It can be mocked as being a Disney Prince in totally serious criticism of supposed western overegging of Zelensky, but if a big part of being a leader in wartime is inspiring people by deed and word, it is the sort of thing that helps.
He seems to understand well his own strengths and weaknesses. He does the acting, the drama, the big stages, and leaves his generals and ministers to work out military strategy and sorting out the power and water supply.
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Thanks for posting this. I think there is little point debating with him any more. He speaks with the shallow knowledge of someone who gets his science from Twitter.
aaaaand there you go. You get to ignore the now frankly overwhelming evidence that it came from the lab. Suits you, Mister "people make mistakes, 20 million died, whatever" Turbowotsit
You ignore anything that doesnt fit your beliefs. That’s why there is no point carrying on. I’m open to lots of possibilities, as I have expressed. You are not. You KNOW, for certain.
Reminds me of the story of after Sean Connery's initial interview to play Bond - Cubby Broccoli watching him walk away out of the window and remarking "You can hear his balls clanking from here".
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
It can be mocked as being a Disney Prince in totally serious criticism of supposed western overegging of Zelensky, but if a big part of being a leader in wartime is inspiring people by deed and word, it is the sort of thing that helps.
He seems to understand well his own strengths and weaknesses. He does the acting, the drama, the big stages, and leaves his generals and ministers to work out military strategy and sorting out the power and water supply.
Interesting article in the Economist about the Commander of the Ukraine Army, it does read as if there is at least some tension between him and Zelensky. Perhaps inevitable at the top, even healthy, and found at all top levels in wartime.
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Come up with hard, irrefutable evidence for the wet market, and I will absolutely listen - but there is none, is there? None. Other than: it is what you desperately want to be true. And against it is the overwhelming circumstantial evidence for Lab Leak - ie the proximity of the ONLY LAB BLAH BLAH
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Come up with hard, irrefutable evidence for the wet market, and I will absolutely listen - but there is none, is there? None. Other than: it is what you desperately want to be true. And against it is the overwhelming circumstantial evidence for Lab Leak - ie the proximity of the ONLY LAB BLAH BLAH
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Really, who?
Twitter, again. You also ignored the point of Andy’s post re furin cleavage and coronaviruses.
Why are you all so wedded to zoonosis, pangolins and the wet market, when it is becoming intellectually embarrassing?
Really, why?
I don't understand the psychology. I mean, I do get it for effete, wanker scientists who can't accept the cruel reality - I'd probably be the same if it was convincingly argued that careless flint knappers killed 20 million people - but I am utterly mystified by the rest of a relatively smart bunch of people, as on PB, being so blinkered
Is it the political polarisation of this issue? ie coz the Trumpites/Republicans pushed the Lab Theory early, so it is now poisoned?
If so, that is sad. Really quite sad. We are better than that
Why are you all so wedded to zoonosis, pangolins and the wet market, when it is becoming intellectually embarrassing?
Really, why?
I don't understand the psychology. I mean, I do get it for effete, wanker scientists who can't accept the cruel reality - I'd probably be the same if it was convincingly argued that careless flint knappers killed 20 million people - but I am utterly mystified by the rest of a relatively smart bunch of people, as on PB, being so blinkered
Is it the political polarisation of this issue? ie coz the Trumpites/Republicans pushed the Lab Theory early, so it is now poisoned?
If so, that is sad. Really quite sad. We are better than that
Shape up, PB
Because it’s case not proven, and every other pandemic has been natural in origin. You might be right. But the case is not proven.
"COVID-19 in China: Current Situation and Downstream effects: 🧵
1/ From the outset, it is very important to recognise that a humanitarian catastrophe is currently unfolding in China. Analysis of this situation is not incompatible with recognising the horror of the situation."
Hypothetically, if HIV guaranteed complete immunity to Covid (including all current variants, and future ones), I'd pick HIV.
I'm not sure he's a loon, at all. He has strident opinions, he also seems notably well informed - this is his job: biorisk
The HIV thing is eccentric but arguable. If you believe Covid will be with us forever and will always mutate, quite possibly into something nastier, then having (now treatable) HIV would be better than getting a lethal and untreatable dose of Covid
There’s no evidence that an untreatable disease of covid exists, especially in people who have had vaccination and the disease itself. Don’t get sucked in.
Oh do fuck off. You're the one who said "if it came from the lab, that's a shame, but PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES!"
LOL
No need to be rude. The point is how it came from the lab, if that’s what happened. I have asked you before if you think it is man made, or a release by accident of a natural virus. If it’s a lab leak, my money is on the latter. You seem unable to accept that pandemics can arise naturally, as they have done repeatedly through human history. I believe you are off travelling soon? Hopefully do your mental state some good. You say that your stay, sorry Eadrics stay, in Wales was thanks for a tip off about what was coming. I think you do this a lot - but a bit like the fake mediums casting round for names. You are pushing the China/doom/new variant meme right now. Maybe you will be right, and in eight weeks time we’re locked down again. But I doubt it.
I'm perfectly fine, Mr "20 million died but that's OK because people make mistakes"" Dude
You are physically incapable of accepting this probably came from the lab, even though you pretend to have shifted away from wet market/zoonosis to a "neutral position". Deep down you fundamentally and emotionally reject the lab leak hypothesis - because you are a scientist and it troubles you existentially that your friends and colleagues might have done this
Ergo, your opinion on all this is frankly worthless?
On other topics I am sure you are much more fun, I just can't remember any examples of that
You don’t sound fine. I am happy to accept the lab leak hypotheses. I also think it’s likely natural in origin. Found in a bat in a cave, brought back to Wuhan, accidentally released. I think you have decided that what happened is scientists paid by Fauci, changed the original virus by inserting a furin cleavage abiliy, and it’s this that escaped. Hence you want to put Fauci on trial. Maybe you are right. But it’s definitely possible to have been natural in origin. As I keep saying, see Spanish Flu, SARS, MERS, the Black Death.
Let me get this right, because it IS important, and 0- banter aside - I do not wish to traduce you, or misrepresent you. Are you now admitting that the most likely origin is a "lab leak but natural" - ie a bat escaped from the lab? Or a bat bit some poor bastard in the lab who then went to the market?
If so, I would probably agree (tho I think you are rather fraudulently misusing the word "natural")
Best guess, it came from the lab. Surely an accident. Was it engineered? Highly likely, that is the research they were doing at the lab
It will be interesting to see just how badly your lot can fuck this up. You Do Not Pick A Fight With The Nurses.
"We're sticking to the independent pay review body. Which we overrode last year, and may interfere with to get the independent result we want next year." People aren't stupid. Told to clap for carers and our heroic NHS staff we're now being told they are on the shill for Putin.
A 6% rise for nurses in line with the average national rise maybe. Or one off extra payment.
The 19% rise the RCN want however is unaffordable
So go and negotiate. They have opened extreme. You are refusing to negotiate. So regardless of what they asked for, its the government being unreasonable.
I saw Barclay on the news earlier. Talking matter if factory about not reopening this year’s pay settlement, independent pay review, important to look forward etc as if this were just some run of the mill contractual process they were going through. Completely tin eared lack of engagement. Not even anything for the die hard Tories like a promise to bring back corporal punishment for skiving paramedics. Almost, dare I say, Major government circa 1996.
We're heading into a winter of discontent. Yet instead of being paraphrased as "Crisis, What Crisis?" the government are instead claiming they *settled* the crisis and anyone saying the entirely reasonable offers are unreasonable must be working for Putin.
