Sounds like Team Mordaunt is deeply spilt right now. Dame Andrea Leadsom is urging her to fight on and try and get to 100, but other PM supporters are calling on her to end the contest today - pointing out with so many MPs behind Sunak, any victory would be pyrrhic. https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1584492937504702465
It won't be pyrrhic unless Sunak's supporters actually murder her (literally or figuratively), because she'll still be PM.
I assume what is meant is that she'd find it hard to unify the party, but the rules are the rules.
If Penny is doing this all as an elaborate way of freezing out other contenders and clearing the path for Rishi and a cabinet post for her (which is what I’ve suspected all along) good job.
If she’s actually pratting about trying to go for this she’s being a Grade A Fool.
I fear before long someone's going to go one stage further than the current XR protests and we'll start seeing great art, cultural artifacts and history of the last 1000+ years literally destroyed. I'd be very nervous if I was a curator in the British Museum or worked at the National gallery.
The suffragettes attacked actual art. Mildly rebuked, via Blast, by the Vorticists, IIRC.
(IIRC as in if I remember histsorically; I wasn't there at the beginning of the last century.)
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
To choose just one of those alleged predictions of mine, I never said “China released covid deliberately” I said “it came from the lab”
Et voila
“Pre-print:
Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2
"Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.
But the findings moved him "to the point where now I also think it's just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market," he told reporters on a call about the findings.
Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.
This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was "zoonotic" -- that it jumped from animals to people.
The first study's team used mapping tools to determine the location of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.
Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market -- and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.
Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus -- including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.
Two introductions to humans
They also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.
The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.
"This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically," Worobey said in a statement. "It really originated at that market and spread out from there."
Worobey has been almost completely debunked by other scientists
“Two recent publications appear to have bolstered the case for a natural origin connected to a “wet market” ….But critics counter that there are so many missing data about the epidemic’s initial days that this portrait may be inaccurate.”
Moreover the CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence for lab leak just gets bigger
“china began stockpiling PPE months before Covid outbreak’ China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts say”
(A new timeline which, by the way, renders the market hypothesis irrelevant)
It came from the lab. There really isn’t a debate any more. Apart from a few diehard virologists who are desperate to defend their science - and not lose their funding
All you've got "debunked by other scientists" while you happily post away from every conspiracy theorist that takes your fancy on the internet.
Every time someone posts something that says it didn't you come up with "debunked by other scientists", "pay of the Chinese" etc. etc. Just accept you might be mistaken as you so often are. Please. Like you were with Truss, Aliens etc etc. You're often wrong so you must be used to it by now
Ok, how about Francois Balloux of UCL - who was excellently lucid on covid-the-disease. His response to this paper
“This is an important piece of work. To me, it looks solid both conceptually and methodologically. I was given advance warning and was able to replicate the key findings. To the best of my knowledge, I confirm the reported patterns are genuine”
“The distribution of restriction sites in SARS-CoV-2 is highly atypical when compared to related viruses in circulation, and far more in line with previous lab-engineered coronaviruses. This is a troubling finding, which requires scrutiny.”
“These findings are not 'final and dispositive', but they can't be ignored either. To me, this is by far the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2.””
“I anticipate Covid twitter will combust in an implosion of rage and fury over this preprint. In an ideal world, this is not what should happen.”
Okay, if we're being credentialist, how about Professor Edward Holmes - ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Doubtless in your mind he's a member of the CCP but, anyway...
"The COVID ‘lab leak theory’ is dead Researchers have confirmed the virus came from a Wuhan wet market, writes Professor Eddie Holmes."
"...Despite political barriers and a salivating media, the evidence for a natural animal origin for SARS-CoV-2 has increased over the past two years. To deny it puts us all at risk..."
TBF, those who are 100% certain in either direction really have no basis for such a certainty.
There is as yet no completely convincing account of the pandemic virus origins, and there are respectable scientist on both sides of the debate. (Note, Professor Jeffrey Sachs isn't one of them; he's not even a scientist.)
I fear before long someone's going to go one stage further than the current XR protests and we'll start seeing great art, cultural artifacts and history of the last 1000+ years literally destroyed. I'd be very nervous if I was a curator in the British Museum or worked at the National gallery.
May I suggest they start with Tracey Emin’s bed? No one will notice a bit more detritus.
Rishi is walking into a trap by avoiding a leadership vote. He will struggle with a reputation as a technocrat regardless. Dodging an election will not help that and will dog his premiership. He will be better if is Mordaunt gets her numbers and triggers a vote.
Balls. Complaining that there is a democratic deficit if the ghastly Con membership is cheated of a vote, is like claiming a democratic deficit if the CEO of Geest unilaterally decides on the next president of Guatemala without consulting the board of directors.
Sunak is literally the son-in-law of one of the world's wealthiest CEOs.
Rishi Rich.
Young, handsome and rich! What's not to like?
He’s a Tory toerag.
The handsome designation for Sunak confuses me a bit, I'll admit. Each to their own I suppose.
My wife hates his side parting.
Did she prefer the fringe candidates?
Just another ‘hair today gone tomorrow’ politician.
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Are the words totally random or is there error checking built into their structure (or in similar ways that many computer science algorithms have been developed over the years)?
The obvious thing thing would be that the words together can be encoded into a binary form in a manner such that if the word is corrupted i.e. misspelled that an checksum algorithm fails.
I'm not sure exactly how the algorithm works but as with so many things designed by tech bros who rarely leave their own bedroom, its dangerously flawed to the point where one cannot rely on it. Wiki tells me that Mountain Rescue England & Wales have counselled against using it – a fairly fatal blow I would have thought!
Well, its a huge flaw if it doesn't have even basic checksum type error checking....a really clever system would not only notice a typo but also self correct say 1-2 letters being mistyped i.e. still now what the location was you actually meant.
That how huge parts of sending files over the internet work and these error checking algorithms are normally part of any decent undergraduate computer science course. And that is why naively I presumed that would be a fundamental part of any such attempt at simplification of location coordinates.
Oh my god - if you all start that conversation again I might have to leave the site forever.
My house has the W3W location Expect Serene Waters (changed slightly while keeping the meaning) - which was amusing until the divorce.
I am supposed to see blue oyster cult this week, but it seems to be in Colorado rather than Brum. What to do?
Would Boris be kicking himself if he thinks he is doing the expeditious thing not standing down so that he can live to fight another day, only to see Penny ignore all that now is not the time bollocks and become PM and remain so for the next 20 years.
When Tucker Carlson says in a podcast he has "contempt" for the UK because of "about how much they hate themselves… and how they have destroyed themselves”, we should listen. People such as Tucker would normally be our friends. This is such a massive humiliation.
Media need to stop giving them sodding publicity. Media need to ignore them....and authorities leave them glued in place for a day or two and let them piss / shit themselves.
Sounds like Team Mordaunt is deeply spilt right now. Dame Andrea Leadsom is urging her to fight on and try and get to 100, but other PM supporters are calling on her to end the contest today - pointing out with so many MPs behind Sunak, any victory would be pyrrhic. https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1584492937504702465
It won't be pyrrhic unless Sunak's supporters actually murder her (literally or figuratively), because she'll still be PM.
I assume what is meant is that she'd find it hard to unify the party, but the rules are the rules.
When would the indicative vote be, tonight? If she could get beyond 150 votes then I think the party is in big trouble because neither candidate has a great mandate.
When Tucker Carlson says in a podcast he has "contempt" for the UK because of "about how much they hate themselves… and how they have destroyed themselves”, we should listen. People such as Tucker would normally be our friends. This is such a massive humiliation.
When Tucker Carlson says in a podcast he has "contempt" for the UK because of "about how much they hate themselves… and how they have destroyed themselves”, we should listen. People such as Tucker would normally be our friends. This is such a massive humiliation.
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
To choose just one of those alleged predictions of mine, I never said “China released covid deliberately” I said “it came from the lab”
Et voila
“Pre-print:
Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2
"Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.
