none of them are anywhere near 40. Which would be an absurd argument, but is just as true).
Over 13,000 children lost a parent to covid. Under your plan, that number would be several times higher. And we'd still have had a large (if not larger) economic impact.
In ICU doesn't mean dead.
Some extra casualties is still better than the alternative. Life is for living, even if some people die, we all die eventually.
Shutting down life in fear of death was not a price worth paying. Simply saying "more would die" isn't an argument winner against someone saying death is acceptable.
People go to ICU when there's a very significant chance that they could die without the assistance. Should there be no more capacity in ICU, no-one else could go to ICU. Those who would have survived with ICU assistance would therefore be dead.
Even "lesser" hospitalisation would see far more dead without hospital assistance. It's a key reason we have hospitals and healthcare in the first place.
Both ICUs and hospitals were maxed out and beyond maxed out. It was the hospital loadings and ICU loadings that governed the call for lockdowns.
Yes, it's true that everyone dies. We do consider it civilized to minimize avoidable deaths. We could close the deficit and cut taxes hugely at a stroke by abolishing all healthcare spending and pension spending, for example, on the grounds that yes, loads of people would die due to lack of healthcare and/or starve to death in old age, but hey - people die, right?
That is, to me, an absurd case to make, but not far off of your argument.
You're right its not far off the argument and make it less ridiculous and its not unreasonable either.
A budget should be available to the NHS for healthcare and the best available treatment based upon what is affordable - the NHS should not have a blank cheque.
If the NHS not having a blank cheque means more die and fewer receive pensions, then so be it. We can't afford to keep everyone alive forever, nor should we.
The NHS has never had a blank cheque and is never going to, so why this straw man argument?
Because Andy made the extreme argument of abolishing the budget entirely, so I retorted with the opposite extreme.
So is it fair to say we both agree that a budget is acceptable and we both agree that it is acceptable for avoidable deaths to occur if they're not viably avoidable within the budget.
Well if so, I consider the lockdown an unacceptable price to pay and if that means extra deaths then so be it, that's the price you pay for not having a blank cheque.
When it comes to what the NHS should spend money on, we have agreed cut-offs used by NICE in terms of £ per quality-adjusted life year gained. Have you or anyone else tried to systematise this argument you are making in terms of what was gained by lockdown in terms of QALYs saved and what it cost, turning all the costs of lockdown into a monetary equivalent amount?
Or are you just saying that lockdown was so awful that no number of QALYs saved would ever justify it?
The former would be interesting to read. The latter seems somewhat absolutist. Your insistence that lockdown should never be done again in any circumstance seems to either assign too much cost to lockdown or to suggest a lack of epidemiological imagination in terms of future pandemics.
I would absolutely love to see a QALY-style calculation, with the cost of lockdowns economically combined with as you suggest a monetary equivalent amount for the loss of liberty and disruption to education. I would assign a very high monetary equivalent 'cost' for education, liberty etc to be curtailed.
This is not my area of expertise but I fully expect that such a QALY calculation would categorically show that lockdown was not remotely "worth" it by pre-existing standards.
Comparing what happened with the range of what might have happened without lockdowns could be done in terms of QALYs without any reference to money, bearing in mind that being locked down reduces the quality of life measurably similarly to how it can be reduced due to physical weakness etc. - at least for most people. Personally I still ran 5km every day outside which was lawful throughout.
Compared with a lingering death through debilitating illness and chronic pain, not being allowed to sit on a park bench for a couple of months during lockdown is of nothing. Check your privilege, as the Wokeists say. Remember David Cameron's remark, after Ivan's death, that he did not know if his son had ever been happy for a single day.
I take your point, @DecrepiterJohnL . I am not complaining about my own experience. And there is something brutal about the whole idea of society-wide QALY calculations. But a calculation can nonetheless be done, and the effects of lockdown for some people included not just a decrease in their QOL by 0.001% for a few months but a deterioration in their health such as to lop an appreciable amount of time off their life expectancy, e.g. as a result of depression. So if Britain's per capita QALY score in 2020 was say 50.0y (??), one could make a few assumptions and say that lockdown "in itself" reduced it by say 0.20y (??), and that had lockdown not been imposed then that 0.20y drop would not have occurred but an estimated drop of ???y +/- ###y would have occurred because of the trouble that would have been caused by a greater spread of SARSCoV2, and it would be interesting to know if ??? was smaller than or greater than 0.20. Someone should do that calculation, and there is no need to bring money into it.
It would be interesting, if complex, to try and put the calculation all together, although perhaps Bart has already made up his mind as to the answer.
The mental health of the country has been poor since the pandemic, but it’s hard to tease apart what of that was caused by lockdowns or other restrictions, and what of that could have been ameliorated by simple tweaks to the rules or the provision of better support for people, versus what of the deterioration in mental health was caused by the pandemic itself, the anxiety associated with it, the morbidity and mortality caused.
The likes of Sajid Javid when Health Secretary offered a rather simplistic take that mental health would improve when all the restrictions were removed, a position some here endorsed. Yet that definitely hasn’t happened: see our recent paper, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395622003466
Yesterday I went into boots opticians and every member of staff was wearing a mask and there were signs up saying wear a mask (no members of the public were doing so). That is far from the only example. In our local hospital people are still only allowed one visitor by appointment.
All the restrictions haven't been removed so your paper is premature.
You will need to write it in five or 10 years time as there will of course be aftershocks even when all restrictions are removed. If they ever will be. Because even months after that happens there will be scares (monkeypox, you name it) which will provoke deep anxiety in many people with the thought that there will be further lockdowns.
Unfortunately the Government has ceased the data collection and ended our funding, although we have been funded to do some separate work on monkeypox, and there are other data collection exercises, e.g. by the ONS. More research will, I’m sure, shed more light on what is driving this phenomenon.
I should’ve said all Government restrictions have been lifted. Boots is a private company and can do what it wants.
There's quite an aggressive message on our Surgery answerphone to the fact that changes to mask wearing do not (by implication capital letters) apply at our surgery. Masks still have to be worn. Furthermore I've been making quite frequent visits to far too many other Health professionals premises recently and generally speaking masks are required.
My sympathies that you’re having to have so many experiences of healthcare premises of late!
I am sceptical that continuing precautions at health premises are what’s driving continued poor mental health in the country.
