Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
The games that Sweden and others have played to avoid becoming part of the Euro are now explicitly outlawed when you join the EU.
So if we rejoin we would need to join the Euro.
Yes, I agree. And sans rebate.
Not going to happen.
But the Swedish tactic of not joining ERM2 is still available to any new member. The rebate has gone, of course, as has the explicit Euro opt-out, since we stupidly threw away the great deal that we had.
Is it? The EU could insist in ERM2 membership before joining, or even insist on Euro membership before or on the date of joining.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
"Dr Tina Peers graduated from Guys Hospital, London University, in 1983. She then qualified as a GP in 1987, working part time in General Practice for 7 years, whilst she had her 3 children. She then became lead clinician for Contraceptive Services, initially for East Surrey, then for the whole of Surrey, running the services from 1994 to 2018. She was particularly instrumental in developing the Young Peoples Contraception and Sexual Health Services in Surrey.
Dr Peers became a Consultant in Contraception and Reproductive Healthcare in 1996, and has years of experience managing complex contraceptive cases and helping women manage and maintain good health during and after the menopause. She started working with Mr Nick Panay at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Menopause Clinic in 2016, being recognised by the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health as a Menopause Specialist in 2017."
No.
That matches what I read. Nothing in there suggesting any expertise in epidemic/pandemic response or even general public health. I'm not doubting her expertise in her area of specialism.
I'm an epidemiologist, which puts me (on the evidence presented) rather closer to having expertise on how to respond to a pandemic than her, but I - not working at all in infectious disease, but having some understanding of the knowledge required, at least - know that I know bugger all about pandemic response.
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
The games that Sweden and others have played to avoid becoming part of the Euro are now explicitly outlawed when you join the EU.
So if we rejoin we would need to join the Euro.
Yes, I agree. And sans rebate.
Not going to happen.
If we could just work a bit harder on trashing the economy we might be able to rejoin in a few years' time as a net recipient. Then the rebate wouldn't matter. If as a bonus the pound could become a proper junk currency and UK gilts junk bonds then joining the Euro might be very attractive too.
Another reason Truss may have been a Lib Dem sleeper agent.
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
The games that Sweden and others have played to avoid becoming part of the Euro are now explicitly outlawed when you join the EU.
So if we rejoin we would need to join the Euro.
Since 1999 all new EU members are obliged to commit to joining the euro *once certain criteria are met*. However, the mechanism by which Sweden has avoided joining is *by ensuring these criteria are not met*, namely by not joining ERM2. That mechanism is still available to any EU member old or new who wants to delay Euro membership, possibly indefinitely. More broadly, no EU member will ever be forced to join the Euro against its will for the simple reason that that would be far more damaging to the EU and the Euro than a country not joining.
This is a similar "they say it, but they don't really mean it" argument to that put forward to why we don't need to worry about the EU's stated desire for ever closer union. And similarly, it isn't very reassuring.
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
Making us join the euro could well be the EU's insurance against us deciding to leave again.
I flew to the EU and back last week. Queueing to get into Finland and back into the UK was no more than 3 or 4 minutes in either direction. Cutting out a 3 or 4 minute queue once every few years doesn't seem a massive gain to me.
How very representative of typical UK to EU travel patterns
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
Making us join the euro could well be the EU's insurance against us deciding to leave again.
I flew to the EU and back last week. Queueing to get into Finland and back into the UK was no more than 3 or 4 minutes in either direction. Cutting out a 3 or 4 minute queue once every few years doesn't seem a massive gain to me.
How very representative of typical UK to EU travel patterns
Well what is representative? It doesn't seem to me that massive queues to get into the EU and again to get back into the UK are typical. Certainly not if one excludes journeys which involve entering France.
I've travelled to a variety of EU countries well over a dozen times since Brexit and have noticed no delays over and above what would be expected pre-Brexit. It is a fake story.