Its like they have given up. No negotiation. Which means the strikes will continue. No excuse. No strategy. No support. No viable pivot to deploy to try and blame the strikes on communist nurses. What is the plan? Hope the public turn on the nurses? And their ludicrous unreasonableness provides succour to less reasonable unions like the RMT...
I'm not sure how a conviction would affect Trump's ability to run. (I am not a lawyer, and have not seen a good discussion of the issues.) However I can say that the 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War, does have a "disqualification" clause that might apply: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14-S3-1-1/ALDE_00000848/
On the other hand, it didn't apply to Eugene Debs, who was convicted of sedition, but ran for president while taxpayers were providing his room and board: "Debs ran for president in the 1920 election while imprisoned in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He received 919,799[54] votes (3.4 percent),[55] slightly less than he had won in 1912, when he received 6 percent, the highest number of votes for a Socialist Party presidential candidate in the United States." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs#Sedition_conviction_and_appeal_to_U.S._Supreme_Court
Warren Harding, who won the 1920 election, commuted his sentence to time served. (Harding had other faults, but he was far better on civil lberties than Woodrow Wilson.)
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Come up with hard, irrefutable evidence for the wet market, and I will absolutely listen - but there is none, is there? None. Other than: it is what you desperately want to be true. And against it is the overwhelming circumstantial evidence for Lab Leak - ie the proximity of the ONLY LAB BLAH BLAH
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Really, who?
Twitter, again. You also ignored the point of Andy’s post re furin cleavage and coronaviruses.
So, er, Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar and Francis Collins - when discussing the origins of the new SARS plague threatening the world - had no idea the Furin Cleavge Site was a red herring and could be blithely dismissed, as "Andy Cooke" has done?
How did they not grasp such a simple fact. a fact so dumb even Andy Cooke off of PB got it? Why did they even bother discussing this silly thing? The leading scientists in the world? Weird, huh
"COVID-19 in China: Current Situation and Downstream effects: 🧵
1/ From the outset, it is very important to recognise that a humanitarian catastrophe is currently unfolding in China. Analysis of this situation is not incompatible with recognising the horror of the situation."
Hypothetically, if HIV guaranteed complete immunity to Covid (including all current variants, and future ones), I'd pick HIV.
I'm not sure he's a loon, at all. He has strident opinions, he also seems notably well informed - this is his job: biorisk
The HIV thing is eccentric but arguable. If you believe Covid will be with us forever and will always mutate, quite possibly into something nastier, then having (now treatable) HIV would be better than getting a lethal and untreatable dose of Covid
There’s no evidence that an untreatable disease of covid exists, especially in people who have had vaccination and the disease itself. Don’t get sucked in.
Oh do fuck off. You're the one who said "if it came from the lab, that's a shame, but PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES!"
LOL
No need to be rude. The point is how it came from the lab, if that’s what happened. I have asked you before if you think it is man made, or a release by accident of a natural virus. If it’s a lab leak, my money is on the latter. You seem unable to accept that pandemics can arise naturally, as they have done repeatedly through human history. I believe you are off travelling soon? Hopefully do your mental state some good. You say that your stay, sorry Eadrics stay, in Wales was thanks for a tip off about what was coming. I think you do this a lot - but a bit like the fake mediums casting round for names. You are pushing the China/doom/new variant meme right now. Maybe you will be right, and in eight weeks time we’re locked down again. But I doubt it.
I'm perfectly fine, Mr "20 million died but that's OK because people make mistakes"" Dude
You are physically incapable of accepting this probably came from the lab, even though you pretend to have shifted away from wet market/zoonosis to a "neutral position". Deep down you fundamentally and emotionally reject the lab leak hypothesis - because you are a scientist and it troubles you existentially that your friends and colleagues might have done this
Ergo, your opinion on all this is frankly worthless?
On other topics I am sure you are much more fun, I just can't remember any examples of that
You don’t sound fine. I am happy to accept the lab leak hypotheses. I also think it’s likely natural in origin. Found in a bat in a cave, brought back to Wuhan, accidentally released. I think you have decided that what happened is scientists paid by Fauci, changed the original virus by inserting a furin cleavage abiliy, and it’s this that escaped. Hence you want to put Fauci on trial. Maybe you are right. But it’s definitely possible to have been natural in origin. As I keep saying, see Spanish Flu, SARS, MERS, the Black Death.
Let me get this right, because it IS important, and 0- banter aside - I do not wish to traduce you, or misrepresent you. Are you now admitting that the most likely origin is a "lab leak but natural" - ie a bat escaped from the lab? Or a bat bit some poor bastard in the lab who then went to the market?
If so, I would probably agree (tho I think you are rather fraudulently misusing the word "natural")
Best guess, it came from the lab. Surely an accident. Was it engineered? Highly likely, that is the research they were doing at the lab
I don’t know what’s most likely, but the idea of a virus found in bats in a cave, the virus brought back to Wuhan for study, and that virus somehow escaping has to be a possibility. And that would be a natural origin, just that the exposure would not have happened if we hadn’t been studying bat coronaviruses. I find that much more plausible that it being from gain of function research.
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Come up with hard, irrefutable evidence for the wet market, and I will absolutely listen - but there is none, is there? None. Other than: it is what you desperately want to be true. And against it is the overwhelming circumstantial evidence for Lab Leak - ie the proximity of the ONLY LAB BLAH BLAH
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Really, who?
Twitter, again. You also ignored the point of Andy’s post re furin cleavage and coronaviruses.
So, er, Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar and Francis Collins - when discussing the origins of the new SARS plague threatening the world - had no idea the Furin Cleavge Site was a red herring and could be blithely dismissed, as "Andy Cooke" has done?
How did they not grasp such a simple fact. a fact so dumb even Andy Cooke off of PB got it? Why did they even bother discussing this silly thing? The leading scientists in the world? Weird, huh
Are you aware of natural ways for viruses to interact within one host? It’s not just bacteria that evolve resistance and new modes of infection.
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Come up with hard, irrefutable evidence for the wet market, and I will absolutely listen - but there is none, is there? None. Other than: it is what you desperately want to be true. And against it is the overwhelming circumstantial evidence for Lab Leak - ie the proximity of the ONLY LAB BLAH BLAH
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Really, who?
Twitter, again. You also ignored the point of Andy’s post re furin cleavage and coronaviruses.
You are literally dismissing evidence because it is a screenshot of an actual email - undisputedly real - between Fauci and Farrar etc, on the basis that the screenshot was "off Twitter"
You realise this sounds a tad desperate, I am sure
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
I haven't given him a "kicking" - I've just responded to one of his posts saying it adds no value to the discussion and suggested he has a rethink. Because he's certainly capable of making interesting contributions.
Incidentally, the fact that you think I'm a seriously partisan poster says everything about you, not me.
"COVID-19 in China: Current Situation and Downstream effects: 🧵
1/ From the outset, it is very important to recognise that a humanitarian catastrophe is currently unfolding in China. Analysis of this situation is not incompatible with recognising the horror of the situation."
Hypothetically, if HIV guaranteed complete immunity to Covid (including all current variants, and future ones), I'd pick HIV.
I'm not sure he's a loon, at all. He has strident opinions, he also seems notably well informed - this is his job: biorisk
The HIV thing is eccentric but arguable. If you believe Covid will be with us forever and will always mutate, quite possibly into something nastier, then having (now treatable) HIV would be better than getting a lethal and untreatable dose of Covid
There’s no evidence that an untreatable disease of covid exists, especially in people who have had vaccination and the disease itself. Don’t get sucked in.