To be honest, getting sick people (we can assume GP surgeries and hospital admissions contain them) to wear masks around others when in a confined space is not the worst piece of public policy whatever they are sick with.
You could make the same argument for disposable gloves given surface contamination. People in any case shouldnt be visiting the GP for feeling 'under the weather' which is the most likely communicable threat at a GPs surgery. Thats what 111 etc is for.
What do 111 tell you if you ring them to say you feel under the weather?
They give generic advice unless your symptoms red flag anything and give you a timescale to seek further adbuce if it diesnt improve. It keeps hypochondriacs, people with a sniffle and the worried well out of the way whilst checking for anything more sinister symptoms wise
Yes. The thing is they don’t know they are worried well do they, now, or they would know they were well and there was nothing to worry about? What a silly expression that is.
Which is why they phone 111 and are reassured rather than clogging up GP sugeries
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
He should have stayed Mayor of London. High profile but not that important, and where being more maverick and inconsistent works better.
I think he could have been a better than average PM if he had had a Willie Whitelaw or an Osborne to run things for him and keep a grip, something he never had the inclination to bother with. He has definite presentational skills and his instincts about bigger calls were above average.
But he was always a lone wolf with few, if any, close advisors that he would trust and who had that kind of ability. Any time any of his cabinet was perceived to be doing well, eg Sunak, he would cut him down to size and belittle him. It's just the way he is and it destroyed his administration, along with the inveterate lying, of course.
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
India and China are currently cosying up to China, and swimming in cut price energy as a result. It may be morally dubious; unwise it ain't.
It's the long term that matters. People like Putin and the CCP don't give things away without expecting a return. Get dependent on cheap energy on Russia, and then you find your prices will finally go through the roof when you have to take a stand. Borrow money cheaply from China, and in the end, people are storming the Presidential Palace.
That's not how I see the oil situation. India and China are exploiting the current situation to get cheap Russian oil. It's obviously in their interests to do so. Russia is the supplicant. They can always get their oil from elsewhere as it's a global market. Gas is rather different of course.
Quite. Both have Governments that, whatever their manifold deficiencies, have not put aside their own national interests. That our Government seems to have done so is troubling.
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
I suppose you can refuse to compensate and renationalise as they fail? I’m only half joking because if we now agree, as a nation, to a centrally set price, then the “market” for energy has become even more artificial than it always was and nationalisation makes the most sense.
Its a really tough question. I think long term we need to be taking control of the production and wholesale of 100% of our needs. British energy plc with protectionist priorities. Short term it requires something like furlough specifically aimed at energy, and at all costs no compensation to any providers. Also, a solution to businesses being fleeced by the providers as they are outside the cap
The problem with protectionism, is what happens if everyone does it. If Biden bans O&G exports before the US mid-terms, using the same logic as you are arguing for the UK to do, then the price is irrelevant because there wil be huge supply shortages.
If youre producing enough food and energy then it doesnt matter.
The UK is by no means self-sufficient in energy or food.
Short-term energy protectionism is a prisoner’s dilemma. It’s great for the UK if we do it - but if everyone else does it, the UK is totally screwed.
USA, Norway, even France with their nuclear base load, can all force shortages at any price on most of Europe, and that’s before we get to whatever games Putin might want to play. The EU has already proposed 15% demand reductions this winter, which is wildly inadequate, but will still lead to industry shutdowns and rolling power cuts.
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
India and China are currently cosying up to China, and swimming in cut price energy as a result. It may be morally dubious; unwise it ain't.
It's the long term that matters. People like Putin and the CCP don't give things away without expecting a return. Get dependent on cheap energy on Russia, and then you find your prices will finally go through the roof when you have to take a stand. Borrow money cheaply from China, and in the end, people are storming the Presidential Palace.
That's not how I see the oil situation. India and China are exploiting the current situation to get cheap Russian oil. It's obviously in their interests to do so. Russia is the supplicant. They can always get their oil from elsewhere as it's a global market. Gas is rather different of course.
Quite. Both have Governments that, whatever their manifold deficiencies, have not put aside their own national interests. That our Government seems to have done so is troubling.
Sometimes short term interests can be sacrificed for medium and long term interests.
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
I suppose you can refuse to compensate and renationalise as they fail? I’m only half joking because if we now agree, as a nation, to a centrally set price, then the “market” for energy has become even more artificial than it always was and nationalisation makes the most sense.
Its a really tough question. I think long term we need to be taking control of the production and wholesale of 100% of our needs. British energy plc with protectionist priorities. Short term it requires something like furlough specifically aimed at energy, and at all costs no compensation to any providers. Also, a solution to businesses being fleeced by the providers as they are outside the cap
The problem with protectionism, is what happens if everyone does it. If Biden bans O&G exports before the US mid-terms, using the same logic as you are arguing for the UK to do, then the price is irrelevant because there wil be huge supply shortages.
If youre producing enough food and energy then it doesnt matter.
The UK is by no means self-sufficient in energy or food.
Short-term energy protectionism is a prisoner’s dilemma. It’s great for the UK if we do it - but if everyone else does it, the UK is totally screwed.
USA, Norway, even France with their nuclear base load, can all force shortages at any price on most of Europe, and that’s before we get to whatever games Putin might want to play. The EU has already proposed 15% demand reductions this winter, which is wildly inadequate, but will still lead to industry shutdowns and rolling power cuts.
Which is why we need to move to self sufficiency or a very high % of need post haste. You dont announce your intention you just do it. We then look at what we need to do in the intervening period. We can be ball squeezed whether or not we move toward longer term self sufficiency
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
It's also rather a good summary of his career - a series of disasters, which for him became opportunities.
That's fine when you're a columnist. When running a country not so much...
A lot of people very grateful for 2019 I guess, when they should be a bit more cold eyed about things.
Boris Johnson brought down Cameron and May; then messed up so badly half his government resigned to force him out; is already undermining Truss; and has left the Tories in the low 30s in the polls, and yet a hefty chunk of members still love him. Mad.
Though I think Freedman is also right about this summary of where we are.
It's definitely true that we are not alone in the problems we have; and that at least some of those problems are time limited. But also true that we have seen examples of fundamental institutional failure and a complete lack of political will for fixing those problems.
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
I suppose you can refuse to compensate and renationalise as they fail? I’m only half joking because if we now agree, as a nation, to a centrally set price, then the “market” for energy has become even more artificial than it always was and nationalisation makes the most sense.