It is a mixed bag. I have similarly travelled and had some really easy stuff just going straight through, but also some nightmares. The worst was Lisbon. We obviously landed at the same time as a couple of large planes from the States (going by the accents). I estimated the snake (numbers in each line by the numbers of lines) to be about 1000 long and it took us 3 hours. I posted here from the queue. The EU and priority gates were empty. All gates were open and they were taking people from our queue through the EU and priority gate as well. Most other trips were fine and I also travelled during lockdown which was a breeze other than the forms. However it is frustrating to see an empty EU gate when you are in a long queue.
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
The games that Sweden and others have played to avoid becoming part of the Euro are now explicitly outlawed when you join the EU.
So if we rejoin we would need to join the Euro.
Yes, I agree. And sans rebate.
Not going to happen.
But the Swedish tactic of not joining ERM2 is still available to any new member. The rebate has gone, of course, as has the explicit Euro opt-out, since we stupidly threw away the great deal that we had.
So great a deal that the Remain campaign refused to even try to claim it was a good deal...
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Did serfs own their own hut, do we know?
Tory serfs owned a few buy-to-let huts.
But were very Not in my strip field about new ones.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
Cities and castles. Almost everybody lives in the countryside, including all serfs.
Makes quite clear there were butchers in marketplaces, Epping has had a marketplace since the 13th century and is no city
There are present day archetypes to look at - I'm pretty sure medieval England was very similar in this respect to poor agrarian regions of the developing world now.
The world of "they're trying their best in difficult circumstances but really the problem is inadequate NHS managers, too many immigrants and health tourists clogging up the system, and lazy civil servants working from home". Such beliefs exist - probably around 16% of this forum for a start.
The shape of the next election is forming in HYUFD thinktank:
"Vote Tory for a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of (your landlord's) land for your basic needs, with lower life expectancy obvs, and provided you do not get into trouble with the law."
Starmer won't sign a blank cheque for the NHS. This is interesting, suggesting an extra 6-10% tax on everyone's incomes would annoy people more than the current state of the NHS, or forgoing the extra investment in public utilities that the chattering classes say are needed.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
Cities and castles. Almost everybody lives in the countryside, including all serfs.
Makes quite clear there were butchers in marketplaces, Epping has had a marketplace since the 13th century and is no city
There are present day archetypes to look at - I'm pretty sure medieval England was very similar in this respect to poor agrarian regions of the developing world now.
True. Going back to Ethiopia, I know the amharic for butcher's shop without looking it up (siga bet, meat shop). But in towns. Serfs are not in towns.
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
The games that Sweden and others have played to avoid becoming part of the Euro are now explicitly outlawed when you join the EU.
So if we rejoin we would need to join the Euro.
Yes, I agree. And sans rebate.
Not going to happen.
If we could just work a bit harder on trashing the economy we might be able to rejoin in a few years' time as a net recipient. Then the rebate wouldn't matter. If as a bonus the pound could become a proper junk currency and UK gilts junk bonds then joining the Euro might be very attractive too.
Another reason Truss may have been a Lib Dem sleeper agent.
It's become pretty clear to me since the vote (I voted Remain, to be clear) that trashing the economy, devaluing the pound and a faltering UK gilts market are actually on the wish list of those who voted similarly to me.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Did serfs own their own hut, do we know?
Tory serfs owned a few buy-to-let huts.
But were very Not in my strip field about new ones.
What's this with the new fangled measures for land?
What's wrong with the hide? If 't were good enough for Swein Godwinson....
"Dr Tina Peers graduated from Guys Hospital, London University, in 1983. She then qualified as a GP in 1987, working part time in General Practice for 7 years, whilst she had her 3 children. She then became lead clinician for Contraceptive Services, initially for East Surrey, then for the whole of Surrey, running the services from 1994 to 2018. She was particularly instrumental in developing the Young Peoples Contraception and Sexual Health Services in Surrey.
Dr Peers became a Consultant in Contraception and Reproductive Healthcare in 1996, and has years of experience managing complex contraceptive cases and helping women manage and maintain good health during and after the menopause. She started working with Mr Nick Panay at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Menopause Clinic in 2016, being recognised by the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health as a Menopause Specialist in 2017."
No.