Oh do fuck off. You're the one who said "if it came from the lab, that's a shame, but PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES!"
LOL
No need to be rude. The point is how it came from the lab, if that’s what happened. I have asked you before if you think it is man made, or a release by accident of a natural virus. If it’s a lab leak, my money is on the latter. You seem unable to accept that pandemics can arise naturally, as they have done repeatedly through human history. I believe you are off travelling soon? Hopefully do your mental state some good. You say that your stay, sorry Eadrics stay, in Wales was thanks for a tip off about what was coming. I think you do this a lot - but a bit like the fake mediums casting round for names. You are pushing the China/doom/new variant meme right now. Maybe you will be right, and in eight weeks time we’re locked down again. But I doubt it.
I'm perfectly fine, Mr "20 million died but that's OK because people make mistakes"" Dude
You are physically incapable of accepting this probably came from the lab, even though you pretend to have shifted away from wet market/zoonosis to a "neutral position". Deep down you fundamentally and emotionally reject the lab leak hypothesis - because you are a scientist and it troubles you existentially that your friends and colleagues might have done this
Ergo, your opinion on all this is frankly worthless?
On other topics I am sure you are much more fun, I just can't remember any examples of that
You don’t sound fine. I am happy to accept the lab leak hypotheses. I also think it’s likely natural in origin. Found in a bat in a cave, brought back to Wuhan, accidentally released. I think you have decided that what happened is scientists paid by Fauci, changed the original virus by inserting a furin cleavage abiliy, and it’s this that escaped. Hence you want to put Fauci on trial. Maybe you are right. But it’s definitely possible to have been natural in origin. As I keep saying, see Spanish Flu, SARS, MERS, the Black Death.
Let me get this right, because it IS important, and 0- banter aside - I do not wish to traduce you, or misrepresent you. Are you now admitting that the most likely origin is a "lab leak but natural" - ie a bat escaped from the lab? Or a bat bit some poor bastard in the lab who then went to the market?
If so, I would probably agree (tho I think you are rather fraudulently misusing the word "natural")
Best guess, it came from the lab. Surely an accident. Was it engineered? Highly likely, that is the research they were doing at the lab
I don’t know what’s most likely, but the idea of a virus found in bats in a cave, the virus brought back to Wuhan for study, and that virus somehow escaping has to be a possibility. And that would be a natural origin, just that the exposure would not have happened if we hadn’t been studying bat coronaviruses. I find that much more plausible that it being from gain of function research.
But why? We know they were doing Gain of Function research to make the coronaviruses more infectious and dangerous, and specially adapted for humans - they were injecting them into humanised mice, for that reason
Here. Here is Peter Daszak, boasting that his Wuhan lab can make "killer coronaviruses"
🚨🚨🚨 Explosive, Unearthed Video Shows Peter Daszak Describing ‘Chinese Colleagues’ Developing ‘Killer’ Coronaviruses
Surely the most likely virus to make the leap from animals to humans is the one that is specially adapted to humans and designed to latch on to them and "be a killer coronavirus"
You are halfway to accepting the truth. You have made good progress. Keep it up
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Come up with hard, irrefutable evidence for the wet market, and I will absolutely listen - but there is none, is there? None. Other than: it is what you desperately want to be true. And against it is the overwhelming circumstantial evidence for Lab Leak - ie the proximity of the ONLY LAB BLAH BLAH
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Really, who?
Twitter, again. You also ignored the point of Andy’s post re furin cleavage and coronaviruses.
You are literally dismissing evidence because it is a screenshot of an actual email - undisputedly real - between Fauci and Farrar etc, on the basis that the screenshot was "off Twitter"
You realise this sounds a tad desperate, I am sure
Not dismissing evidence.
Viruses exchange genetic material all the time. Get two viruses in one host and odd things can happen. It’s entirely plausible that covid gained the furin cleavage site naturally. Doesn’t mean that how it happened, but it is possible.
Why are you all so wedded to zoonosis, pangolins and the wet market, when it is becoming intellectually embarrassing?
Really, why?
I don't understand the psychology. I mean, I do get it for effete, wanker scientists who can't accept the cruel reality - I'd probably be the same if it was convincingly argued that careless flint knappers killed 20 million people - but I am utterly mystified by the rest of a relatively smart bunch of people, as on PB, being so blinkered
Is it the political polarisation of this issue? ie coz the Trumpites/Republicans pushed the Lab Theory early, so it is now poisoned?
If so, that is sad. Really quite sad. We are better than that
Shape up, PB
Says the absolute roaster that spammed the site about what.three.words and how only your galaxy sized brain could spot its genius.
Still not as embarrassing as your pronouncements on how awesome PM Liz Truss would be.
“Vile shitbags who drive ambulances for a living”. Yeah! Personally I’d string them up with the scum firefighters who rescue stranded kittens from trees.
It will be interesting to see just how badly your lot can fuck this up. You Do Not Pick A Fight With The Nurses.
"We're sticking to the independent pay review body. Which we overrode last year, and may interfere with to get the independent result we want next year." People aren't stupid. Told to clap for carers and our heroic NHS staff we're now being told they are on the shill for Putin.
A 6% rise for nurses in line with the average national rise maybe. Or one off extra payment.
The 19% rise the RCN want however is unaffordable
So go and negotiate. They have opened extreme. You are refusing to negotiate. So regardless of what they asked for, its the government being unreasonable.
I saw Barclay on the news earlier. Talking matter if factory about not reopening this year’s pay settlement, independent pay review, important to look forward etc as if this were just some run of the mill contractual process they were going through. Completely tin eared lack of engagement. Not even anything for the die hard Tories like a promise to bring back corporal punishment for skiving paramedics. Almost, dare I say, Major government circa 1996.
We're heading into a winter of discontent. Yet instead of being paraphrased as "Crisis, What Crisis?" the government are instead claiming they *settled* the crisis and anyone saying the entirely reasonable offers are unreasonable must be working for Putin.
Its like they have given up. No negotiation. Which means the strikes will continue. No excuse. No strategy. No support. No viable pivot to deploy to try and blame the strikes on communist nurses. What is the plan? Hope the public turn on the nurses? And their ludicrous unreasonableness provides succour to less reasonable unions like the RMT...
It's the same psychotrauma as 2015-20.
The British Government has made it clear that it doesn't want to pay nurses/teachers/train drivers more. The other party in the negotiations is cruelly refusing to hear that. But the British Government is the British Government, so by definition they should get exactly what they want.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
The problem is that a Swiss system would only work here if implemented by Labour.
The Tories will just be bought and paid for by the American companies who want their system here.
Only Labour can reform the NHS. And fix it.
They were making good progress on every measure until they were voted out. Shortest waiting times in history, highest rate of satisfaction ever. Cancer guarantee.
Get the Tories out.
Such pointless partisanship insults the intelligence of everyone here.
You can post from a centre-left perspective, for sure, but please post constructive contributions not football team chants please.
Why can't CHB post partisan material? You do.
I most certainly do not.
I am entirely objective in my posts and my betting.
If you can't see that it's because you're part or the problem too.
Serious or self-parody? Hard to tell sometimes.
Totally serious.
My analysis is objective and, not being funny here, but I consistently make quite a bit of money off the back of it. As those who've followed me for a while will know.
I even posted truthfully on the dire state of the NHS earlier today (go back and have a read if you missed it) which isn't flattering to the Tories in any way. I even think Sunak should do a deal - get the independent pay review commission to have another look at the nurses case, updated for the latest inflation numbers.