Its a really tough question. I think long term we need to be taking control of the production and wholesale of 100% of our needs. British energy plc with protectionist priorities. Short term it requires something like furlough specifically aimed at energy, and at all costs no compensation to any providers. Also, a solution to businesses being fleeced by the providers as they are outside the cap
The problem with protectionism, is what happens if everyone does it. If Biden bans O&G exports before the US mid-terms, using the same logic as you are arguing for the UK to do, then the price is irrelevant because there wil be huge supply shortages.
If youre producing enough food and energy then it doesnt matter.
The UK is by no means self-sufficient in energy or food.
Short-term energy protectionism is a prisoner’s dilemma. It’s great for the UK if we do it - but if everyone else does it, the UK is totally screwed.
USA, Norway, even France with their nuclear base load, can all force shortages at any price on most of Europe, and that’s before we get to whatever games Putin might want to play. The EU has already proposed 15% demand reductions this winter, which is wildly inadequate, but will still lead to industry shutdowns and rolling power cuts.
Which is why we need to move to self sufficiency or a very high % of need post haste. You dont announce your intention you just do it. We then look at what we need to do in the intervening period. We can be ball squeezed whether or not we move toward longer term self sufficiency
That’s the plan for 3 or 5 years down the line. What’s the plan for this winter?
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
He should have stayed Mayor of London. High profile but not that important, and where being more maverick and inconsistent works better.
I think he could have been a better than average PM if he had had a Willie Whitelaw or an Osborne to run things for him and keep a grip, something he never had the inclination to bother with. He has definite presentational skills and his instincts about bigger calls were above average.
But he was always a lone wolf with few, if any, close advisors that he would trust and who had that kind of ability. Any time any of his cabinet was perceived to be doing well, eg Sunak, he would cut him down to size and belittle him. It's just the way he is and it destroyed his administration, along with the inveterate lying, of course.
Presumably Cummings was originally intended to perform the Whitelaw/Osborne 'wise head' role, but that all fell apart when Carrie was brought into government. If Vote Leave were the Brexit Beatles then Carrie was Yoko.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
He should have stayed Mayor of London. High profile but not that important, and where being more maverick and inconsistent works better.
I think he could have been a better than average PM if he had had a Willie Whitelaw or an Osborne to run things for him and keep a grip, something he never had the inclination to bother with. He has definite presentational skills and his instincts about bigger calls were above average.
But he was always a lone wolf with few, if any, close advisors that he would trust and who had that kind of ability. Any time any of his cabinet was perceived to be doing well, eg Sunak, he would cut him down to size and belittle him. It's just the way he is and it destroyed his administration, along with the inveterate lying, of course.
As Mayor his biggest success was with cycling infrastructure, which came about because he appointed Andrew Gilligan to the job, and backed him in disputes with the taxi drivers.
As PM, he scored one hit with Kate Bingham leading the vaccine taskforce, but otherwise his choice of appointees was poor. Dominic Cummings could help him win an election to resolve the Brexit impasse, but he couldn't run government.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
He should have stayed Mayor of London. High profile but not that important, and where being more maverick and inconsistent works better.
I think he could have been a better than average PM if he had had a Willie Whitelaw or an Osborne to run things for him and keep a grip, something he never had the inclination to bother with. He has definite presentational skills and his instincts about bigger calls were above average.
But he was always a lone wolf with few, if any, close advisors that he would trust and who had that kind of ability. Any time any of his cabinet was perceived to be doing well, eg Sunak, he would cut him down to size and belittle him. It's just the way he is and it destroyed his administration, along with the inveterate lying, of course.
Presumably Cummings was originally intended to perform the Whitelaw/Osborne 'wise head' role, but that all fell apart when Carrie was brought into government. If Vote Leave were the Brexit Beatles then Carrie was Yoko.
Since Cummings was (a) useless (b) compulsively dishonest and (c) mad as a box of frogs, that in itself would never have worked.
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
I suppose you can refuse to compensate and renationalise as they fail? I’m only half joking because if we now agree, as a nation, to a centrally set price, then the “market” for energy has become even more artificial than it always was and nationalisation makes the most sense.
Its a really tough question. I think long term we need to be taking control of the production and wholesale of 100% of our needs. British energy plc with protectionist priorities. Short term it requires something like furlough specifically aimed at energy, and at all costs no compensation to any providers. Also, a solution to businesses being fleeced by the providers as they are outside the cap
The problem with protectionism, is what happens if everyone does it. If Biden bans O&G exports before the US mid-terms, using the same logic as you are arguing for the UK to do, then the price is irrelevant because there wil be huge supply shortages.
If youre producing enough food and energy then it doesnt matter.
The UK is by no means self-sufficient in energy or food.
Short-term energy protectionism is a prisoner’s dilemma. It’s great for the UK if we do it - but if everyone else does it, the UK is totally screwed.
USA, Norway, even France with their nuclear base load, can all force shortages at any price on most of Europe, and that’s before we get to whatever games Putin might want to play. The EU has already proposed 15% demand reductions this winter, which is wildly inadequate, but will still lead to industry shutdowns and rolling power cuts.
Which is why we need to move to self sufficiency or a very high % of need post haste. You dont announce your intention you just do it. We then look at what we need to do in the intervening period. We can be ball squeezed whether or not we move toward longer term self sufficiency
That’s the plan for 3 or 5 years down the line. What’s the plan for this winter?
Furlough style solution. We will have to take a hit on the national debt ameliorated in whatever clever way they can find Edit - you bail us out, not the energy providers
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
He should have stayed Mayor of London. High profile but not that important, and where being more maverick and inconsistent works better.
I think he could have been a better than average PM if he had had a Willie Whitelaw or an Osborne to run things for him and keep a grip, something he never had the inclination to bother with. He has definite presentational skills and his instincts about bigger calls were above average.
But he was always a lone wolf with few, if any, close advisors that he would trust and who had that kind of ability. Any time any of his cabinet was perceived to be doing well, eg Sunak, he would cut him down to size and belittle him. It's just the way he is and it destroyed his administration, along with the inveterate lying, of course.
Presumably Cummings was originally intended to perform the Whitelaw/Osborne 'wise head' role, but that all fell apart when Carrie was brought into government. If Vote Leave were the Brexit Beatles then Carrie was Yoko.