But the findings moved him "to the point where now I also think it's just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market," he told reporters on a call about the findings.
Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.
This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was "zoonotic" -- that it jumped from animals to people.
The first study's team used mapping tools to determine the location of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.
Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market -- and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.
Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus -- including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.
Two introductions to humans
They also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.
The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.
"This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically," Worobey said in a statement. "It really originated at that market and spread out from there."
Worobey has been almost completely debunked by other scientists
“Two recent publications appear to have bolstered the case for a natural origin connected to a “wet market” ….But critics counter that there are so many missing data about the epidemic’s initial days that this portrait may be inaccurate.”
Moreover the CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence for lab leak just gets bigger
“china began stockpiling PPE months before Covid outbreak’ China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts say”
(A new timeline which, by the way, renders the market hypothesis irrelevant)
It came from the lab. There really isn’t a debate any more. Apart from a few diehard virologists who are desperate to defend their science - and not lose their funding
All you've got "debunked by other scientists" while you happily post away from every conspiracy theorist that takes your fancy on the internet.
Every time someone posts something that says it didn't you come up with "debunked by other scientists", "pay of the Chinese" etc. etc. Just accept you might be mistaken as you so often are. Please. Like you were with Truss, Aliens etc etc. You're often wrong so you must be used to it by now
Ok, how about Francois Balloux of UCL - who was excellently lucid on covid-the-disease. His response to this paper
“This is an important piece of work. To me, it looks solid both conceptually and methodologically. I was given advance warning and was able to replicate the key findings. To the best of my knowledge, I confirm the reported patterns are genuine”
“The distribution of restriction sites in SARS-CoV-2 is highly atypical when compared to related viruses in circulation, and far more in line with previous lab-engineered coronaviruses. This is a troubling finding, which requires scrutiny.”
“These findings are not 'final and dispositive', but they can't be ignored either. To me, this is by far the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2.””
“I anticipate Covid twitter will combust in an implosion of rage and fury over this preprint. In an ideal world, this is not what should happen.”
Okay, if we're being credentialist, how about Professor Edward Holmes - ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Doubtless in your mind he's a member of the CCP but, anyway...
"The COVID ‘lab leak theory’ is dead Researchers have confirmed the virus came from a Wuhan wet market, writes Professor Eddie Holmes."
"...Despite political barriers and a salivating media, the evidence for a natural animal origin for SARS-CoV-2 has increased over the past two years. To deny it puts us all at risk..."
TBF, those who are 100% certain in either direction really have no basis for such a certainty.
Very many moons ago, when I studied science at University, one of the lecturers remarked that when he'd started studying chemistry he thought it was a mass of un-related facts. He later came to realise it is in fact a mass of unrelated theories...
Mr. Pulpstar, I agree. The self-righteous iconoclast cretins will want to re-enact the deeds of the man, who shall not be named, who burnt down the Temple of Artemis (a wonder of the ancient world) to ensure his name lived forever.
Because they have a cause. And they're special.
It was probably the post H*******s rebuild which was a WOTW.
Media need to stop giving them sodding publicity. Media need to ignore them....and authorities leave them glued in place for a day or two and let them piss / shit themselves.
Volkswagen had the right idea:
A group of nine scientists have glued themselves to the floor of Volkswagen’s Autostadt facility in Germany to protest climate change.
Unfortunately for members of the ‘Scientific Rebellion’ activist group when it came time to close up for the night, VW locked the doors and switched off the lights and heating.
According to the protesters, the carmaker supported their right to protest but neglected to give them ‘a bowl to urinate and defecate in a decent manner while we are glued.’
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
To choose just one of those alleged predictions of mine, I never said “China released covid deliberately” I said “it came from the lab”
Et voila
“Pre-print:
Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2
"Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.
But the findings moved him "to the point where now I also think it's just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market," he told reporters on a call about the findings.
Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.
This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was "zoonotic" -- that it jumped from animals to people.
The first study's team used mapping tools to determine the location of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.
Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market -- and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.
Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus -- including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.
Two introductions to humans
They also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.
The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.
"This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically," Worobey said in a statement. "It really originated at that market and spread out from there."
Worobey has been almost completely debunked by other scientists
“Two recent publications appear to have bolstered the case for a natural origin connected to a “wet market” ….But critics counter that there are so many missing data about the epidemic’s initial days that this portrait may be inaccurate.”
Moreover the CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence for lab leak just gets bigger
“china began stockpiling PPE months before Covid outbreak’ China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts say”
(A new timeline which, by the way, renders the market hypothesis irrelevant)
It came from the lab. There really isn’t a debate any more. Apart from a few diehard virologists who are desperate to defend their science - and not lose their funding
All you've got "debunked by other scientists" while you happily post away from every conspiracy theorist that takes your fancy on the internet.
Every time someone posts something that says it didn't you come up with "debunked by other scientists", "pay of the Chinese" etc. etc. Just accept you might be mistaken as you so often are. Please. Like you were with Truss, Aliens etc etc. You're often wrong so you must be used to it by now
Ok, how about Francois Balloux of UCL - who was excellently lucid on covid-the-disease. His response to this paper
“This is an important piece of work. To me, it looks solid both conceptually and methodologically. I was given advance warning and was able to replicate the key findings. To the best of my knowledge, I confirm the reported patterns are genuine”
“The distribution of restriction sites in SARS-CoV-2 is highly atypical when compared to related viruses in circulation, and far more in line with previous lab-engineered coronaviruses. This is a troubling finding, which requires scrutiny.”
“These findings are not 'final and dispositive', but they can't be ignored either. To me, this is by far the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2.””
“I anticipate Covid twitter will combust in an implosion of rage and fury over this preprint. In an ideal world, this is not what should happen.”
Okay, if we're being credentialist, how about Professor Edward Holmes - ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Doubtless in your mind he's a member of the CCP but, anyway...
"The COVID ‘lab leak theory’ is dead Researchers have confirmed the virus came from a Wuhan wet market, writes Professor Eddie Holmes."
"...Despite political barriers and a salivating media, the evidence for a natural animal origin for SARS-CoV-2 has increased over the past two years. To deny it puts us all at risk..."
TBF, those who are 100% certain in either direction really have no basis for such a certainty.
There is as yet no completely convincing account of the pandemic virus origins, and there are respectable scientist on both sides of the debate. (Note, Professor Jeffrey Sachs isn't one of them; he's not even a scientist.)
No it isn’t certain. And probably never will be now
But Ockham’s razor slices profoundly towards lab leak
“LONDON (AP) — When a World Health Organization-led team traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a top official said he was worried about safety standards at a laboratory close to the seafood market where the first human cases were detected, according to a documentary released Thursday by Danish television channel TV2.
The Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention was handling coronaviruses “without potentially having the same level of expertise or safety or who knows,” Peter Ben Embarek said during a conference call in January, according to footage shown by TV2. “
One of the problems is that those who we would expect to provide answers - virologists, immunologists, bioscientists - are also those who are emotionally most committed to proving it did NOT come from the lab. Because that would be cognitively unbearable for them - and might end careers, or worse
20m people are dead, after all
I am content with my personal conclusion that it is 95% certain it came from the lab, by accident. I accept I will not persuade others on PB. And we can respectfully disagree
What is more interesting because more provable is the cover-up that came after. The crushing of the mere idea of lab leak. That definitely happened (recall Facebook and Twitter deleted anyone even mentioning the hypothesis). That is frightening
FWIW my reafing of Penny's actions is she has to play it up for now as were she to pull out with a pitiful 25 public names she doesnt warrant a big job. Rishi can just ignore any informal agreement if she shows no groundswell amongst MPs. She's trying to secure the foreign office
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
To choose just one of those alleged predictions of mine, I never said “China released covid deliberately” I said “it came from the lab”
Et voila
“Pre-print:
Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2
"Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.
But the findings moved him "to the point where now I also think it's just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market," he told reporters on a call about the findings.
Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.
This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was "zoonotic" -- that it jumped from animals to people.
The first study's team used mapping tools to determine the location of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.
Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market -- and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.
Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus -- including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.
Two introductions to humans
They also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.
The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.
"This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically," Worobey said in a statement. "It really originated at that market and spread out from there."
Worobey has been almost completely debunked by other scientists
“Two recent publications appear to have bolstered the case for a natural origin connected to a “wet market” ….But critics counter that there are so many missing data about the epidemic’s initial days that this portrait may be inaccurate.”
Moreover the CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence for lab leak just gets bigger
“china began stockpiling PPE months before Covid outbreak’ China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts say”
(A new timeline which, by the way, renders the market hypothesis irrelevant)
It came from the lab. There really isn’t a debate any more. Apart from a few diehard virologists who are desperate to defend their science - and not lose their funding
All you've got "debunked by other scientists" while you happily post away from every conspiracy theorist that takes your fancy on the internet.
Every time someone posts something that says it didn't you come up with "debunked by other scientists", "pay of the Chinese" etc. etc. Just accept you might be mistaken as you so often are. Please. Like you were with Truss, Aliens etc etc. You're often wrong so you must be used to it by now
Ok, how about Francois Balloux of UCL - who was excellently lucid on covid-the-disease. His response to this paper
“This is an important piece of work. To me, it looks solid both conceptually and methodologically. I was given advance warning and was able to replicate the key findings. To the best of my knowledge, I confirm the reported patterns are genuine”
“The distribution of restriction sites in SARS-CoV-2 is highly atypical when compared to related viruses in circulation, and far more in line with previous lab-engineered coronaviruses. This is a troubling finding, which requires scrutiny.”
“These findings are not 'final and dispositive', but they can't be ignored either. To me, this is by far the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2.””
“I anticipate Covid twitter will combust in an implosion of rage and fury over this preprint. In an ideal world, this is not what should happen.”
Okay, if we're being credentialist, how about Professor Edward Holmes - ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Doubtless in your mind he's a member of the CCP but, anyway...
"The COVID ‘lab leak theory’ is dead Researchers have confirmed the virus came from a Wuhan wet market, writes Professor Eddie Holmes."
"...Despite political barriers and a salivating media, the evidence for a natural animal origin for SARS-CoV-2 has increased over the past two years. To deny it puts us all at risk..."
Lots of pandemics didn't start in a lab, indeed probably all. They start via the usual routes, either a human disease mutating and become more transmissable, or jumping from another species into man. we currently have a nasty avian flu in the UK. Its possible that an avian flu might become a serious human flu at some point.
Sounds like Team Mordaunt is deeply spilt right now. Dame Andrea Leadsom is urging her to fight on and try and get to 100, but other PM supporters are calling on her to end the contest today - pointing out with so many MPs behind Sunak, any victory would be pyrrhic. https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1584492937504702465
If she gets 100 (Which I doubt) and wins a members vote (Which I also don't see) the Tories will be utterly wrecked next GE.
Are you expecting a serene two years under the Sunak-Hunt double act?
It's only the form of the electoral disaster that is at stake, the detail of how we get from here to a shattering defeat. The destination is no longer in doubt.
It's one of the least consequential leadership elections that I can remember. The Tory party are currently ungovernable. It matters little who is nominally in command of the rabble.
I would suggest that is rather complacent
It is true that Labour are on course to win in 2024 but 2 years is a long time in politics
I would expect Rishi to introduce honesty, integrity, and decency into the conservative party and certainly reduce the likely labour lead
You may be right but politics is very unpredictable
I think it's realistic about two factors.
1. The breach of trust that the Truss budget represents. It is right to compare it to Black Wednesday in terms of destroying the Tories reputation, receipt that it was so very much worse. Major and Clarke arguably did quite well for a few years up to 1997 - fat lot of good it did them.
2. Hard to believe, but today's Tory party is even more divided than they were in the mid-90s. The willingness to rally around the leader, and to do unpopular, but arguably sensible, things at their behest is not present. Sunak will do well to survive to the next election.
I used to caution those who thought Labour were on an inevitable glide-path to victory. I thought both Johnson, and Truss, had plausible routes to victory at the next GE. There are some improbable scenarios where Starmer destroys his own credibility before the next election, but otherwise the result is done. People don't forgive or forget economic meltdowns that easily.
You can feel Labour searching for the right attack lines on Sunak this morning, can't you?
They are worried.
I think for many of us we are suffering a little from euphoria that big dog has gone off with his tail between his legs.
Although polls will improve significantly that will be largely down to the fact that the recent 14% and 19% Tory figures were never going to last to a GE. Beyond that it is nowhere near plain sailing for Sunak or the Tories.
Before I would consider a switch I would want to see evidence that the interests of the country are being put first. I want to see cabinet members chosen on merit not because they appease some loony section of the party and membership.
If all we get for the next 2 years is more self-indulgent Tory infighting and incompetent ministers put in place to keep the ERG and members happy then Sunak deserves to lose.
We will know which route he has taken by this time next week but given the noises coming from the likes of Dories and Chope this morning I don't think Labour has too much to worry about for the time being. The Tories look incapable of uniting.
Assuming Rishi gets it (97% chance currently with Smarkets) he has a couple of opportunities:
1) He can run the country intelligently and with seriousness for a change while being sure it can't be for more than two years
2) He can do this while having an outside chance of winning an election.
3) He could (especially if he decides he only has two years) indulge in honesty with the public about tax, spending, debt and borrowing, and the choices we really have, and as he has nothing to lose engage in answering questions intelligently and being worth listening to.
His outside chance of winning (10% chance?) involves being lucky (warm winter, Russians withdraw, inflation drops, gas price miracle, house prices don't crash) and creating the impression of having a government of greater competence than the Labour alternative. This has not been an option recently.
An unanswered question here is this: the Tories lost in 1997 by a landslide because of events in 1992. That was a different era. Could it be that in our current age polling and sentiment could change much more rapidly. Are we remembering less well and forgetting more quickly.
In answer to your closing para. I think 2024 is too close a time frame for people to have forgotten the chaos of the Truss/Johnson governments. Going forward Sunak could steady the ship along the lines you suggest (which would be good for us all) or he could be locked in never-ending battle with John Major's "bastards" egged on by Farage and Johnson from the sidelines.
I really believe the Tories need a spell out of government to decide in which direction they actually want to go. We have had 3 years now of self-indulgent navel gazing and infighting by the Tories while the country slides downhill. The time to do that is in opposition not while trying to run the country.
My preference was Mordaunt, but I'm happy enough with Sunak. What I'm not happy about is Hunt staying on as Chancellor, but I accept it's inevitable in the short to medium term. I'm hoping he eventually flounces out when he gets bored of being Alistair Darling to Sunak's Gordon Brown.
Even if the melody is great this needs a lot of work.
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
To choose just one of those alleged predictions of mine, I never said “China released covid deliberately” I said “it came from the lab”
Et voila
“Pre-print:
Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2
"Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.
But the findings moved him "to the point where now I also think it's just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market," he told reporters on a call about the findings.
Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.
This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was "zoonotic" -- that it jumped from animals to people.
The first study's team used mapping tools to determine the location of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.
Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market -- and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.
Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus -- including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.
Two introductions to humans
They also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.
The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.
"This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically," Worobey said in a statement. "It really originated at that market and spread out from there."
Worobey has been almost completely debunked by other scientists
“Two recent publications appear to have bolstered the case for a natural origin connected to a “wet market” ….But critics counter that there are so many missing data about the epidemic’s initial days that this portrait may be inaccurate.”
Moreover the CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence for lab leak just gets bigger
“china began stockpiling PPE months before Covid outbreak’ China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts say”
(A new timeline which, by the way, renders the market hypothesis irrelevant)
It came from the lab. There really isn’t a debate any more. Apart from a few diehard virologists who are desperate to defend their science - and not lose their funding
All you've got "debunked by other scientists" while you happily post away from every conspiracy theorist that takes your fancy on the internet.