That matches what I read. Nothing in there suggesting any expertise in epidemic/pandemic response or even general public health. I'm not doubting her expertise in her area of specialism.
I'm an epidemiologist, which puts me (on the evidence presented) rather closer to having expertise on how to respond to a pandemic than her, but I - not working at all in infectious disease, but having some understanding of the knowledge required, at least - know that I know bugger all about pandemic response.
Allow me to help then. Maybe it was the least worst option. Maybe it wasn't. But our pandemic response sowed the seeds for a huge health and wellbeing crisis which we are beginning to see unfurl now.
Seems like there has been some progress in the last 24 hours in The Speaker Saga, but no-one seems to know if it will be enough to make anyone change their vote, and there also seems to be a hardcore subset of the 20 rebels who are simply digging their heels in and refusing to back McCarthy come what may.
If the House follows precedent, switches to plurality voting and the Dems win the Speakership as a result, will those twenty get primaried?
Indeed, could they be recalled?
To switch to plurality voting there will need to be a majority of Reps who are willing to do so. So it requires cross-party buy in (assuming the awkward squad don’t back it - and why would they?
The rest of the GOP won’t switch to plurality unless it guarantees a GOP speaker.
So unless McCarthy steps aside or manages to broker a deal in the next couple of days I think this saga still has a bit to run.
Recall I think depends on whether the particular state allows it but someone with greater knowledge of US politics will probably set me right on that.
Why would you need a majority of Republicans? You just need 10 of them.
I should have written representatives (which is what I meant) rather than Reps, that muddied the water somewhat!
Not sure how you get those 10 to do so though unless it guarantees a GOP speaker. Otherwise they are de facto voting for a Democratic speaker which I cant see.
I suppose if they force through plurality with democratic help they can try and call Boebert et als bluff by saying “vote McCarthy or get Jeffreys,” but it’s a high risk strategy.
But project this forward. McCarthy has offered everything that is even halfway reasonable. Still it's not enough for them. The centrist Republicans won't vote for an actual freedom caucus nutter. So the 20 aren't going to get anything more. So they are going to do a week of this.
At that point might a handful of the most reasonable Republicans think screw this, my party is a joke. I will punish these nutters by showing them what they get. If the base hates them over it, they can defect to the Dems.
One of the things that has been (far) less commented on about the Midterms is that, despite the poor results vs expectations, the GOP polled nearly 3% ahead of the Democrats in the popular vote (when it came to seat redistricting, many D states like Illinois resorted to rolling the dice and focusing on maximising seat numbers, not majorities, in contrast to many GOP states). That was with some batshit crazy / poor quality candidates.
Every single story on here gets turned into a "This will kill the GOP" but the fact is that a large percentage of the American population won't vote Democratic and - maybe a surprise to people on here - sees many of the Democrats as batshit crazy in their own way.
Anyone hoping this is Death Knell 2001 for the GOP is going to be disappointed severely.
"Dr Tina Peers graduated from Guys Hospital, London University, in 1983. She then qualified as a GP in 1987, working part time in General Practice for 7 years, whilst she had her 3 children. She then became lead clinician for Contraceptive Services, initially for East Surrey, then for the whole of Surrey, running the services from 1994 to 2018. She was particularly instrumental in developing the Young Peoples Contraception and Sexual Health Services in Surrey.
Dr Peers became a Consultant in Contraception and Reproductive Healthcare in 1996, and has years of experience managing complex contraceptive cases and helping women manage and maintain good health during and after the menopause. She started working with Mr Nick Panay at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Menopause Clinic in 2016, being recognised by the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health as a Menopause Specialist in 2017."
No.
That matches what I read. Nothing in there suggesting any expertise in epidemic/pandemic response or even general public health. I'm not doubting her expertise in her area of specialism.
I'm an epidemiologist, which puts me (on the evidence presented) rather closer to having expertise on how to respond to a pandemic than her, but I - not working at all in infectious disease, but having some understanding of the knowledge required, at least - know that I know bugger all about pandemic response.
Allow me to help then. Maybe it was the least worst option. Maybe it wasn't. But our pandemic response sowed the seeds for a huge health and wellbeing crisis which we are beginning to see unfurl now.