Very true, she did him no favours whatsoever. The wallpaper fiasco was entirely her fault, it was the party with her birthday cake that got him a FPN and her falling out with Cummings destabilised the government (to the extent that anything wth Cummings in it could ever be described as stable). All in all, despite his reputation, he has been surprisingly loyal to her.
A lot of people very grateful for 2019 I guess, when they should be a bit more cold eyed about things.
Boris Johnson brought down Cameron and May; then messed up so badly half his government resigned to force him out; is already undermining Truss; and has left the Tories in the low 30s in the polls, and yet a hefty chunk of members still love him. Mad.
Though I think Freedman is also right about this summary of where we are.
It's definitely true that we are not alone in the problems we have; and that at least some of those problems are time limited. But also true that we have seen examples of fundamental institutional failure and a complete lack of political will for fixing those problems.
Boris is undermining Truss? Not beyond the realms of possibility of course, but I'd assumed Liz was Boris's preferred successor.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
I wonder what the best outlet for BoJo's talents would have been?
Mayor of London was the best political fit- lots of photo ops, boosterism and the hard bits could be delegated to people who were minions not rivals. But even in that role, he botched significant things- the garden bridge, the Boris bus.
Perhaps a chronicler of life- a columnist but with little interest in politics.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
He should have stayed Mayor of London. High profile but not that important, and where being more maverick and inconsistent works better.
I think he could have been a better than average PM if he had had a Willie Whitelaw or an Osborne to run things for him and keep a grip, something he never had the inclination to bother with. He has definite presentational skills and his instincts about bigger calls were above average.
But he was always a lone wolf with few, if any, close advisors that he would trust and who had that kind of ability. Any time any of his cabinet was perceived to be doing well, eg Sunak, he would cut him down to size and belittle him. It's just the way he is and it destroyed his administration, along with the inveterate lying, of course.
Presumably Cummings was originally intended to perform the Whitelaw/Osborne 'wise head' role, but that all fell apart when Carrie was brought into government. If Vote Leave were the Brexit Beatles then Carrie was Yoko.
Very true, she did him no favours whatsoever. The wallpaper fiasco was entirely her fault, it was the party with her birthday cake that got him a FPN and her falling out with Cummings destabilised the government (to the extent that anything wth Cummings in it could ever be described as stable). All in all, despite his reputation, he has been surprisingly loyal to her.
For the first time in his life, loyalty to a woman caused the professional problems, rather than the other way around.
Bringing his girlfriend into the middle of the No.10 operation, with no formal role, was the start of the chaos.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
I wonder what the best outlet for BoJo's talents would have been?
Mayor of London was the best political fit- lots of photo ops, boosterism and the hard bits could be delegated to people who were minions not rivals. But even in that role, he botched significant things- the garden bridge, the Boris bus.
Perhaps a chronicler of life- a columnist but with little interest in politics.
Or head of the EU Commission...
I don't think Boris was ever destined to do one thing. It would have bored him stupid. Now he is no longer screwing the country up (other than his little jokes like Zahawi as Chancellor), I wish him well.
No good outcome here. The armourer on set was very young and inexperienced, the actor pointed the gun at someone, there were stories about huge arguments on set about all sorts of things. Frankly, the studio, executive producers, and the director, should all be charged with manslaughter by gross negligence. Baldwin will argue he did what he was told to do, and probably convinces a Californian jury to give him a suspended sentence or house arrest. In the UK, he’d be in more trouble than that.
No good outcome here. The armourer on set was very young and inexperienced, the actor pointed the gun at someone, there were stories about huge arguments on set about all sorts of things. Frankly, the studio, executive producers, and the director, should all be charged with manslaughter by gross negligence. Baldwin will argue he did what he was told to do, and probably convinces a Californian jury to give him a suspended sentence or house arrest. In the UK, he’d be in more trouble than that.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
I wonder what the best outlet for BoJo's talents would have been?
Mayor of London was the best political fit- lots of photo ops, boosterism and the hard bits could be delegated to people who were minions not rivals. But even in that role, he botched significant things- the garden bridge, the Boris bus.
Perhaps a chronicler of life- a columnist but with little interest in politics.
Or head of the EU Commission...
Ceremonial President. All the kudos, respect and prominence, none of the executive responsibility. But there's no vacancy for that role in a constitutional monarchy.
As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”
The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.
Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. “In Oakland, when you have 19% of Black kids reading—that can’t be maintained in the society,” says Weaver, who received an early and vivid lesson in the value of literacy in 1984 after his cousin got out of prison and told him the other inmates stopped harassing him when they realized he could read their mail to them. “It has been an unmitigated disaster.”
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
I wonder what the best outlet for BoJo's talents would have been?
Mayor of London was the best political fit- lots of photo ops, boosterism and the hard bits could be delegated to people who were minions not rivals. But even in that role, he botched significant things- the garden bridge, the Boris bus.
Perhaps a chronicler of life- a columnist but with little interest in politics.
Or head of the EU Commission...
I don't think Boris was ever destined to do one thing. It would have bored him stupid. Now he is no longer screwing the country up (other than his little jokes like Zahawi as Chancellor), I wish him well.
I wonder if the boredom threshold is why, despite his talents, he has ultimately failed.
PM sure, but for days longer than May, and with a problematic legacy.
As a human being, I hope he finds peace, but it may be beyond him. And it would have been better all round had he never been PM.
No good outcome here. The armourer on set was very young and inexperienced, the actor pointed the gun at someone, there were stories about huge arguments on set about all sorts of things. Frankly, the studio, executive producers, and the director, should all be charged with manslaughter by gross negligence. Baldwin will argue he did what he was told to do, and probably convinces a Californian jury to give him a suspended sentence or house arrest. In the UK, he’d be in more trouble than that.
Depending on the facts, I am not sure he would. If you think a gun is safe because someone who has just the one job, to tell you guns are safe, tells you so, you tend to be in the clear. See also
The biggest danger for Labour (and the govt if they take up a cap on the cap type policy) is how pissed off people are at the energy companies getting compensated. Its the new 'bailing out the banks and nobody is held to account'. If youre struggling and prices are 'frozen' at struggling to pay levels and the energy company taking 200 a month off you gets compensated for not taking 400, the CEO and shareholders all get fat payouts and nothing changes then theres a problem
I suppose you can refuse to compensate and renationalise as they fail? I’m only half joking because if we now agree, as a nation, to a centrally set price, then the “market” for energy has become even more artificial than it always was and nationalisation makes the most sense.