Every time someone posts something that says it didn't you come up with "debunked by other scientists", "pay of the Chinese" etc. etc. Just accept you might be mistaken as you so often are. Please. Like you were with Truss, Aliens etc etc. You're often wrong so you must be used to it by now
Ok, how about Francois Balloux of UCL - who was excellently lucid on covid-the-disease. His response to this paper
“This is an important piece of work. To me, it looks solid both conceptually and methodologically. I was given advance warning and was able to replicate the key findings. To the best of my knowledge, I confirm the reported patterns are genuine”
“The distribution of restriction sites in SARS-CoV-2 is highly atypical when compared to related viruses in circulation, and far more in line with previous lab-engineered coronaviruses. This is a troubling finding, which requires scrutiny.”
“These findings are not 'final and dispositive', but they can't be ignored either. To me, this is by far the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2.””
“I anticipate Covid twitter will combust in an implosion of rage and fury over this preprint. In an ideal world, this is not what should happen.”
Okay, if we're being credentialist, how about Professor Edward Holmes - ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Doubtless in your mind he's a member of the CCP but, anyway...
"The COVID ‘lab leak theory’ is dead Researchers have confirmed the virus came from a Wuhan wet market, writes Professor Eddie Holmes."
"...Despite political barriers and a salivating media, the evidence for a natural animal origin for SARS-CoV-2 has increased over the past two years. To deny it puts us all at risk..."
TBF, those who are 100% certain in either direction really have no basis for such a certainty.
There is as yet no completely convincing account of the pandemic virus origins, and there are respectable scientist on both sides of the debate. (Note, Professor Jeffrey Sachs isn't one of them; he's not even a scientist.)
No it isn’t certain. And probably never will be now
But Ockham’s razor slices profoundly towards lab leak...
Some light reading for you.
The Tyranny of Simple Explanations The history of science has been distorted by a longstanding conviction that correct theories about nature are always the most elegant ones.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/occams-razor/495332/ ...it’s what Francis Crick was driving at when he warned that Occam’s razor (which he equated with advocating “simplicity and elegance”) might not be well suited to biology, where things can get very messy. While it’s true that “simple, elegant” theories have sometimes turned out to be wrong (a classical example being Alfred Kempe’s flawed 1879 proof of the “four-color theorem” in mathematics), it’s also true that simpler but less accurate theories can be more useful than complicated ones for clarifying the bare bones of an explanation. There’s no easy equation between simplicity and truth, and Crick’s caution about Occam’s razor just perpetuates misconceptions about its meaning and value.
The worst misuses, however, fixate on the idea that the razor can adjudicate between rival theories. I have found no single instance where it has served this purpose to settle a scientific debate. Worse still, the history of science is often distorted in attempts to argue that it has....
Robert Peston @Peston · 25s It is in Penny Mordaunt’s long term interest to say she is champion of members’ right to vote in the leadership election. But if she secures the support of a third or less of Tory MPs, she will be under enormous moral pressure from colleagues to pull out - and I assume she will
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Logic is not Sean’s area of strength.
Apart from being a superlative tosser, we’re still trying to identify his USPs
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Are the words totally random or is there error checking built into their structure (or in similar ways that many computer science algorithms have been developed over the years)?
The obvious thing thing would be that the words together can be encoded into a binary form in a manner such that if the word is corrupted i.e. misspelled that an checksum algorithm fails.
I'm not sure exactly how the algorithm works but as with so many things designed by tech bros who rarely leave their own bedroom, its dangerously flawed to the point where one cannot rely on it. Wiki tells me that Mountain Rescue England & Wales have counselled against using it – a fairly fatal blow I would have thought!
Well, its a huge flaw if it doesn't have even basic checksum type error checking....a really clever system would not only notice a typo but also self correct say 1-2 letters being mistyped i.e. still now what the location was you actually meant.
That how huge parts of sending files over the internet work and these error checking algorithms are normally part of any decent undergraduate computer science course. And that is why naively I presumed that would be a fundamental part of any such attempt at simplification of location coordinates.
Oh my god - if you all start that conversation again I might have to leave the site forever.
My house has the W3W location Expect Serene Waters (changed slightly while keeping the meaning) - which was amusing until the divorce.
The problems of error checking in this resemble those for the telegraph commercial codes of the 19th and early 20th cents. The aim there wasn’t really secrecy - but information densely. While protecting against errors.
The codes are long abandoned, and in most cases are no longer copyrighted.
Amazing fact that I've had to check three times, should Mr Sunak become Prime Minister, he will become the first Head of Government to represent a Yorkshire Constituency.
When Tucker Carlson says in a podcast he has "contempt" for the UK because of "about how much they hate themselves… and how they have destroyed themselves”, we should listen. People such as Tucker would normally be our friends. This is such a massive humiliation.
Prof Edward Holmes, by the way - who is so dismissive of the lab leak hypothesis - is this guy:
He’s also this guy:
“Edward Holmes on being asked why they didn't release the SARS-CoV-2 genome when they got it: "...essentially there were instructions that there's no publicizing the outbreak, so we kept it to ourselves, we told the key people in China..but we were told not to release the data..."
Robert Peston @Peston · 25s It is in Penny Mordaunt’s long term interest to say she is champion of members’ right to vote in the leadership election. But if she secures the support of a third or less of Tory MPs, she will be under enormous moral pressure from colleagues to pull out - and I assume she will
So in her world - the members override the constitution.
Were labour so inclined they could insist on formalizing everything within a written constitution so this type of disaster cannot occur again
Under two hours until the 'why a visibly ethnic minority running the country isn't actually important or good because they're on the other team' articles start to drop.
Robert Peston @Peston · 25s It is in Penny Mordaunt’s long term interest to say she is champion of members’ right to vote in the leadership election. But if she secures the support of a third or less of Tory MPs, she will be under enormous moral pressure from colleagues to pull out - and I assume she will
So in her world - the members override the constitution.
Were labour so inclined they could insist on formalizing everything within a written constitution so this type of disaster cannot occur again
Ultimately parliament is sovereign. You're never going to be able to avoid MPs feeling pressure from the outside though. Be it party members, the press or corporate lobbyists. What is absurd is the idea that someone who wins a vote with the party membership is ENTITLED to be Prime minister.
Mark Francois for ERG says as a group they have been unable to agree between themselves
ERG resolves they will unite behind whoever wins
They are neutral on both candidates
Well, I didn't see that coming. Second pleasant political surprise in as many days.
He said: "We believe that we have one and potentially two extremely strong options to be leader of the Conservative Party but as a group we were unable to collectively endorse either candidate."
If Rishi caves and gives her one of the big offices of state then that would be a sign of real weakness from the start of his premiership.
Assume you are referring to Mordaunt? If so, no. Proper strong leaders are not afraid of bringing competitors in as potential successors. It would be a demonstration of leadership and strength, not weakness. Weak leaders, eg. Johnson and Truss surround themselves with no-hopers and sycophants. We are living with the consequences of such weak leadership.
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Logic is not Sean’s area of strength.
Apart from being a superlative tosser, we’re still trying to identify his USPs
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Are the words totally random or is there error checking built into their structure (or in similar ways that many computer science algorithms have been developed over the years)?
The obvious thing thing would be that the words together can be encoded into a binary form in a manner such that if the word is corrupted i.e. misspelled that an checksum algorithm fails.
I'm not sure exactly how the algorithm works but as with so many things designed by tech bros who rarely leave their own bedroom, its dangerously flawed to the point where one cannot rely on it. Wiki tells me that Mountain Rescue England & Wales have counselled against using it – a fairly fatal blow I would have thought!
Well, its a huge flaw if it doesn't have even basic checksum type error checking....a really clever system would not only notice a typo but also self correct say 1-2 letters being mistyped i.e. still now what the location was you actually meant.
That how huge parts of sending files over the internet work and these error checking algorithms are normally part of any decent undergraduate computer science course. And that is why naively I presumed that would be a fundamental part of any such attempt at simplification of location coordinates.
Oh my god - if you all start that conversation again I might have to leave the site forever.