I've criticised @Heathener and @CorrectHorseBattery for hyper partisan takes on Labour / Labour's chances, and I will continue to do so if I think it's baseless or unfounded or has no value. It doesn't mean I dislike them, have anything against them personally, or desire to "give them a kicking" - unless you think we should debate on here or call out what you think is nonsense.
What we're seeing is a herd football team defence of 'one of their own', which may reflect where we're at in the electoral lifecycle but certainly isn't serious analysis worthy of serious consideration.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Come up with hard, irrefutable evidence for the wet market, and I will absolutely listen - but there is none, is there? None. Other than: it is what you desperately want to be true. And against it is the overwhelming circumstantial evidence for Lab Leak - ie the proximity of the ONLY LAB BLAH BLAH
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Really, who?
Twitter, again. You also ignored the point of Andy’s post re furin cleavage and coronaviruses.
You are literally dismissing evidence because it is a screenshot of an actual email - undisputedly real - between Fauci and Farrar etc, on the basis that the screenshot was "off Twitter"
You realise this sounds a tad desperate, I am sure
Not dismissing evidence.
Viruses exchange genetic material all the time. Get two viruses in one host and odd things can happen. It’s entirely plausible that covid gained the furin cleavage site naturally. Doesn’t mean that how it happened, but it is possible.
"Before I left the office for the ball, I aligned nCoV with the 96% bat CoV sequenced at WIV. Except for the RBD the S proteins are essentially identical at the amino acid level – well all but the perfect insertion of 12 nucleotides that adds the furin site. S2 is over its whole length essentially identical.
I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotide that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function – that and you don’t change any other amino acid in S2? I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. Do the alignment of the spikes at the amino acid level – its stunning.
Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted. Another scenario is that the progenitor of nCoV was a bat virus with the perfect furin cleavage site generated over 3 evolutionary times. In this scenario RaTG13 the WIV virus was generated by a perfect deletion of 12 nucleotides while essentially not changing any other S2 amino acid. Even more implausible IMO.
That is the big if. If you were doing gain of function research you would NOT use an existing clone of SARS or MERSv. These viruses are already human pathogens. What you would do is close a bat virus th[at] had not yet emerged. Maybe then pass it in human cells for a while to lock in the RBS, then you reclone and put in the mutations you are interested – one of the first a polybasic cleavage site." "
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Not remotely good enough, because it's not provably true and is probably false.
Politico.com - An attorney for [US Representative-Elect] George Santos responded to allegations he made up core portions of his resume with a fake quote from Winston Churchill.
What happened: An attorney for Republican Rep.-elect George Santos (R) responded to allegations in The New York Times that the politician made up core portions of his resume with a quote from Winston Churchill that PolitiFact says the British politician never uttered.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
I think you are spot on. If you are fighting day in, day out just to do the job, you must start to wonder if there isn’t something else you could be doing. I’m very lucky in that I love my job, am fairly paid for doing it and I get to manage my own time.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
The Conservatives have managed for twelve years and counting without one. Labour would take that.
“Vile shitbags who drive ambulances for a living”. Yeah! Personally I’d string them up with the scum firefighters who rescue stranded kittens from trees.
An ex-editor of The Sun is THE personification of "vile shitbag" writ large.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Indeed, and precisely what I have been saying for months.
An election victory with a majority of 20 or 30 or even probably 40 on a wafer thin manifesto not including any necessary radical changes won't give him any chance of getting them through if he springs them on the country afterwards.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
Pay certainly matters in itself, but is also a deeply symbolic issue.
Morale is low because we are the scapegoats that the government wants to bully.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
Not a hope in hell that the government would be willing to pay that much. (My sense is that we've passed through a state change and it would need some overpaying to get back to normal.)
But the experiment- tell organisations to pay what it takes to fill up the staff list- would be fascinating.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
The Conservatives have managed for twelve years and counting without one. Labour would take that.
Nonsense. How can anyone claim, for one example, that the 2019 election wasn't won on a specific vision? It was a three word slogan!
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Indeed, and precisely what I have been saying for months.
An election victory with a majority of 20 or 30 or even probably 40 on a wafer thin manifesto not including any necessary radical changes won't give him any chance of getting them through if he springs them on the country afterwards.
Which is actually a shame because the next government really does need to deliver for young people if we don't want the whole system to blow up.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
Not a hope in hell that the government would be willing to pay that much. (My sense is that we've passed through a state change and it would need some overpaying to get back to normal.)
But the experiment- tell organisations to pay what it takes to fill up the staff list- would be fascinating.
What would tempt you back, Stuart?
For me, it would be £100,000 a year plus a 50% of final salary pension payable at 70 based on three years' service.
Because for that money, I could buy three more houses (sorry, Max) and retire comfortably.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
Do they do a lot more manufacturing or other high energy parts of the economy? It surely cannot be domestic usage.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
More electric heating?
(Pure guess, but they have lots of nuclear and no North Sea gas, so it seems rational).
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
The Conservatives have managed for twelve years and counting without one. Labour would take that.
Nonsense. How can anyone claim, for one example, that the 2019 election wasn't won on a specific vision? It was a three word slogan!
'Give everyone owls' would have been about as accurate.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Sorry. I seem to have lost the vision and enthusiasm in the Conservative Party. Can you point it out to me?
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Indeed, Cameron proved that to be true, unless austerity is a vision of course.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
More electric heating?
(Pure guess, but they have lots of nuclear and no North Sea gas, so it seems rational).
I'm pretty confident that will be the case. Lots of electric heating in France.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
Do they do a lot more manufacturing or other high energy parts of the economy? It surely cannot be domestic usage.
My guess, nuclear generated electric has been so cheap for so long that they all preferentially heat with it, not gas or oil.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Indeed, and precisely what I have been saying for months.
An election victory with a majority of 20 or 30 or even probably 40 on a wafer thin manifesto not including any necessary radical changes won't give him any chance of getting them through if he springs them on the country afterwards.
Which is actually a shame because the next government really does need to deliver for young people if we don't want the whole system to blow up.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
Do they do a lot more manufacturing or other high energy parts of the economy? It surely cannot be domestic usage.
My guess, nuclear generated electric has been so cheap for so long that they all preferentially heat with it, not gas or oil.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
Not a hope in hell that the government would be willing to pay that much. (My sense is that we've passed through a state change and it would need some overpaying to get back to normal.)
But the experiment- tell organisations to pay what it takes to fill up the staff list- would be fascinating.
As I pointed out earlier today - they already are paying the market rate given that agency staff cost the nhs £8.9bn a year https://www.bmj.com/content/379/bmj.o2749 and we calculated earlier today that the 300,000 nurses the nhs employs cost less than that.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
The Conservatives have managed for twelve years and counting without one. Labour would take that.
Nonsense. How can anyone claim, for one example, that the 2019 election wasn't won on a specific vision? It was a three word slogan!
A slogan is not a vision, that's like saying you live your whole life on the premise of Eat Your Greens or Always Apply Sunscreen.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
I think you are spot on. If you are fighting day in, day out just to do the job, you must start to wonder if there isn’t something else you could be doing. I’m very lucky in that I love my job, am fairly paid for doing it and I get to manage my own time.
How about they enter into a sustainable long term arrangement where nurses’ pay rises automatically for the foreseeable future at a rate which is the higher of national average earnings or CPI inflation, with a floor of 2.5%.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Sorry. I seem to have lost the vision and enthusiasm in the Conservative Party. Can you point it out to me?
I am not an advocate for them!