And your views are just as valid and well informed as Peer's (absent other evidence, not presently presented, that she is better informed than her bio suggests or that you are a blathering idiot).
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
"Dr Tina Peers graduated from Guys Hospital, London University, in 1983. She then qualified as a GP in 1987, working part time in General Practice for 7 years, whilst she had her 3 children. She then became lead clinician for Contraceptive Services, initially for East Surrey, then for the whole of Surrey, running the services from 1994 to 2018. She was particularly instrumental in developing the Young Peoples Contraception and Sexual Health Services in Surrey.
Dr Peers became a Consultant in Contraception and Reproductive Healthcare in 1996, and has years of experience managing complex contraceptive cases and helping women manage and maintain good health during and after the menopause. She started working with Mr Nick Panay at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Menopause Clinic in 2016, being recognised by the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health as a Menopause Specialist in 2017."
No.
That matches what I read. Nothing in there suggesting any expertise in epidemic/pandemic response or even general public health. I'm not doubting her expertise in her area of specialism.
I'm an epidemiologist, which puts me (on the evidence presented) rather closer to having expertise on how to respond to a pandemic than her, but I - not working at all in infectious disease, but having some understanding of the knowledge required, at least - know that I know bugger all about pandemic response.
Allow me to help then. Maybe it was the least worst option. Maybe it wasn't. But our pandemic response sowed the seeds for a huge health and wellbeing crisis which we are beginning to see unfurl now.
And your views are just as valid and well informed as Peer's (absent other evidence, not presently presented, that she is better informed than her bio suggests or that you are a blathering idiot).
Sadly we don't have a meaningful control, beyond "Sweden" but I can with great authority say that our response has and will be responsible for many more "excess deaths" than was the pandemic.
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
The games that Sweden and others have played to avoid becoming part of the Euro are now explicitly outlawed when you join the EU.
So if we rejoin we would need to join the Euro.
Yes, I agree. And sans rebate.
Not going to happen.
If we could just work a bit harder on trashing the economy we might be able to rejoin in a few years' time as a net recipient. Then the rebate wouldn't matter. If as a bonus the pound could become a proper junk currency and UK gilts junk bonds then joining the Euro might be very attractive too.
Another reason Truss may have been a Lib Dem sleeper agent.
It's become pretty clear to me since the vote (I voted Remain, to be clear) that trashing the economy, devaluing the pound and a faltering UK gilts market are actually on the wish list of those who voted similarly to me.
More likely on the wish list of those funding the Leave campaign.
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
Making us join the euro could well be the EU's insurance against us deciding to leave again.
I flew to the EU and back last week. Queueing to get into Finland and back into the UK was no more than 3 or 4 minutes in either direction. Cutting out a 3 or 4 minute queue once every few years doesn't seem a massive gain to me.
How very representative of typical UK to EU travel patterns
Interesting. The declining popularity of Brexit comes mostly from Leave voters changing their mind.
In what other way could its popularity decline?
There was talk that after Brexit, with loyalty to Dave no longer an issue and with the Brexit benefits pouring in, there would be a mass defection of Remain voters to the Leave camp. But instead it's all been one-way traffic in the other direction, which I doubt the Brexit godfathers ever suspected would happen.
There is no "remain" or "leave" camp.
As for that blog post, I'm afraid it suffers from GIGO - until the public understands that the terms of rejoining won't even be the previous ones, let alone imaginary better ones, polling on rejoin/stay out is utterly meaningless.
There's no reason to think the public are that lacking in understanding
I sense you are articulating Leave's final refuge: OK it was a moronic fuck up, but it was an IRREVERSIBLE moronic fuck up. Well done ✔
There's plenty of reason to think it, starting with the fact that there's been effectively no public disucssion of what rejoin would actually mean.
It's also not irreversible - but the Rejoin campaign would need to be a lot better than the Remain campaign was. Which shouldn't be hard, but if they have to sell the euro and Schengen...
Selling Schengen is easy - no queuing when you land at your holiday destination - just collect your bag and walk out the day.