My house has the W3W location Expect Serene Waters (changed slightly while keeping the meaning) - which was amusing until the divorce.
The problems of error checking in this resemble those for the telegraph commercial codes of the 19th and early 20th cents. The aim there wasn’t really secrecy - but information densely. While protecting against errors.
The codes are long abandoned, and in most cases are no longer copyrighted.
The fix is easy here - you add a fourth (checksum) word that can be displayed and used if required.
Because the issue here isn’t information density it’s validation of information quality and that means a secondary validation process can be worthwhile
Under two hours until the 'why a visibly ethnic minority running the country isn't actually important or good because they're on the other team' articles start to drop.
If PM strings this out until 5 to 2pm and then doesn't have the numbers, she can kiss goodbye to Cabinet I reckon.
If she folds now and accepts the country needs Sunak and needs him today then she can get her sweetie.
LBC reckons she is trading for a top job
Rishi should face her down, she's got a weaker hand than Boris ever had in this race.
The whole Mordaunt thing is largely fluff imo. Sunak can give her a cabinet job but it doesn't have to be a big one.
Doesn't it actually look better if Mordaunt fails to get the number of nominations, rather than just pulling out because of some deal done in private behind the scenes?
If Rishi caves and gives her one of the big offices of state then that would be a sign of real weakness from the start of his premiership.
Assume you are referring to Mordaunt? If so, no. Proper strong leaders are not afraid of bringing competitors in as potential successors. It would be a demonstration of leadership and strength, not weakness. Weak leaders, eg. Johnson and Truss surround themselves with no-hopers and sycophants. We are living with the consequences of such weak leadership.
Agreed and the Tory Party needs good communicators like Penny in visible roles for the hard sells that are coming down the line.
Mark Francois for ERG says as a group they have been unable to agree between themselves
ERG resolves they will unite behind whoever wins
They are neutral on both candidates
Well, I didn't see that coming. Second pleasant political surprise in as many days.
He said: "We believe that we have one and potentially two extremely strong options to be leader of the Conservative Party but as a group we were unable to collectively endorse either candidate."
Split between perennial schemers and those that are off to join Nigel
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
Predicts the heavy odds-on shot of a 2024 GE and that the Cons will do better in it than their current historic lows.
Sober, unflashy, deeply dull punditry. New leaf and I like it - like it very much.
I was replying to @Heathener who is adamant there will be a GE in 23. Can’t see it. No reason why it would happen (barring a Black Sean)
*lol - Black Sean is an autocorrect typo. I’ve kept it for fun as it is so bizarrely apt
I'm just happy we have more lab leak stuff to keep Team Ivermectin occupied so they stop trying to solve the Ukraine War.
What even is this shite?
1 lab leak. Highly plausible theory. Not proven. But if it is ever proven: wow. Massive and important consequences
2. Ivermectin. A trivial theory which is probably total bollocks. Does anyone care anyway?
3. Trying to solve the Ukrainian war = really really important because if it goes wrong we could, literally, all die. We can argue how this solving is done but boy, it needs to be done
Yet to you these all can all be classed as “weird conspiratorial nonsense done by loons”
Which is itself a lunatic position. You’re an idiot
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
To choose just one of those alleged predictions of mine, I never said “China released covid deliberately” I said “it came from the lab”
Et voila
“Pre-print:
Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2
"Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.
But the findings moved him "to the point where now I also think it's just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market," he told reporters on a call about the findings.
Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.
This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was "zoonotic" -- that it jumped from animals to people.
The first study's team used mapping tools to determine the location of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.
Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market -- and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.
Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus -- including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.
Two introductions to humans
They also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.
The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.
"This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically," Worobey said in a statement. "It really originated at that market and spread out from there."
Worobey has been almost completely debunked by other scientists
“Two recent publications appear to have bolstered the case for a natural origin connected to a “wet market” ….But critics counter that there are so many missing data about the epidemic’s initial days that this portrait may be inaccurate.”
Moreover the CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence for lab leak just gets bigger
“china began stockpiling PPE months before Covid outbreak’ China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts say”
(A new timeline which, by the way, renders the market hypothesis irrelevant)
It came from the lab. There really isn’t a debate any more. Apart from a few diehard virologists who are desperate to defend their science - and not lose their funding
All you've got "debunked by other scientists" while you happily post away from every conspiracy theorist that takes your fancy on the internet.
Every time someone posts something that says it didn't you come up with "debunked by other scientists", "pay of the Chinese" etc. etc. Just accept you might be mistaken as you so often are. Please. Like you were with Truss, Aliens etc etc. You're often wrong so you must be used to it by now
Ok, how about Francois Balloux of UCL - who was excellently lucid on covid-the-disease. His response to this paper
“This is an important piece of work. To me, it looks solid both conceptually and methodologically. I was given advance warning and was able to replicate the key findings. To the best of my knowledge, I confirm the reported patterns are genuine”
“The distribution of restriction sites in SARS-CoV-2 is highly atypical when compared to related viruses in circulation, and far more in line with previous lab-engineered coronaviruses. This is a troubling finding, which requires scrutiny.”
“These findings are not 'final and dispositive', but they can't be ignored either. To me, this is by far the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2.””
“I anticipate Covid twitter will combust in an implosion of rage and fury over this preprint. In an ideal world, this is not what should happen.”
Okay, if we're being credentialist, how about Professor Edward Holmes - ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Doubtless in your mind he's a member of the CCP but, anyway...
"The COVID ‘lab leak theory’ is dead Researchers have confirmed the virus came from a Wuhan wet market, writes Professor Eddie Holmes."
"...Despite political barriers and a salivating media, the evidence for a natural animal origin for SARS-CoV-2 has increased over the past two years. To deny it puts us all at risk..."
A lot wrong there. For one thing, I like my science to assert and deny things on the basis of whether they are true or false, not whether they "put us all at risk," and not to get all pathetically polemical about "salivating media." And he is not making any first hand claims, just "researchers have established."
There's some weird shit going on here. The fact of a lethal variant of a virus emerging on the doorstep of an institution which boasts of and glories in and publishes papers about manufacturing lethal variants of that particular virus looks from most angles a tad suspicious. The bien pensant want to avoid the obvious conclusion out of a fear of "conspiracy theories," a touching belief in the inherent goodness and honesty of our insect overlords, and a fear of being thought racist (inscrutable evil mandarin scientists).
Meaning they fall straight into a genuine racist trope, about "wet markets" where disgusting peasants sell live bats to each other to put in the shark fin soup. Thing is, a wet market as far as I can tell is just a market with butchers and fishmongers in it. There's one in Tavistock, and a couple of the supermarkets qualify too. What we don't have are 1. an institute of virology or 2. outbreaks of deadly diseases originating in the wet markets. funny, that.
So the ERG have named their conditions ! They really need to just fxck off.
The role of the ECJ isn’t a big problem for the people in NI but if no 10 obsess over this then they can own a trade war just at a time when the economy is hitting the buffers .
Mark Francois for ERG says as a group they have been unable to agree between themselves
ERG resolves they will unite behind whoever wins
They are neutral on both candidates
Well, I didn't see that coming. Second pleasant political surprise in as many days.
He said: "We believe that we have one and potentially two extremely strong options to be leader of the Conservative Party but as a group we were unable to collectively endorse either candidate."
Split between perennial schemers and those that are off to join Nigel
Perhaps it really is a case of both candidates being Leavers and the ERG being ambivalent about which one wins out.
Robert Peston @Peston · 25s It is in Penny Mordaunt’s long term interest to say she is champion of members’ right to vote in the leadership election. But if she secures the support of a third or less of Tory MPs, she will be under enormous moral pressure from colleagues to pull out - and I assume she will
If she forces a vote now, with a large majority of MPs wanting Sunak, she would show herself unfit to be PM, IMO.
If Rishi caves and gives her one of the big offices of state then that would be a sign of real weakness from the start of his premiership.