It wouldn't surprise me if the next GE had a record low turnout. There is a palpable lack of enthusiasm.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Indeed, and precisely what I have been saying for months.
An election victory with a majority of 20 or 30 or even probably 40 on a wafer thin manifesto not including any necessary radical changes won't give him any chance of getting them through if he springs them on the country afterwards.
Which is actually a shame because the next government really does need to deliver for young people if we don't want the whole system to blow up.
I suspect we will start seeing labour’s policies in about 12 months time. What’s the point of revealing things well before an election only for your competition to steal whole sections of the policy.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
I think you are spot on. If you are fighting day in, day out just to do the job, you must start to wonder if there isn’t something else you could be doing. I’m very lucky in that I love my job, am fairly paid for doing it and I get to manage my own time.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
The Conservatives have managed for twelve years and counting without one. Labour would take that.
Nonsense. How can anyone claim, for one example, that the 2019 election wasn't won on a specific vision? It was a three word slogan!
But what did " get Brexit done" actually mean? If "get Brexit done badly" was a vision, by f***, mission accomplished.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
Not a hope in hell that the government would be willing to pay that much. (My sense is that we've passed through a state change and it would need some overpaying to get back to normal.)
But the experiment- tell organisations to pay what it takes to fill up the staff list- would be fascinating.
It is interesting though. We've already had a Council taken to Court for failing to provide statutory one to one education services. They had to concede and pay market rates. We will see more of it I reckon.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
As others have said, it’s much greater industrial production combined with less gas heating and more electric. I assume larger landmass probably contributes too.
Interestingly their peak demand is during the working day when industry is at full output whereas ours is in the evening for domestic consumption, so the two of us can balance our supply and demand nicely through the interconnectors.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
If Labour have no ideas then they also fulfil two of the three criteria. And there's no guarantee they won't be more incompetent.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
The Conservatives have managed for twelve years and counting without one. Labour would take that.
Nonsense. How can anyone claim, for one example, that the 2019 election wasn't won on a specific vision? It was a three word slogan!
'Give everyone owls' would have been about as accurate.
Mr Gullis, MP for Stoke on Trent, went on BBC Radio 4's Today programme following the judgment to defend the policy.
When the bishop's criticism was put to him he replied: "I don't think unelected bishops in the House of Lords should be preaching about politics.
"I think they should be looking in-house at the wide abuse claims that have gone on and the Archbishop of Canterbury should be spending his time focusing on [inaudible] the Church's reputation.
Well that's going to trigger HYUFD, he'll be sending tanks to Stoke to crush such heretical talk.
Like two of four of the cold coronaviruses. Like MERS.
So literally half of human-affecting coronaviruses prior to SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder which lab leaked OC43 in the 1880s.
No doubt Leon will leap in and insult me and others whilst screaming "DRAMA! BRACE! EVUL!"
Accepting anything that might imply lab leak regardless of content or origin with total credulity and lack of anything resembling critical thought whilst discounting any evidence against it as fatally biased and dishonest will inevitably lead you to one conclusion.
I've seen scientists online refuse to even discuss it any more due to the level of vitriol and abuse hurled at them if they don't subscribe to the lab leakers beliefs. I can empathise. I'm quitting discussing it here. Leon doesn't want to believe or listen to anything that might shake his over-excited and dramatic conviction in his simple answer with goodies and baddies, one that makes for such a good story and drama.
And he'll inevitably post rapidly, repetitively, and abusively on this yet again, so there's no point even looking in here again tonight, I reckon.
Leon, you're going to come up with something either patronising or abusive or irrelevant, so there's no point in reading it. It's just tedious now.
Come up with hard, irrefutable evidence for the wet market, and I will absolutely listen - but there is none, is there? None. Other than: it is what you desperately want to be true. And against it is the overwhelming circumstantial evidence for Lab Leak - ie the proximity of the ONLY LAB BLAH BLAH
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Really, who?
Twitter, again. You also ignored the point of Andy’s post re furin cleavage and coronaviruses.
You are literally dismissing evidence because it is a screenshot of an actual email - undisputedly real - between Fauci and Farrar etc, on the basis that the screenshot was "off Twitter"
You realise this sounds a tad desperate, I am sure
Not dismissing evidence.
Viruses exchange genetic material all the time. Get two viruses in one host and odd things can happen. It’s entirely plausible that covid gained the furin cleavage site naturally. Doesn’t mean that how it happened, but it is possible.
"Before I left the office for the ball, I aligned nCoV with the 96% bat CoV sequenced at WIV. Except for the RBD the S proteins are essentially identical at the amino acid level – well all but the perfect insertion of 12 nucleotides that adds the furin site. S2 is over its whole length essentially identical.
I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotide that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function – that and you don’t change any other amino acid in S2? I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. Do the alignment of the spikes at the amino acid level – its stunning.
Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted. Another scenario is that the progenitor of nCoV was a bat virus with the perfect furin cleavage site generated over 3 evolutionary times. In this scenario RaTG13 the WIV virus was generated by a perfect deletion of 12 nucleotides while essentially not changing any other S2 amino acid. Even more implausible IMO.
That is the big if. If you were doing gain of function research you would NOT use an existing clone of SARS or MERSv. These viruses are already human pathogens. What you would do is close a bat virus th[at] had not yet emerged. Maybe then pass it in human cells for a while to lock in the RBS, then you reclone and put in the mutations you are interested – one of the first a polybasic cleavage site." "
Farrar email summarising Garry in telcon
Have none of these people ever watched Spider-Man?
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
That's a different argument to "anything else is worth a try".
The ideas I've seen from Labour so far have been pretty crap and uninspiring ones - HoL reform is hardly a priority and eviscerating the private school sector will do nothing to improve educational outcomes overall, and may in fact make them worse.
As I'm said before I think Starmer is nothing more than a dull and boring tactical triangulator.
He'd offer nothing different from Sunak except the shade of his clothes.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
If Labour have no ideas then they also fulfil two of the three criteria. And there's no guarantee they won't be more incompetent.
The problem of nihilism is not that people will believe nothing, but rather that they will believe anything.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
If Labour have no ideas then they also fulfil two of the three criteria. And there's no guarantee they won't be more incompetent.
It is impossible to be more incompetent than this shower. Look, you’re a Tory, fine, you and HYUFD will prop up their floor of votes. Don’t concern troll about the vision of the Labour Party when the Tories have your vote in the bag come what may.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
I think you are spot on. If you are fighting day in, day out just to do the job, you must start to wonder if there isn’t something else you could be doing. I’m very lucky in that I love my job, am fairly paid for doing it and I get to manage my own time.
You not on the UCU picket lines then, Turbo?
Nope. I have a lot of sympathy for those who are, notably the younger ones, but the hard facts are that final salary pensions are gone, uni life is pretty well rewarded in the main and if you think the private sector is better, go there
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
If Labour have no ideas then they also fulfil two of the three criteria. And there's no guarantee they won't be more incompetent.
No guarantee, no. But it'd be a pretty tough ask though.
Why are you all so wedded to zoonosis, pangolins and the wet market, when it is becoming intellectually embarrassing?
Really, why?
I don't understand the psychology. I mean, I do get it for effete, wanker scientists who can't accept the cruel reality - I'd probably be the same if it was convincingly argued that careless flint knappers killed 20 million people - but I am utterly mystified by the rest of a relatively smart bunch of people, as on PB, being so blinkered
Is it the political polarisation of this issue? ie coz the Trumpites/Republicans pushed the Lab Theory early, so it is now poisoned?