Its a really tough question. I think long term we need to be taking control of the production and wholesale of 100% of our needs. British energy plc with protectionist priorities. Short term it requires something like furlough specifically aimed at energy, and at all costs no compensation to any providers. Also, a solution to businesses being fleeced by the providers as they are outside the cap
The problem with protectionism, is what happens if everyone does it. If Biden bans O&G exports before the US mid-terms, using the same logic as you are arguing for the UK to do, then the price is irrelevant because there wil be huge supply shortages.
If youre producing enough food and energy then it doesnt matter.
The UK is by no means self-sufficient in energy or food.
Short-term energy protectionism is a prisoner’s dilemma. It’s great for the UK if we do it - but if everyone else does it, the UK is totally screwed.
USA, Norway, even France with their nuclear base load, can all force shortages at any price on most of Europe, and that’s before we get to whatever games Putin might want to play. The EU has already proposed 15% demand reductions this winter, which is wildly inadequate, but will still lead to industry shutdowns and rolling power cuts.
Which is why we need to move to self sufficiency or a very high % of need post haste. You dont announce your intention you just do it. We then look at what we need to do in the intervening period. We can be ball squeezed whether or not we move toward longer term self sufficiency
That’s the plan for 3 or 5 years down the line. What’s the plan for this winter?
Furlough style solution. We will have to take a hit on the national debt ameliorated in whatever clever way they can find Edit - you bail us out, not the energy providers
But how does that work, when there isn’t enough energy to go around? Unless the government are buying it at market rates and selling it for pennies in the pound, at a cost of over £100bn.
My general takeaway. Affluent, not necessarily posh, men who don't like taxes, rules and public officialdom. Libertarian with a dash of pro-British sentiment.
If the Tories are as obsessed with the "woke media" as they are here, they are going to lose in a landslide. Totally out of touch
Be fair. ToryTV did that focus group in Bury North. 7 of of 9 Tory 2019 voters said they would likely vote Labour. Then the presenter reminded them that Starmer may say something about the definition of a woman and all 9 said they would vote Tory.
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
India and China are currently cosying up to China, and swimming in cut price energy as a result. It may be morally dubious; unwise it ain't.
It's the long term that matters. People like Putin and the CCP don't give things away without expecting a return. Get dependent on cheap energy on Russia, and then you find your prices will finally go through the roof when you have to take a stand. Borrow money cheaply from China, and in the end, people are storming the Presidential Palace.
That's not how I see the oil situation. India and China are exploiting the current situation to get cheap Russian oil. It's obviously in their interests to do so. Russia is the supplicant. They can always get their oil from elsewhere as it's a global market. Gas is rather different of course.
Quite. Both have Governments that, whatever their manifold deficiencies, have not put aside their own national interests. That our Government seems to have done so is troubling.
Sometimes short term interests can be sacrificed for medium and long term interests.
I'm not sure that's a concept I'm on board with philosophically.
My general takeaway. Affluent, not necessarily posh, men who don't like taxes, rules and public officialdom. Libertarian with a dash of pro-British sentiment.
If the Tories are as obsessed with the "woke media" as they are here, they are going to lose in a landslide. Totally out of touch
Be fair. ToryTV did that focus group in Bury North. 7 of of 9 Tory 2019 voters said they would likely vote Labour. Then the presenter reminded them that Starmer may say something about the definition of a woman and all 9 said they would vote Tory.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
I wonder what the best outlet for BoJo's talents would have been?
Mayor of London was the best political fit- lots of photo ops, boosterism and the hard bits could be delegated to people who were minions not rivals. But even in that role, he botched significant things- the garden bridge, the Boris bus.
Perhaps a chronicler of life- a columnist but with little interest in politics.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
He should have stayed Mayor of London. High profile but not that important, and where being more maverick and inconsistent works better.
I think he could have been a better than average PM if he had had a Willie Whitelaw or an Osborne to run things for him and keep a grip, something he never had the inclination to bother with. He has definite presentational skills and his instincts about bigger calls were above average.
But he was always a lone wolf with few, if any, close advisors that he would trust and who had that kind of ability. Any time any of his cabinet was perceived to be doing well, eg Sunak, he would cut him down to size and belittle him. It's just the way he is and it destroyed his administration, along with the inveterate lying, of course.
You mention "along with the inveterate lying, of course" almost as an afterthought to the virtues you perceive in Boris.
I think it's much more fundamental than that. I do not want a Prime Minister who is an inveterate liar, regardless of any other strengths or weaknesses. And that's a non-partisan view.
We have a general election in exactly 4 weeks time. I haven’t got the faintest scoobie who to vote for. I don’t even know which bloc to vote for. Ditto the council and regional elections on the same day.
We’ve got eight parliamentary parties, and I could seriously consider voting for six of them.
But the modern SNP is most definitely centre-left.
Actually Stuart is just anti-Labour, doesn't matter where the SNP are
Absolute nonsense. PM Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats is one of the six parties I’m considering voting for.
I can easily see myself voting Labour/Social Democrat in Scotland too, but only post-independence. I will *definitely* not be voting SNP post-independence. The SNP are a tool. Once the job is done the tool will be gleefully abandoned.
As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”
The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.
Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. “In Oakland, when you have 19% of Black kids reading—that can’t be maintained in the society,” says Weaver, who received an early and vivid lesson in the value of literacy in 1984 after his cousin got out of prison and told him the other inmates stopped harassing him when they realized he could read their mail to them. “It has been an unmitigated disaster.”
The Republican Glenn Youngkin won, on a platform of being against telling the white kids they were intrinsically racist and could choose their own gender.
My general takeaway. Affluent, not necessarily posh, men who don't like taxes, rules and public officialdom. Libertarian with a dash of pro-British sentiment.
If the Tories are as obsessed with the "woke media" as they are here, they are going to lose in a landslide. Totally out of touch
Be fair. ToryTV did that focus group in Bury North. 7 of of 9 Tory 2019 voters said they would likely vote Labour. Then the presenter reminded them that Starmer may say something about the definition of a woman and all 9 said they would vote Tory.
My general takeaway. Affluent, not necessarily posh, men who don't like taxes, rules and public officialdom. Libertarian with a dash of pro-British sentiment.