Assume you are referring to Mordaunt? If so, no. Proper strong leaders are not afraid of bringing competitors in as potential successors. It would be a demonstration of leadership and strength, not weakness. Weak leaders, eg. Johnson and Truss surround themselves with no-hopers and sycophants. We are living with the consequences of such weak leadership.
Agreed and the Tory Party needs good communicators like Penny in visible roles for the hard sells that are coming down the line.
She has 27 backers. This talk might be more realistic if she had 127.
Rishi is walking into a trap by avoiding a leadership vote. He will struggle with a reputation as a technocrat regardless. Dodging an election will not help that and will dog his premiership. He will be better if is Mordaunt gets her numbers and triggers a vote.
A vote by 180,000 self selecting octagenarian Tory Members just draws attention to the historical absurdity that got us to where we are. Moreso when we're shown these members deliberating in pubs throughout the shires in quite misleading vox pops
A vote by the 310 elected Tory MPs sthough not perfect appears much more legitimate.
For a politician who with struggle with a technocratic global-elite persona, avoiding a vote is a risk IMO.
I don't think the public take a mandate from Tory party members seriously. Not for being prime minister anyway.
Yes. Tory MPs claiming that are being disingenuous suggesting it would be treated like a public mandate.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 17m Boris Johnson claimed to have 102 MPs backing him. But we were never shown the list. Penny Mordaunt now claiming to have 90 names. But, again, no evidence. Please can we see it?
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Logic is not Sean’s area of strength.
Apart from being a superlative tosser, we’re still trying to identify his USPs
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
What was his ramping of W3W? I must have missed that.
That was a system always doomed to fail – it had a fatal flaw: if you miswrite or misspell a word (e.g. a homophone) you could end up on the other side of the city/world. Why would anyone think it was a workable idea?
Are the words totally random or is there error checking built into their structure (or in similar ways that many computer science algorithms have been developed over the years)?
The obvious thing thing would be that the words together can be encoded into a binary form in a manner such that if the word is corrupted i.e. misspelled that an checksum algorithm fails.
I'm not sure exactly how the algorithm works but as with so many things designed by tech bros who rarely leave their own bedroom, its dangerously flawed to the point where one cannot rely on it. Wiki tells me that Mountain Rescue England & Wales have counselled against using it – a fairly fatal blow I would have thought!
Well, its a huge flaw if it doesn't have even basic checksum type error checking....a really clever system would not only notice a typo but also self correct say 1-2 letters being mistyped i.e. still now what the location was you actually meant.
That how huge parts of sending files over the internet work and these error checking algorithms are normally part of any decent undergraduate computer science course. And that is why naively I presumed that would be a fundamental part of any such attempt at simplification of location coordinates.
Oh my god - if you all start that conversation again I might have to leave the site forever.
My house has the W3W location Expect Serene Waters (changed slightly while keeping the meaning) - which was amusing until the divorce.
The problems of error checking in this resemble those for the telegraph commercial codes of the 19th and early 20th cents. The aim there wasn’t really secrecy - but information densely. While protecting against errors.
The codes are long abandoned, and in most cases are no longer copyrighted.
The fix is easy here - you add a fourth (checksum) word that can be displayed and used if required.
Because the issue here isn’t information density it’s validation of information quality and that means a secondary validation process can be worthwhile
Or, ask your informant to move the 1.5 metres on average required, and give you another w3w location as soon as it changes.
Under two hours until the 'why a visibly ethnic minority running the country isn't actually important or good because they're on the other team' articles start to drop.
No, Sunak's potential crowning as PM is a not moment to celebrate diversity. If you think so then you've not really listened to his politics or the people they will hurt most. Few children or young POC will be inspired by a person working against their/their families' interests.
Mark Francois for ERG says as a group they have been unable to agree between themselves
ERG resolves they will unite behind whoever wins
They are neutral on both candidates
Well, I didn't see that coming. Second pleasant political surprise in as many days.
He said: "We believe that we have one and potentially two extremely strong options to be leader of the Conservative Party but as a group we were unable to collectively endorse either candidate."
Split between perennial schemers and those that are off to join Nigel
Perhaps it really is a case of both candidates being Leavers and the ERG being ambivalent about which one wins out.
I think its more that Francois has lost control of the ERG as a united group, they are now a much looser collective. The more prominent ERGers have made their own position very clear
Under two hours until the 'why a visibly ethnic minority running the country isn't actually important or good because they're on the other team' articles start to drop.
No, Sunak's potential crowning as PM is a not moment to celebrate diversity. If you think so then you've not really listened to his politics or the people they will hurt most. Few children or young POC will be inspired by a person working against their/their families' interests.
Mark Francois confirms there will be an ERG statement at midday. The ERG like to vote in a bloc, but have split over weekend with some prominent figures - Braverman, Baker - coming out for Sunak. Now Johnson out, will they agree on Sunak or split?
Under two hours until the 'why a visibly ethnic minority running the country isn't actually important or good because they're on the other team' articles start to drop.
No, Sunak's potential crowning as PM is a not moment to celebrate diversity. If you think so then you've not really listened to his politics or the people they will hurt most. Few children or young POC will be inspired by a person working against their/their families' interests.
Andrew Neil @afneil · 17m Boris Johnson claimed to have 102 MPs backing him. But we were never shown the list. Penny Mordaunt now claiming to have 90 names. But, again, no evidence. Please can we see it?
Sunak will be a competent if uninspiring centrist, and grim domestic politics will be out-grimmed by even grimmer world politics. The appetite for profound political upheaval will be dulled. The Tories will unite under Sunak as he becomes their only possible chance of survival
Labour will still win in 24, but not by 30 points. Sunak will claw back support. He might even reduce Labour to NOM
When Leondamus speaks you’d better listen. There’s always surprises on the upside.
Poor guy - no millions of dead Brits from covid, no alien takeover, no Russian nuclear strike, Truss surprises hugely on the downside and is gone, Boris wasn't restored, not even any proof that China released covid deliberately....but sooner or later he must get one right!
Don’t forget his ramping of What3Words, who, according to a PBer last week, are losing money hand over fist.
To choose just one of those alleged predictions of mine, I never said “China released covid deliberately” I said “it came from the lab”
Et voila
“Pre-print:
Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2
"Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, who co-authored both papers, had previously called on the scientific community in a letter to be more open to the idea that the virus was the result of a lab leak.
But the findings moved him "to the point where now I also think it's just not plausible that this virus was introduced any other way than through the wildlife trade at the Wuhan market," he told reporters on a call about the findings.
Though previous investigation had centered on the live animal market, researchers wanted more evidence to determine it was really the progenitor of the outbreak, as opposed to an amplifier.
This required neighborhood-level study within Wuhan to be more certain the virus was "zoonotic" -- that it jumped from animals to people.
The first study's team used mapping tools to determine the location of the first 174 cases identified by the World Health Organization, finding 155 of them were in Wuhan.
Further, these cases clustered tightly around the market -- and some early patients with no recent history of visiting the market lived very close to it.
Mammals now known to be infectable with the virus -- including red foxes, hog badgers and raccoon dogs, were all sold live in the market, the team showed.
Two introductions to humans
They also tied positive samples from patients in early 2020 to the western portion of the market, which sold live or freshly butchered animals in late 2019.
The tightly confined early cases contrasted with how it radiated throughout the rest of the city by January and February, which the researchers confirmed by drilling into social media check-in data from the Weibo app.
"This tells us the virus was not circulating cryptically," Worobey said in a statement. "It really originated at that market and spread out from there."
Worobey has been almost completely debunked by other scientists
“Two recent publications appear to have bolstered the case for a natural origin connected to a “wet market” ….But critics counter that there are so many missing data about the epidemic’s initial days that this portrait may be inaccurate.”
Moreover the CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence for lab leak just gets bigger
“china began stockpiling PPE months before Covid outbreak’ China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts say”
(A new timeline which, by the way, renders the market hypothesis irrelevant)
It came from the lab. There really isn’t a debate any more. Apart from a few diehard virologists who are desperate to defend their science - and not lose their funding
All you've got "debunked by other scientists" while you happily post away from every conspiracy theorist that takes your fancy on the internet.