If so, that is sad. Really quite sad. We are better than that
Shape up, PB
Says the absolute roaster that spammed the site about what.three.words and how only your galaxy sized brain could spot its genius.
Still not as embarrassing as your pronouncements on how awesome PM Liz Truss would be.
She was awesome. Totally piss funny. We will never again witness such shithousery in our lifetimes.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
Do they do a lot more manufacturing or other high energy parts of the economy? It surely cannot be domestic usage.
My guess, nuclear generated electric has been so cheap for so long that they all preferentially heat with it, not gas or oil.
OK, that makes sense. Thanks to all who answered.
Seems not to be true though
"... it appears that the French use much more electricity, whereas the UK uses a little more gas. The average yearly usage amounts currently stand as so:
United Kingdom: 3,100 kWh of electricity & 12,500 kWh of gas France: 4,670 kWh of electricity and 11,800 kWh of gas
You may think that the discrepancies between the two usages level the playing field; however, due to electricity being much more expensive per kWh in general, people in France are destined to pay more in their average energy bills.
When it comes down to the actual price of energy, there is not a great deal of difference. France’s electricity is a tad cheaper, whereas in the UK, gas is a little cheaper. Arguably, that slight reduction in electricity is more beneficial, especially with France’s higher usage, but the verdict stands as the UK being the cheaper of the two in general."
Not sure what to conclude from that. Heating in the Alps and Pyrenees must consume a lot, but it doesn't seem from this that electric is virtually free in France, as I thought.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
The Conservatives have managed for twelve years and counting without one. Labour would take that.
Nonsense. How can anyone claim, for one example, that the 2019 election wasn't won on a specific vision? It was a three word slogan!
But what did " get Brexit done" actually mean? If "get Brexit done badly" was a vision, by f***, mission accomplished.
Decry the details for sure, but the nation was in deadlock before the 2019 election, and Brexit is indeed done, at least as far as leaving and setting arrangements with the EU. That the nirvana we were promised hasn't yet arrived, and it's all a bit rubbish does not mean Brexit isn't done.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
That's a different argument to "anything else is worth a try".
The ideas I've seen from Labour so far have been pretty crap and uninspiring ones - HoL reform is hardly a priority and eviscerating the private school sector will do nothing to improve educational outcomes overall, and may in fact make them worse.
As I'm said before I think Starmer is nothing more than a dull and boring tactical triangulator.
He'd offer nothing different from Sunak except the shade of his clothes.
I’m sure he’ll take the advice of Tories such as yourself to heart. According to BJO he already does.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Indeed, Cameron proved that to be true, unless austerity is a vision of course.
Actually, the Conservatives (and then the coalition) had a strong reform programme on welfare, education, tax and pensions from 2010-2013 that did good for the country IMHO, before the coalition descended into stalemate. Then, the Conservatives had absolutely no idea what to do with the majority they won in 2015 except feel rather guilty about it.
Out of interest and nothing to do with anything on here:
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
Do they do a lot more manufacturing or other high energy parts of the economy? It surely cannot be domestic usage.
My guess, nuclear generated electric has been so cheap for so long that they all preferentially heat with it, not gas or oil.
OK, that makes sense. Thanks to all who answered.
Seems not to be true though
"... it appears that the French use much more electricity, whereas the UK uses a little more gas. The average yearly usage amounts currently stand as so:
United Kingdom: 3,100 kWh of electricity & 12,500 kWh of gas France: 4,670 kWh of electricity and 11,800 kWh of gas
You may think that the discrepancies between the two usages level the playing field; however, due to electricity being much more expensive per kWh in general, people in France are destined to pay more in their average energy bills.
When it comes down to the actual price of energy, there is not a great deal of difference. France’s electricity is a tad cheaper, whereas in the UK, gas is a little cheaper. Arguably, that slight reduction in electricity is more beneficial, especially with France’s higher usage, but the verdict stands as the UK being the cheaper of the two in general."
Not sure what to conclude from that. Heating in the Alps and Pyrenees must consume a lot, but it doesn't seem from this that electric is virtually free in France, as I thought.
So industrial use is a possibility.
But that wouldn't explain why it's so much higher right now.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
That's a different argument to "anything else is worth a try".
The ideas I've seen from Labour so far have been pretty crap and uninspiring ones - HoL reform is hardly a priority and eviscerating the private school sector will do nothing to improve educational outcomes overall, and may in fact make them worse.
As I'm said before I think Starmer is nothing more than a dull and boring tactical triangulator.
He'd offer nothing different from Sunak except the shade of his clothes.
I’m sure he’ll take the advice of Tories such as yourself to heart. According to BJO he already does.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
Not a hope in hell that the government would be willing to pay that much. (My sense is that we've passed through a state change and it would need some overpaying to get back to normal.)
But the experiment- tell organisations to pay what it takes to fill up the staff list- would be fascinating.
What would tempt you back, Stuart?
For me, it would be £100,000 a year plus a 50% of final salary pension payable at 70 based on three years' service.
Because for that money, I could buy three more houses (sorry, Max) and retire comfortably.
Excellent question.
I think it would be time and headspace to make the job doable for a couple more decades. Family Stuff meant pausing for a couple of years and realising how much full time teaching drains body and spirit. Oh, and fewer lies. A shame, because good days in school are tremendous fun.
However, I'm undoubtedly a freak- with a physical science PhD I ought to be making much more money doing something completely different.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
Indeed, and precisely what I have been saying for months.
An election victory with a majority of 20 or 30 or even probably 40 on a wafer thin manifesto not including any necessary radical changes won't give him any chance of getting them through if he springs them on the country afterwards.
Which is actually a shame because the next government really does need to deliver for young people if we don't want the whole system to blow up.
I suspect we will start seeing labour’s policies in about 12 months time. What’s the point of revealing things well before an election only for your competition to steal whole sections of the policy.
This excuse has been used before and I'm afraid it doesn't wash.
A policy proposed by Labour now and implemented by the Tories now is a win for Labour, not a loss.
That's in isolation, too - on top of that, it would show the direction they want to go.
Surely the way to settle all these public sector disputes is to announce that pay will be set from next year at the market rate to fill vacancies? Otherwise we'll be here again. From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
I think you are spot on. If you are fighting day in, day out just to do the job, you must start to wonder if there isn’t something else you could be doing. I’m very lucky in that I love my job, am fairly paid for doing it and I get to manage my own time.
You not on the UCU picket lines then, Turbo?
Nope. I have a lot of sympathy for those who are, notably the younger ones, but the hard facts are that final salary pensions are gone, uni life is pretty well rewarded in the main and if you think the private sector is better, go there
I agree, on the whole. Striking somewhat self-defeating for me, given I do bugger all teaching - no one is going to notice and I'll still need to make up the time to get my grants completed etc.
There are better paid options in my area,* but without the autonomy and freedom to choose what I work on, as long as I can convince someone to fund it.
Casualisation is an issue. Some unis/departments do take the piss a bit, but mine is actually very good on that.
*stats/code monkey for CROs for example, but that looks dull
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
Why not Farage, Scottish independence, or an alliance with Putin, or a tungsten tipped Brexit then? What about totally open borders? What about saving tens of billions by scrapping the MoD wholesale?
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
We have a nihilistic government that believes in nothing, has no ideology and is manifestly incompetent. But yes, let’s re-elect them on the grounds Labour have no ideas.
That's a different argument to "anything else is worth a try".