If the Tories are as obsessed with the "woke media" as they are here, they are going to lose in a landslide. Totally out of touch
Be fair. ToryTV did that focus group in Bury North. 7 of of 9 Tory 2019 voters said they would likely vote Labour. Then the presenter reminded them that Starmer may say something about the definition of a woman and all 9 said they would vote Tory.
How on Earth is that an objective focus group?
Rochdale is making it up. You remember jokes?
Labour have had trouble recognising jokes in recent times. Exhibit A - Jeremy Corbyn.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
He was definitely right.
That will be why Boris with multiple marriages and relationships displays these virtues so well.
He's never been very good at learning though. Remember, he was sacked from the Times for lying, sacked from the Tory front bench for lying, sacked as PM for lying...If he'd only learned his lesson the first time he'd have been fine.
The lesson he learnt was that he could get away with it. Probably why he still believes he can come back now. You can't keep BoJo/big dog down for long. All he faces are temporary setbacks.
There are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, on being sacked by Michael Howard in 2004.
I always thought that was his best quote. Not only is it an immensely positive way to look at life, it recognises the absurdity of it at the same time. He was a lousy PM, one of the very worst, but he could turn a phrase.
I wonder what the best outlet for BoJo's talents would have been?
Mayor of London was the best political fit- lots of photo ops, boosterism and the hard bits could be delegated to people who were minions not rivals. But even in that role, he botched significant things- the garden bridge, the Boris bus.
Perhaps a chronicler of life- a columnist but with little interest in politics.
Or head of the EU Commission...
If he'd become PM without the baggage of the referendum which turned metropolitan liberals against him, then the perception of him would probably have been totally different.
No good outcome here. The armourer on set was very young and inexperienced, the actor pointed the gun at someone, there were stories about huge arguments on set about all sorts of things. Frankly, the studio, executive producers, and the director, should all be charged with manslaughter by gross negligence. Baldwin will argue he did what he was told to do, and probably convinces a Californian jury to give him a suspended sentence or house arrest. In the UK, he’d be in more trouble than that.
Depending on the facts, I am not sure he would. If you think a gun is safe because someone who has just the one job, to tell you guns are safe, tells you so, you tend to be in the clear. See also
IIRC, the Baldwin case has a lot of complications, none of which help Baldwin, who was also either a producer or the producer on set. There had, in the days running up to the fatal incident, been a number of ‘near-miss’ incidents involving gun safety, and there was intense pressure on the production which was running out of time and budget, hence the young and inexperienced armourer.
We have a general election in exactly 4 weeks time. I haven’t got the faintest scoobie who to vote for. I don’t even know which bloc to vote for. Ditto the council and regional elections on the same day.
We’ve got eight parliamentary parties, and I could seriously consider voting for six of them.
It’ll come to you in the polling booth. Subconsciously you’ll have killed it over.
Edit - “Mulled”! Mulled it over. Ducking autocorrect.
Absolutely. I’m confident that I’ll have narrowed it down to two choices by the final week. But when I get to the polling station all will become clear.
I was surprised at myself yesterday. I saw the first posters go up in my street, for my former party the Moderates. I saw red and thought “No fucking way”. I was taken aback by my own strong reaction. It does tend to indicate that I will be voting for one of the parties backing (or likely to back) PM Magdalena Andersson:
Social Democrats (Lab) Centre Party (LD) Liberals (LD) (unclear which bloc they’ll back) Greens Left Party (socialist)
My general takeaway. Affluent, not necessarily posh, men who don't like taxes, rules and public officialdom. Libertarian with a dash of pro-British sentiment.
If the Tories are as obsessed with the "woke media" as they are here, they are going to lose in a landslide. Totally out of touch
Be fair. ToryTV did that focus group in Bury North. 7 of of 9 Tory 2019 voters said they would likely vote Labour. Then the presenter reminded them that Starmer may say something about the definition of a woman and all 9 said they would vote Tory.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Kipling said marriage teaches the hard virtues; humility, restraint and forethought.
My general takeaway. Affluent, not necessarily posh, men who don't like taxes, rules and public officialdom. Libertarian with a dash of pro-British sentiment.
If the Tories are as obsessed with the "woke media" as they are here, they are going to lose in a landslide. Totally out of touch
Be fair. ToryTV did that focus group in Bury North. 7 of of 9 Tory 2019 voters said they would likely vote Labour. Then the presenter reminded them that Starmer may say something about the definition of a woman and all 9 said they would vote Tory.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
Bury North is Labour's top target seat in the UK, if they can't even win there they would make no progress at all. Cost of living and inflation would also still be a problem for any incoming Labour government until the Russian and Ukraine war is over and sanctions have ended and energy supplies been increased
FUDHY at his empathetic best.
Con voters in personal and family distress? Not our problem. Bury is dispensable.
So, when do Conservatives start caring?
Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East?
Suffolk Coastal?
Havant?
Epping. The last redoubt.
Ah yes, Epping. How could we forget Epping.
I can just see his wee tank atop the final barricades.
The problem isn't the Tory party, its the voters. People want contradictory things but refuse to accept there is a contradiction. A series of events have empowered them to believe their genuine ignorance on a subject holds the same weight as actual knowledge and experience. They aren't wrong, the experts are wrong.
There is a way through though - find us a new Blair or Thatcher, someone who does know what they are talking about and has political umph. People said "that is Boris" but as all but the remaining holdouts now accept Boris stood for nothing, with no great policies delivered and settled in his time.
Ummm, BoZo was the politician more than any other in my lifetime that told voters they could have contradictory things. Denied the contradictions. That experts were to be derided.
He was the problem
The fact his opponents failed to make their case shows how poor they were
Not entirely.
If you are in a debate with someone shameless and dishonest enough, it can be really hard to persuade an audience.
It tends to go this;
BORIS-ALIKE Something involving cake and eat it
RORY-ALIKE (because he at least tried) That's not possible- once you have eaten your cake, it's gone...
BORIS-ALIKE There you go, with your doomy gloomy negativity. Remember we are Great Britain! We are being held back by your fears... (Continues ad nauseum.)
Boris style cakeism is a really attractive prospectus. It's awfully hard to argue against, because deep down we want it to be true, and want to believe that there's some meanie stopping it being true for us. That's been the case since the apple/snake/Eve fiasco in Genesis.
It would have been better for the UK had someone successfully argued us out of Borisism, but I'm not convinced that was possible.