Every time someone posts something that says it didn't you come up with "debunked by other scientists", "pay of the Chinese" etc. etc. Just accept you might be mistaken as you so often are. Please. Like you were with Truss, Aliens etc etc. You're often wrong so you must be used to it by now
Ok, how about Francois Balloux of UCL - who was excellently lucid on covid-the-disease. His response to this paper
“This is an important piece of work. To me, it looks solid both conceptually and methodologically. I was given advance warning and was able to replicate the key findings. To the best of my knowledge, I confirm the reported patterns are genuine”
“The distribution of restriction sites in SARS-CoV-2 is highly atypical when compared to related viruses in circulation, and far more in line with previous lab-engineered coronaviruses. This is a troubling finding, which requires scrutiny.”
“These findings are not 'final and dispositive', but they can't be ignored either. To me, this is by far the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2.””
“I anticipate Covid twitter will combust in an implosion of rage and fury over this preprint. In an ideal world, this is not what should happen.”
Okay, if we're being credentialist, how about Professor Edward Holmes - ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney, with concurrent Professorial appointments in the School of Life & Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences. Doubtless in your mind he's a member of the CCP but, anyway...
"The COVID ‘lab leak theory’ is dead Researchers have confirmed the virus came from a Wuhan wet market, writes Professor Eddie Holmes."
"...Despite political barriers and a salivating media, the evidence for a natural animal origin for SARS-CoV-2 has increased over the past two years. To deny it puts us all at risk..."
A lot wrong there. For one thing, I like my science to assert and deny things on the basis of whether they are true or false, not whether they "put us all at risk," and not to get all pathetically polemical about "salivating media." And he is not making any first hand claims, just "researchers have established."
There's some weird shit going on here. The fact of a lethal variant of a virus emerging on the doorstep of an institution which boasts of and glories in and publishes papers about manufacturing lethal variants of that particular virus looks from most angles a tad suspicious. The bien pensant want to avoid the obvious conclusion out of a fear of "conspiracy theories," a touching belief in the inherent goodness and honesty of our insect overlords, and a fear of being thought racist (inscrutable evil mandarin scientists).
Meaning they fall straight into a genuine racist trope, about "wet markets" where disgusting peasants sell live bats to each other to put in the shark fin soup. Thing is, a wet market as far as I can tell is just a market with butchers and fishmongers in it. There's one in Tavistock, and a couple of the supermarkets qualify too. What we don't have are 1. an institute of virology or 2. outbreaks of deadly diseases originating in the wet markets. funny, that.
What Eddie Holmes really means is not “to deny the wet market hypothesis puts us all at risk” but “to deny the wet market hypothesis puts at risk my lucrative job with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control in Beijing”
Andrew Neil @afneil · 17m Boris Johnson claimed to have 102 MPs backing him. But we were never shown the list. Penny Mordaunt now claiming to have 90 names. But, again, no evidence. Please can we see it?
I fear before long someone's going to go one stage further than the current XR protests and we'll start seeing great art, cultural artifacts and history of the last 1000+ years literally destroyed. I'd be very nervous if I was a curator in the British Museum or worked at the National gallery.
Particularly with the reaction against colonial displays element.
If Rishi caves and gives her one of the big offices of state then that would be a sign of real weakness from the start of his premiership.
Assume you are referring to Mordaunt? If so, no. Proper strong leaders are not afraid of bringing competitors in as potential successors. It would be a demonstration of leadership and strength, not weakness. Weak leaders, eg. Johnson and Truss surround themselves with no-hopers and sycophants. We are living with the consequences of such weak leadership.
Agreed and the Tory Party needs good communicators like Penny in visible roles for the hard sells that are coming down the line.
She has 27 backers. This talk might be more realistic if she had 127.
The number of backers isn’t relevant to the fact that she is a good communicator and comes across as a relatively well-adjusted and decent human being. Which there is a significant lack of at the top of the Tory Party.
It will be a shame if she doesn’t get a decent role in the next government
If PM strings this out until 5 to 2pm and then doesn't have the numbers, she can kiss goodbye to Cabinet I reckon.
If she folds now and accepts the country needs Sunak and needs him today then she can get her sweetie.
LBC reckons she is trading for a top job
Rishi should face her down, she's got a weaker hand than Boris ever had in this race.
The whole Mordaunt thing is largely fluff imo. Sunak can give her a cabinet job but it doesn't have to be a big one.
She's a big beast in the party anyway. She would be expected to get a top job in the new cabinet. Why the need to angle for one?
Not sure how B of a B she actually is. It rests on very little as far as I can see. Just a good performance in that extremely odd last but one leadership contest. In which she said virtually nothing and was just a kind of 'presence' that didn't turn off or offend. Maybe she'll grow into a formidable politician from here but she's way off that atm imo.
Under two hours until the 'why a visibly ethnic minority running the country isn't actually important or good because they're on the other team' articles start to drop.
No, Sunak's potential crowning as PM is a not moment to celebrate diversity. If you think so then you've not really listened to his politics or the people they will hurt most. Few children or young POC will be inspired by a person working against their/their families' interests.
That will be interesting news to a lot of companies who are interested in diversity. No point in having someone of colour as your CEO as they are therefore rich and don't count. They are de facto white people if they have money. All people of colour should make sure they are poor or else they have to self-declare themselves white.
This is how fucking stupid people are on the left.
If Rishi caves and gives her one of the big offices of state then that would be a sign of real weakness from the start of his premiership.
Assume you are referring to Mordaunt? If so, no. Proper strong leaders are not afraid of bringing competitors in as potential successors. It would be a demonstration of leadership and strength, not weakness. Weak leaders, eg. Johnson and Truss surround themselves with no-hopers and sycophants. We are living with the consequences of such weak leadership.
Agreed and the Tory Party needs good communicators like Penny in visible roles for the hard sells that are coming down the line.
She has 27 backers. This talk might be more realistic if she had 127.
The number of backers isn’t relevant to the fact that she is a good communicator and comes across as a relatively well-adjusted and decent human being. Which there is a significant lack of at the top of the Tory Party.
It will be a shame if she doesn’t get a decent role in the next government
Cabinet potentially. One of the big 3 (FS, HS, CH), no.
When Tucker Carlson says in a podcast he has "contempt" for the UK because of "about how much they hate themselves… and how they have destroyed themselves”, we should listen. People such as Tucker would normally be our friends. This is such a massive humiliation.
Rishi is walking into a trap by avoiding a leadership vote. He will struggle with a reputation as a technocrat regardless. Dodging an election will not help that and will dog his premiership. He will be better if is Mordaunt gets her numbers and triggers a vote.
A vote by 180,000 self selecting octagenarian Tory Members just draws attention to the historical absurdity that got us to where we are. Moreso when we're shown these members deliberating in pubs throughout the shires in quite misleading vox pops
A vote by the 310 elected Tory MPs sthough not perfect appears much more legitimate.
For a politician who with struggle with a technocratic global-elite persona, avoiding a vote is a risk IMO.
I don't think the public take a mandate from Tory party members seriously. Not for being prime minister anyway.
Yes. Tory MPs claiming that are being disingenuous suggesting it would be treated like a public mandate.
Sunak has no mandate whether Tory members have a say or not. But he can build a public mandate by not running a circus and by delivering serious government for a change. The problem he faces is that most of what he has to do will be crushingly unpopular, AND he will face civil war from the Tory loons who hate other Tories more than they do Labour.
Comments
I assume what is meant is that she'd find it hard to unify the party, but the rules are the rules.
If she’s actually pratting about trying to go for this she’s being a Grade A Fool.
(IIRC as in if I remember histsorically; I wasn't there at the beginning of the last century.)
There is as yet no completely convincing account of the pandemic virus origins, and there are respectable scientist on both sides of the debate. (Note, Professor Jeffrey Sachs isn't one of them; he's not even a scientist.)