The ideas I've seen from Labour so far have been pretty crap and uninspiring ones - HoL reform is hardly a priority and eviscerating the private school sector will do nothing to improve educational outcomes overall, and may in fact make them worse.
As I'm said before I think Starmer is nothing more than a dull and boring tactical triangulator.
He'd offer nothing different from Sunak except the shade of his clothes.
So not in the least bit partisan. Thanks for clearing that up.
Gullis is repulsive, but this is a non point. What he said was 'When the bishop's criticism was put to him he replied: "I don't think unelected bishops in the House of Lords should be preaching about politics" ' which is different, and is also pretty in line with the thinking of prominent Christian thinkers like Jesus of Nazareth.
Actually, the Conservatives (and then the coalition) had a strong reform programme on welfare, education, tax and pensions from 2010-2013 that did good for the country IMHO, before the coalition descended into stalemate. Then, the Conservatives had absolutely no idea what to do with the majority they won in 2015 except feel rather guilty about it.
I'm genuinely of the view Cameron didn't expect to win a majority (had he not done so, he wouldn't have had to begin the process which led to the 2016 Referendum which, he had expressly said, was contingent on him winning a majority).
Mr Gullis, MP for Stoke on Trent, went on BBC Radio 4's Today programme following the judgment to defend the policy.
When the bishop's criticism was put to him he replied: "I don't think unelected bishops in the House of Lords should be preaching about politics.
"I think they should be looking in-house at the wide abuse claims that have gone on and the Archbishop of Canterbury should be spending his time focusing on [inaudible] the Church's reputation.
Well that's going to trigger HYUFD, he'll be sending tanks to Stoke to crush such heretical talk.
I heard the Archbish. His speech was very very good. But its a democratic outrage for the bishops of an established church to get an automatic seat in the House of Peers to say such things. So if Gullis wants to disestablish the CofE and abolish the Lords, I agree.
But he doesn't. Because he can't spell disestablish.
As my contributions are clearly not valued I will be leaving again.
Wish you a good Christmas
Thoughtful contributions are valued, but if all you have is, "it was all great when Labour were in office - get the Tories out" then that isn't one I value, I'm afraid.
For one thing that splurge in funding on the NHS over the 2000-2008 period was off the back of a huge boom in financial services and an asset bubble. And Labour weren't in office to deal with the huge contraction in the health of the public finances after the GFC.
For that to be credible, now, you'd have to identify how Labour would materially change the funding levels of the NHS in the current environment to achieve that same step change again.
Otherwise it's just football team stuff I'm afraid. I think you're better than that, and so are we.
Why do you not have a beef with Driver, Marquee Mark, amongst others, or even yourself? Because you are one of the seriously partisan posters and are quite content to read posts favourable to the Conservatives and antagonistic towards Labour, LD or the SNP.
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
Oi, leave me out of it. I'm still looking for reasons to vote for Labour, even if Sir Keir doesn't seem interested in offering them and people like CHB are actively and deliberately trying to turn me away.
Because anything’s worth a try in comparison to the current shitshow?
That sort of negative appeal may well win an election for Starmer, but it won't sustain that government very long. There needs to be some vision and enthusiasm for that, and there is where Starmer is so lacking.
The Conservatives have managed for twelve years and counting without one. Labour would take that.
Nonsense. How can anyone claim, for one example, that the 2019 election wasn't won on a specific vision? It was a three word slogan!
A slogan is not a vision, that's like saying you live your whole life on the premise of Eat Your Greens or Always Apply Sunscreen.
Amusingly, always.apply.sunscreen is in the Saudi desert:
What is funnier - shithouses like Gullis or the shithouses who voted for it?
Because as you well know, Rochdale, the alternative was Corbyn. Gullis might not be the brightest star in parliament*, but he wasn't proposing that we make Jeremy Corbyn PM, and that kind of elevates him above his opponent and pretty kuch anyone who stood for Labour in 2017 and 2019.
*although if his subtext is that the bishops can fuck right off I'm with him.
Comments
Has anyone been here? Spotted it on a map, had never heard of it, and so am thinking of going in the summer, islands being very much my bag:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bornholm
Bearing in mind Horse has opened up about his health issues and rarely posts on here, giving him a good kicking when he returns is a bit s*** to be honest.
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1605282153775960064?t=xDI9ZsP3cxIs59C0fBBnnQ&s=19
At the same time, we have this evidence for the Furin Cleavage Site being significant. THIS. HERE
Who to believe, that here trainspotter Andy Cooke off of politicalbetting.com, or Jeremy Farrar and Anthony Fauci, in private emails about the very origin of Covid?
Really, who?
Really, why?
I don't understand the psychology. I mean, I do get it for effete, wanker scientists who can't accept the cruel reality - I'd probably be the same if it was convincingly argued that careless flint knappers killed 20 million people - but I am utterly mystified by the rest of a relatively smart bunch of people, as on PB, being so blinkered
Is it the political polarisation of this issue? ie coz the Trumpites/Republicans pushed the Lab Theory early, so it is now poisoned?
If so, that is sad. Really quite sad. We are better than that
Shape up, PB
You might be right. But the case is not proven.
If so, I would probably agree (tho I think you are rather fraudulently misusing the word "natural")
Best guess, it came from the lab. Surely an accident. Was it engineered? Highly likely, that is the research they were doing at the lab
Its like they have given up. No negotiation. Which means the strikes will continue. No excuse. No strategy. No support. No viable pivot to deploy to try and blame the strikes on communist nurses. What is the plan? Hope the public turn on the nurses? And their ludicrous unreasonableness provides succour to less reasonable unions like the RMT...
On the other hand, it didn't apply to Eugene Debs, who was convicted of sedition, but ran for president while taxpayers were providing his room and board: "Debs ran for president in the 1920 election while imprisoned in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He received 919,799[54] votes (3.4 percent),[55] slightly less than he had won in 1912, when he received 6 percent, the highest number of votes for a Socialist Party presidential candidate in the United States."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs#Sedition_conviction_and_appeal_to_U.S._Supreme_Court
Warren Harding, who won the 1920 election, commuted his sentence to time served. (Harding had other faults, but he was far better on civil lberties than Woodrow Wilson.)
How did they not grasp such a simple fact. a fact so dumb even Andy Cooke off of PB got it? Why did they even bother discussing this silly thing? The leading scientists in the world? Weird, huh
I find that much more plausible that it being from gain of function research.
Wells Fargo slammed with $3.7B penalty, in record CFPB settlement
The bank was charged with mismanaging auto loans, mortgages and deposit accounts.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/20/wells-fargo-cfpb-settlement-00074740
You realise this sounds a tad desperate, I am sure
Incidentally, the fact that you think I'm a seriously partisan poster says everything about you, not me.
Will check in again tomorrow, as I don’t have the energy.
Here. Here is Peter Daszak, boasting that his Wuhan lab can make "killer coronaviruses"
🚨🚨🚨 Explosive, Unearthed Video Shows Peter Daszak Describing ‘Chinese Colleagues’ Developing ‘Killer’ Coronaviruses
https://twitter.com/Dustinpenner25/status/1402701539567816704?s=20&t=CkU7ifC_lMOvq3OSEf3T5w
Surely the most likely virus to make the leap from animals to humans is the one that is specially adapted to humans and designed to latch on to them and "be a killer coronavirus"
You are halfway to accepting the truth. You have made good progress. Keep it up
Viruses exchange genetic material all the time. Get two viruses in one host and odd things can happen. It’s entirely plausible that covid gained the furin cleavage site naturally. Doesn’t mean that how it happened, but it is possible.