It would have been better for the Conservatives and the UK to have not fallen for Borisism, but that required human nature to be something it isn't.
The culpability for (gestures round) all of this belongs with the clique who proposed it, who lied to the public about it, who smeared and deposed those who questioned it.
Not particularly with those who fell for it, and certainly not with those who did their best to argue against it.
Unless you had a better plan to argue against Boris, in which case I'm all ears.
And unless he didn't vote for the Conservatives when Mr Johnson was their leader.
I want to make this clear
I supported Johnson on brexit, covid and Ukraine but he lost me from Paterson onwards
Starmer would have had our economy in lockdown forever if he could, and it is to Johnson's credit he opened the economy when he did
That's a very silly thing to write. Starmer wanted us "in lockdown forever"?
Profoundly stupid read of the situation that isn't worthy of yours usual sage analysis.
Forever is a stretch, but Starmer was ALWAYS on the side of more and longer restrictions.
I accept forever was one of my rather exaggerated comments but there is no doubt Starmer favoured a much stricter and longer lockdown and it was Johnson who made the correct decision and it has been proven as the right thing to do
It is rather hot and I apologise for my exaggeration
Boris caused longer lockdowns by always being slow to initiate a lockdown. Had we acted promptly, we would have better controlled infection rates and could’ve come out of lockdown sooner. It’s yet more short term thinking.
Oh what nonsense. Claimed by people who want to justify lockdowns. Taking away civil liberties as a precautionary measure is unacceptable and the virus would still be prevalent on our continent after any lockdown it wasn't a magic pill that would get rid of it.
What country in Europe successfully had a short, sharp lockdown that was rapidly ended and not repeated?
I can in hindsight point at a country and say we should have done that, Sweden. Can you name any country that had a rapid premature lockdown that worked, fixed things and meant coming out of lockdown sooner?
Following the Swedish model would have been utterly catastrophic. Look at their death rates compared to their immediate neighbours. Thousands of additional people died in Sweden who did not need to because of the route they chose. And that is in spite of the fact that far more people in Sweden work from home anyway so the effects of a lockdown would have been considerably less on their economy.
Many - if not all - European countries got their policies wrong in the pandemic in one way or another. Sweden is certainly no exception.
Thousands extra dying, almost all of whom would have died soon anyway, is better than stripping tens of millions of two years of civil liberties, trashing education and development for years that will have consequences for generations to come, spending hundreds of billions and creating NHS waiting lists for years to come.
The price we paid to keep people alive was not a price worth paying. There's more to life than a mortuary league table.
If the vulnerable wishes to shield that should be there prerogative but not at the price of trashing children's education etc
Bolded: incorrect, and pointed out to you repeatedly before.
Half of those in ICUs were under 60. A quarter were under 50.
Using averages of deaths is as irrelevant as using the average age of people locked down (which was over 40, so why are we worrying about childrens education when none of them are anywhere near 40. Which would be an absurd argument, but is just as true).
Over 13,000 children lost a parent to covid. Under your plan, that number would be several times higher. And we'd still have had a large (if not larger) economic impact.
In ICU doesn't mean dead.
Some extra casualties is still better than the alternative. Life is for living, even if some people die, we all die eventually.
Shutting down life in fear of death was not a price worth paying. Simply saying "more would die" isn't an argument winner against someone saying death is acceptable.
People go to ICU when there's a very significant chance that they could die without the assistance. Should there be no more capacity in ICU, no-one else could go to ICU. Those who would have survived with ICU assistance would therefore be dead.
Even "lesser" hospitalisation would see far more dead without hospital assistance. It's a key reason we have hospitals and healthcare in the first place.
Both ICUs and hospitals were maxed out and beyond maxed out. It was the hospital loadings and ICU loadings that governed the call for lockdowns.
Yes, it's true that everyone dies. We do consider it civilized to minimize avoidable deaths. We could close the deficit and cut taxes hugely at a stroke by abolishing all healthcare spending and pension spending, for example, on the grounds that yes, loads of people would die due to lack of healthcare and/or starve to death in old age, but hey - people die, right?
That is, to me, an absurd case to make, but not far off of your argument.
You're right its not far off the argument and make it less ridiculous and its not unreasonable either.
A budget should be available to the NHS for healthcare and the best available treatment based upon what is affordable - the NHS should not have a blank cheque.
If the NHS not having a blank cheque means more die and fewer receive pensions, then so be it. We can't afford to keep everyone alive forever, nor should we.
The NHS has never had a blank cheque and is never going to, so why this straw man argument?
Because Andy made the extreme argument of abolishing the budget entirely, so I retorted with the opposite extreme.
So is it fair to say we both agree that a budget is acceptable and we both agree that it is acceptable for avoidable deaths to occur if they're not viably avoidable within the budget.
Well if so, I consider the lockdown an unacceptable price to pay and if that means extra deaths then so be it, that's the price you pay for not having a blank cheque.
When it comes to what the NHS should spend money on, we have agreed cut-offs used by NICE in terms of £ per quality-adjusted life year gained. Have you or anyone else tried to systematise this argument you are making in terms of what was gained by lockdown in terms of QALYs saved and what it cost, turning all the costs of lockdown into a monetary equivalent amount?
Or are you just saying that lockdown was so awful that no number of QALYs saved would ever justify it?
The former would be interesting to read. The latter seems somewhat absolutist. Your insistence that lockdown should never be done again in any circumstance seems to either assign too much cost to lockdown or to suggest a lack of epidemiological imagination in terms of future pandemics.
I would absolutely love to see a QALY-style calculation, with the cost of lockdowns economically combined with as you suggest a monetary equivalent amount for the loss of liberty and disruption to education. I would assign a very high monetary equivalent 'cost' for education, liberty etc to be curtailed.
This is not my area of expertise but I fully expect that such a QALY calculation would categorically show that lockdown was not remotely "worth" it by pre-existing standards.
Comparing what happened with the range of what might have happened without lockdowns could be done in terms of QALYs without any reference to money, bearing in mind that being locked down reduces the quality of life measurably similarly to how it can be reduced due to physical weakness etc. - at least for most people. Personally I still ran 5km every day outside which was lawful throughout.
Compared with a lingering death through debilitating illness and chronic pain, not being allowed to sit on a park bench for a couple of months during lockdown is of nothing. Check your privilege, as the Wokeists say. Remember David Cameron's remark, after Ivan's death, that he did not know if his son had ever been happy for a single day.