When Tucker Carlson says in a podcast he has "contempt" for the UK because of "about how much they hate themselves… and how they have destroyed themselves”, we should listen. People such as Tucker would normally be our friends. This is such a massive humiliation.
https://twitter.com/Rob_Kimbell/status/1584498452746027009
I'd much rather have our nutters, loony-tunes and n'ere do wells than yours, Mr Putin Carlson....
Tucker Carlson represents the worst of the worst of America. He's even more vile than Trump himself. 🤮
A group of nine scientists have glued themselves to the floor of Volkswagen’s Autostadt facility in Germany to protest climate change.
Unfortunately for members of the ‘Scientific Rebellion’ activist group when it came time to close up for the night, VW locked the doors and switched off the lights and heating.
According to the protesters, the carmaker supported their right to protest but neglected to give them ‘a bowl to urinate and defecate in a decent manner while we are glued.’
https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/20/protestors-who-glued-themselves-to-volkswagens-floor-left-in-the-dark-17601987/
If she folds now and accepts the country needs Sunak and needs him today then she can get her sweetie.
But Ockham’s razor slices profoundly towards lab leak
“LONDON (AP) — When a World Health Organization-led team traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a top official said he was worried about safety standards at a laboratory close to the seafood market where the first human cases were detected, according to a documentary released Thursday by Danish television channel TV2.
The Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention was handling coronaviruses “without potentially having the same level of expertise or safety or who knows,” Peter Ben Embarek said during a conference call in January, according to footage shown by TV2. “
https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-joe-biden-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-986f0ff0f97af020de3b4eb3d76b23cd
One of the problems is that those who we would expect to provide answers - virologists, immunologists, bioscientists - are also those who are emotionally most committed to proving it did NOT come from the lab. Because that would be cognitively unbearable for them - and might end careers, or worse
20m people are dead, after all
I am content with my personal conclusion that it is 95% certain it came from the lab, by accident. I accept I will not persuade others on PB. And we can respectfully disagree
What is more interesting because more provable is the cover-up that came after. The crushing of the mere idea of lab leak. That definitely happened (recall Facebook and Twitter deleted anyone even mentioning the hypothesis). That is frightening
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1584500672287756288?t=QXWNDDmXTJA0bwbGnrZZ5g&s=19
1. The breach of trust that the Truss budget represents. It is right to compare it to Black Wednesday in terms of destroying the Tories reputation, receipt that it was so very much worse. Major and Clarke arguably did quite well for a few years up to 1997 - fat lot of good it did them.
2. Hard to believe, but today's Tory party is even more divided than they were in the mid-90s. The willingness to rally around the leader, and to do unpopular, but arguably sensible, things at their behest is not present. Sunak will do well to survive to the next election.
I used to caution those who thought Labour were on an inevitable glide-path to victory. I thought both Johnson, and Truss, had plausible routes to victory at the next GE. There are some improbable scenarios where Starmer destroys his own credibility before the next election, but otherwise the result is done. People don't forgive or forget economic meltdowns that easily.
I really believe the Tories need a spell out of government to decide in which direction they actually want to go. We have had 3 years now of self-indulgent navel gazing and infighting by the Tories while the country slides downhill. The time to do that is in opposition not while trying to run the country.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1584500672287756288
The Tyranny of Simple Explanations
The history of science has been distorted by a longstanding conviction that correct theories about nature are always the most elegant ones.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/occams-razor/495332/
...it’s what Francis Crick was driving at when he warned that Occam’s razor (which he equated with advocating “simplicity and elegance”) might not be well suited to biology, where things can get very messy. While it’s true that “simple, elegant” theories have sometimes turned out to be wrong (a classical example being Alfred Kempe’s flawed 1879 proof of the “four-color theorem” in mathematics), it’s also true that simpler but less accurate theories can be more useful than complicated ones for clarifying the bare bones of an explanation. There’s no easy equation between simplicity and truth, and Crick’s caution about Occam’s razor just perpetuates misconceptions about its meaning and value.
The worst misuses, however, fixate on the idea that the razor can adjudicate between rival theories. I have found no single instance where it has served this purpose to settle a scientific debate. Worse still, the history of science is often distorted in attempts to argue that it has....
Robert Peston
@Peston
·
25s
It is in Penny Mordaunt’s long term interest to say she is champion of members’ right to vote in the leadership election. But if she secures the support of a third or less of Tory MPs, she will be under enormous moral pressure from colleagues to pull out - and I assume she will
And welcome back. Just hedged the 4.5 tip you made a few weeks ago (at 4.5) on a Labour majority.
ERG resolves they will unite behind whoever wins
They are neutral on both candidates
Oh sod off ERG...
The codes are long abandoned, and in most cases are no longer copyrighted.
Especially when it involves reality and compromise.
Amazing fact that I've had to check three times, should Mr Sunak become Prime Minister, he will become the first Head of Government to represent a Yorkshire Constituency.
https://twitter.com/JackTindale/status/1584472906889064448
He’s also this guy:
“Edward Holmes on being asked why they didn't release the SARS-CoV-2 genome when they got it: "...essentially there were instructions that there's no publicizing the outbreak, so we kept it to ourselves, we told the key people in China..but we were told not to release the data..."
https://twitter.com/theseeker268/status/1380600964218974209?s=46&t=zQTb85yUB9K4Ug9nuIBk4w
So he’s totally reliable. Not
Were labour so inclined they could insist on formalizing everything within a written constitution so this type of disaster cannot occur again
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1584503502545768448
Does he now think Rishi has got enough votes?
https://twitter.com/DavidDPaxton/status/1584503604223754241
But ERG has the votes to show that they can block both.
That will show Rishi their power!!
Because the issue here isn’t information density it’s validation of information quality and that means a secondary validation process can be worthwhile
https://twitter.com/SophiaSleigh/status/1584503813292974081
Not much better than Chishti
1 lab leak. Highly plausible theory. Not proven. But if it is ever proven: wow. Massive and important consequences
2. Ivermectin. A trivial theory which is probably total bollocks. Does anyone care anyway?
3. Trying to solve the Ukrainian war = really really important because if it goes wrong we could, literally, all die. We can argue how this solving is done but boy, it needs to be done
Yet to you these all can all be classed as “weird conspiratorial nonsense done by loons”
Which is itself a lunatic position. You’re an idiot
There's some weird shit going on here. The fact of a lethal variant of a virus emerging on the doorstep of an institution which boasts of and glories in and publishes papers about manufacturing lethal variants of that particular virus looks from most angles a tad suspicious. The bien pensant want to avoid the obvious conclusion out of a fear of "conspiracy theories," a touching belief in the inherent goodness and honesty of our insect overlords, and a fear of being thought racist (inscrutable evil mandarin scientists).
Meaning they fall straight into a genuine racist trope, about "wet markets" where disgusting peasants sell live bats to each other to put in the shark fin soup. Thing is, a wet market as far as I can tell is just a market with butchers and fishmongers in it. There's one in Tavistock, and a couple of the supermarkets qualify too. What we don't have are 1. an institute of virology or 2. outbreaks of deadly diseases originating in the wet markets. funny, that.
The role of the ECJ isn’t a big problem for the people in NI but if no 10 obsess over this then they can own a trade war just at a time when the economy is hitting the buffers .
Andrew Neil
@afneil
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17m
Boris Johnson claimed to have 102 MPs backing him. But we were never shown the list.
Penny Mordaunt now claiming to have 90 names. But, again, no evidence. Please can we see it?
No, Sunak's potential crowning as PM is a not moment to celebrate diversity. If you think so then you've not really listened to his politics or the people they will hurt most. Few children or young POC will be inspired by a person working against their/their families' interests.
https://twitter.com/mirrordarren/status/1584462212046852098
“It’s only diversity if you think like me”.
homeworknomination list.It will be a shame if she doesn’t get a decent role in the next government
This is how fucking stupid people are on the left.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1584506211785113600
“a bit”? By ERG standards??
Although she denies it now, Penny was a fully paid up TWAW member….
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1584508140455763969