Still not as embarrassing as your pronouncements on how awesome PM Liz Truss would be.
The British Government has made it clear that it doesn't want to pay nurses/teachers/train drivers more. The other party in the negotiations is cruelly refusing to hear that. But the British Government is the British Government, so by definition they should get exactly what they want.
My analysis is objective and, not being funny here, but I consistently make quite a bit of money off the back of it. As those who've followed me for a while will know.
I even posted truthfully on the dire state of the NHS earlier today (go back and have a read if you missed it) which isn't flattering to the Tories in any way. I even think Sunak should do a deal - get the independent pay review commission to have another look at the nurses case, updated for the latest inflation numbers.
I've criticised @Heathener and @CorrectHorseBattery for hyper partisan takes on Labour / Labour's chances, and I will continue to do so if I think it's baseless or unfounded or has no value. It doesn't mean I dislike them, have anything against them personally, or desire to "give them a kicking" - unless you think we should debate on here or call out what you think is nonsense.
What we're seeing is a herd football team defence of 'one of their own', which may reflect where we're at in the electoral lifecycle but certainly isn't serious analysis worthy of serious consideration.
Otherwise we'll be here again.
From my experience it isn't all about money. It's about understaffing making the job increasingly difficult whilst having your real pay cut on top of it.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21177759-house-oversight-letter-and-email-transcriptions
"Before I left the office for the ball, I aligned nCoV with the 96% bat CoV sequenced at WIV. Except for the RBD the S proteins are essentially identical at the amino acid level – well all but the perfect insertion of 12 nucleotides that adds the furin site. S2 is over its whole length essentially identical.
I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotide that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function – that and you don’t change any other amino acid in S2? I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. Do the alignment of the spikes at the amino acid level – its stunning.
Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted. Another scenario is that the progenitor of nCoV was a bat virus with the perfect furin cleavage site generated over 3 evolutionary times. In this scenario RaTG13 the WIV virus was generated by a perfect deletion of 12 nucleotides while essentially not changing any other S2 amino acid. Even more implausible IMO.
That is the big if. If you were doing gain of function research you would NOT use an existing clone of SARS or MERSv. These viruses are already human pathogens. What you would do is close a bat virus th[at] had not yet emerged. Maybe then pass it in human cells for a while to lock in the RBS, then you reclone and put in the mutations you are interested – one of the first a polybasic cleavage site."
"
Farrar email summarising Garry in telcon
What happened: An attorney for Republican Rep.-elect George Santos (R) responded to allegations in The New York Times that the politician made up core portions of his resume with a quote from Winston Churchill that PolitiFact says the British politician never uttered.
https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/12-19-2022/santos-responds/
And it's one reason why I walked.
Such sentiments lead to sloppy (or no) thinking and poor governance - sometimes even worse governance.
Government is complex, complicated and difficult - if we've learnt anything over the last 15 years it should be that.
An election victory with a majority of 20 or 30 or even probably 40 on a wafer thin manifesto not including any necessary radical changes won't give him any chance of getting them through if he springs them on the country afterwards.
Morale is low because we are the scapegoats that the government wants to bully.
Why is demand for electricity in France nearly double that of the UK? (55 GW against 33GW.) I mean, they have a similar size of population, surely?
I'm not forgetting they're exporting a lot of power to (at this moment) us, the Swiss and the Italians, but it still seems a surprisingly large discrepancy.
But the experiment- tell organisations to pay what it takes to fill up the staff list- would be fascinating.
For me, it would be £100,000 a year plus a 50% of final salary pension payable at 70 based on three years' service.
Because for that money, I could buy three more houses (sorry, Max) and retire comfortably.
(Pure guess, but they have lots of nuclear and no North Sea gas, so it seems rational).
It's just most people haven't noticed yet.
What is left is sweeping up the pieces.
They could call it something like “triple-lock”.
It wouldn't surprise me if the next GE had a record low turnout. There is a palpable lack of enthusiasm.
“Tory MP Jonathan Gullis attacks bishops for ‘using the pulpit to preach from’”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rwanda-deport-jonathan-gullis-bishops-pulpit-preach-b2248192.html
We've already had a Council taken to Court for failing to provide statutory one to one education services. They had to concede and pay market
rates.
We will see more of it I reckon.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-64044204
Where as they cremating bodiea at 5 a minute in Bejing alone....24/7.
Interestingly their peak demand is during the working day when industry is at full output whereas ours is in the evening for domestic consumption, so the two of us can balance our supply and demand nicely through the interconnectors.
When the bishop's criticism was put to him he replied: "I don't think unelected bishops in the House of Lords should be preaching about politics.
"I think they should be looking in-house at the wide abuse claims that have gone on and the Archbishop of Canterbury should be spending his time focusing on [inaudible] the Church's reputation.
Well that's going to trigger HYUFD, he'll be sending tanks to Stoke to crush such heretical talk.
As if priests preach form the pulpit these days.
Most of them prefer the lectern.
The ideas I've seen from Labour so far have been pretty crap and uninspiring ones - HoL reform is hardly a priority and eviscerating the private school sector will do nothing to improve educational outcomes overall, and may in fact make them worse.
As I'm said before I think Starmer is nothing more than a dull and boring tactical triangulator.
He'd offer nothing different from Sunak except the shade of his clothes.
(Just to confirm: we’ll be continuing to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.)
https://twitter.com/JustinWelby/status/1605248420456894464
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rwanda-deport-jonathan-gullis-bishops-pulpit-preach-b2248192.html
But it'd be a pretty tough ask though.
"... it appears that the French use much more electricity, whereas the UK uses a little more gas. The average yearly usage amounts currently stand as so:
United Kingdom: 3,100 kWh of electricity & 12,500 kWh of gas
France: 4,670 kWh of electricity and 11,800 kWh of gas
You may think that the discrepancies between the two usages level the playing field; however, due to electricity being much more expensive per kWh in general, people in France are destined to pay more in their average energy bills.
When it comes down to the actual price of energy, there is not a great deal of difference. France’s electricity is a tad cheaper, whereas in the UK, gas is a little cheaper. Arguably, that slight reduction in electricity is more beneficial, especially with France’s higher usage, but the verdict stands as the UK being the cheaper of the two in general."
https://anglophone-direct.com/gas-and-electricity-comparison-uk-france/
Not sure what to conclude from that. Heating in the Alps and Pyrenees must consume a lot, but it doesn't seem from this that electric is virtually free in France, as I thought.
But that wouldn't explain why it's so much higher right now.
A sure sign the bank is empty of arguments.
I think it would be time and headspace to make the job doable for a couple more decades. Family Stuff meant pausing for a couple of years and realising how much full time teaching drains body and spirit. Oh, and fewer lies. A shame, because good days in school are tremendous fun.
However, I'm undoubtedly a freak- with a physical science PhD I ought to be making much more money doing something completely different.
A policy proposed by Labour now and implemented by the Tories now is a win for Labour, not a loss.
That's in isolation, too - on top of that, it would show the direction they want to go.
There are better paid options in my area,* but without the autonomy and freedom to choose what I work on, as long as I can convince someone to fund it.
Casualisation is an issue. Some unis/departments do take the piss a bit, but mine is actually very good on that.
*stats/code monkey for CROs for example, but that looks dull
But he doesn't. Because he can't spell disestablish.
https://what3words.com/always.apply.sunscreen
And eat.your.greens is in Scunthorpe.
(Nah, made the 2nd one up - sorry Scunthorpe.)
*although if his subtext is that the bishops can fuck right off I'm with him.