I take your point, @DecrepiterJohnL . I am not complaining about my own experience. And there is something brutal about the whole idea of society-wide QALY calculations. But a calculation can nonetheless be done, and the effects of lockdown for some people included not just a decrease in their QOL by 0.001% for a few months but a deterioration in their health such as to lop an appreciable amount of time off their life expectancy, e.g. as a result of depression. So if Britain's per capita QALY score in 2020 was say 50.0y (??), one could make a few assumptions and say that lockdown "in itself" reduced it by say 0.20y (??), and that had lockdown not been imposed then that 0.20y drop would not have occurred but an estimated drop of ???y +/- ###y would have occurred because of the trouble that would have been caused by a greater spread of SARSCoV2, and it would be interesting to know if ??? was smaller than or greater than 0.20. Someone should do that calculation, and there is no need to bring money into it.
It would be interesting, if complex, to try and put the calculation all together, although perhaps Bart has already made up his mind as to the answer.
The mental health of the country has been poor since the pandemic, but it’s hard to tease apart what of that was caused by lockdowns or other restrictions, and what of that could have been ameliorated by simple tweaks to the rules or the provision of better support for people, versus what of the deterioration in mental health was caused by the pandemic itself, the anxiety associated with it, the morbidity and mortality caused.
The likes of Sajid Javid when Health Secretary offered a rather simplistic take that mental health would improve when all the restrictions were removed, a position some here endorsed. Yet that definitely hasn’t happened: see our recent paper, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395622003466
Besides, imagine that we hadn't called lockdowns March, November and January.
Unless you think that cases would have just stopped rising, we would pretty rapidly have ended up at health system collapse. It's just maths.
What would that have done for the mental state of the country?
We will never know of course what might have happened. The Guardian calls a health system collapse every year and has done for the past 10 years. Famously.
Do you think the current waiting lists, or waiting times for ambulances, or difficulties getting dental care, are indicative of a health system that’s all hunky-dory?
If we're refused to have a lockdown, allowed nature to take its course, then I suspect that current waiting lists would be a lot better not a lot worse.
The waiting lists are a consequence of shutting down society to keep people alive.
Comments
Thunderstorms permitting, also intend to wear a mask on the train to Birmingham and the tram to Edgbaston this coming week.
But he was always a lone wolf with few, if any, close advisors that he would trust and who had that kind of ability. Any time any of his cabinet was perceived to be doing well, eg Sunak, he would cut him down to size and belittle him. It's just the way he is and it destroyed his administration, along with the inveterate lying, of course.
Short-term energy protectionism is a prisoner’s dilemma. It’s great for the UK if we do it - but if everyone else does it, the UK is totally screwed.
USA, Norway, even France with their nuclear base load, can all force shortages at any price on most of Europe, and that’s before we get to whatever games Putin might want to play. The EU has already proposed 15% demand reductions this winter, which is wildly inadequate, but will still lead to industry shutdowns and rolling power cuts.
Boris Johnson brought down Cameron and May; then messed up so badly half his government resigned to force him out; is already undermining Truss; and has left the Tories in the low 30s in the polls, and yet a hefty chunk of members still love him. Mad.
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1558749310615011330?cxt=HHwWhIC-kamP5aErAAAA
Though I think Freedman is also right about this summary of where we are.
It's definitely true that we are not alone in the problems we have; and that at least some of those problems are time limited. But also true that we have seen examples of fundamental institutional failure and a complete lack of political will for fixing those problems.
As PM, he scored one hit with Kate Bingham leading the vaccine taskforce, but otherwise his choice of appointees was poor. Dominic Cummings could help him win an election to resolve the Brexit impasse, but he couldn't run government.
Edit - you bail us out, not the energy providers
Mayor of London was the best political fit- lots of photo ops, boosterism and the hard bits could be delegated to people who were minions not rivals. But even in that role, he botched significant things- the garden bridge, the Boris bus.
Perhaps a chronicler of life- a columnist but with little interest in politics.
Or head of the EU Commission...
https://nypost.com/2022/08/13/fbi-confirms-alec-baldwin-pulled-trigger-in-fatal-rust-shooting/
Bringing his girlfriend into the middle of the No.10 operation, with no formal role, was the start of the chaos.
https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/
As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”
The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.
Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. “In Oakland, when you have 19% of Black kids reading—that can’t be maintained in the society,” says Weaver, who received an early and vivid lesson in the value of literacy in 1984 after his cousin got out of prison and told him the other inmates stopped harassing him when they realized he could read their mail to them. “It has been an unmitigated disaster.”
PM sure, but for days longer than May, and with a problematic legacy.
As a human being, I hope he finds peace, but it may be beyond him. And it would have been better all round had he never been PM.
https://www.lawteacher.net/cases/r-v-lamb.php
The existing proposal has a cost of £37bn. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/energy-bills-support-scheme-explainer
I think it's much more fundamental than that. I do not want a Prime Minister who is an inveterate liar, regardless of any other strengths or weaknesses. And that's a non-partisan view.
Lab latest capping the cap will positively impact short term until Truss is forced to change her stance on "handouts"
I can easily see myself voting Labour/Social Democrat in Scotland too, but only post-independence. I will *definitely* not be voting SNP post-independence. The SNP are a tool. Once the job is done the tool will be gleefully abandoned.
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/04/1052101647/education-parents-election-virginia-republicans
The Republican Glenn Youngkin won, on a platform of being against telling the white kids they were intrinsically racist and could choose their own gender.
IIRC, the Baldwin case has a lot of complications, none of which help Baldwin, who was also either a producer or the producer on set. There had, in the days running up to the fatal incident, been a number of ‘near-miss’ incidents involving gun safety, and there was intense pressure on the production which was running out of time and budget, hence the young and inexperienced armourer.
I was surprised at myself yesterday. I saw the first posters go up in my street, for my former party the Moderates. I saw red and thought “No fucking way”. I was taken aback by my own strong reaction. It does tend to indicate that I will be voting for one of the parties backing (or likely to back) PM Magdalena Andersson:
Social Democrats (Lab)
Centre Party (LD)
Liberals (LD) (unclear which bloc they’ll back)
Greens
Left Party (socialist)
NEW THREAD
I can just see his wee tank atop the final barricades.
The waiting lists are a consequence of shutting down society to keep people alive.