Indeed. Travel issues are one of the drivers of changing opinion, as people encounter an annoying (if minor) downside which sets them thinking as to whether there is any actual upside.
Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and still isn’t in the Euro. If we didn’t want to join, I doubt we would be obliged to - in extremis rules can be changed or bent - the bigger question is whether we’d be welcome.
Making us join the euro could well be the EU's insurance against us deciding to leave again.
I flew to the EU and back last week. Queueing to get into Finland and back into the UK was no more than 3 or 4 minutes in either direction. Cutting out a 3 or 4 minute queue once every few years doesn't seem a massive gain to me.
How very representative of typical UK to EU travel patterns
Well what is representative? It doesn't seem to me that massive queues to get into the EU and again to get back into the UK are typical. Certainly not if one excludes journeys which involve entering France.
Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland
Well from limited anecdotal experience, there haven't been massive queues entering Spain or Italy from the UK since Brexit (or returning). I don't know anyone who's been to Greece or Switzerland.
I think the lanes thing is a bit of a red herring and is really just a choice for the airport. The more structural issue is the need for a passport officer to check the entry and exit dates of the tourist against the 90 day limit (even if cursory), and then find a clean page and stamp the passport. It adds let's say 10-20 seconds on to each check.
The issue seems to be with peak periods in peak locations where the time per passport is critical to whether a queue is manageable or massive.
Passport check with no entry-exit date check or stamping = a few seconds, passport check with the stamping = a few seconds more. If only 100 people are arriving off one flight and there are 3 or 4 booths open then no problem. If hundreds are arriving from different airlines then suddenly it's a problem.
That's the issue with queues - they have a tipping point. A bit like the Dickens quote about income and expenses.
Arriving into Schipol or Copenhagen or Brussels back when we were still in the EU I would regularly experience very long queues at passport control. Unless one was in the biometric system then arriving from outside the Schengen area would very often result in lengthy waits. So much so that I would arrange much longer transfers, particularly at Schipol, just to make sure I didn't miss my onward connection.
*PUTIN ORDERS JAN. 6-7 CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE, KREMLIN SAYS
I assume he realises that is when the Ukrainian offensive is likely to occur and so can accuse Ukraine of ignoring a peace overture. It looks like a tactical ploy, nothing more.
Labour's @AngelaRayner on new anti-strike restrictions on workers in NHS, fire services, rail, buses, education, border security, nuclear decommissioning
"It's insulting to key workers that Rishi Sunak thinks that threatening teachers and nurses with the sack will end strikes"
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
I've always assumed the Tories' goal is the return of the workhouse, but now I see I have failed to understand the extent of their ambition - a full on return to serfdom.
Thatch in her pomp: The Road to Serfdom, a profound warning to us all about the threats to our freedom. HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
The shape of the next election is forming in HYUFD thinktank:
"Vote Tory for a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of (your landlord's) land for your basic needs, with lower life expectancy obvs, and provided you do not get into trouble with the law."
No need for HS2, either, not to say electric cars, airport queues, energy bills or commuting. I think it could catch on!
Keir needs to reform the NHS into a Swiss system. Today he has given himself the room to do that.
I agree that the NHS needs radical reform - the only way any kind of insurance element would be accepted is if it was compulsory and even then I suspect the bulk of the left simply would not countenance it. It opens the door to extras for those prepared to pay more. It's what happens here in Spain which has an ok NHS but also a thriving private sector which is way cheaper than anything you'd get in the UK and as a result is accessed by a significant minority of moderately well off people. Incidentally, pay levels for doctors certainly and I suspect nurses too are also considerably less than in the UK. The public V private debate is a hot issue in many areas. I have private cover here - currently 135€ a month which includes a private GP service, a range of clinical services and all hospital costs as standard. Prescriptions can be a pricey extra on top. I reckon at my age - 68 - the quivalemnt service if it existed would be at least 3 or 4 times as much.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
I've always assumed the Tories' goal is the return of the workhouse, but now I see I have failed to understand the extent of their ambition - a full on return to serfdom.
Thatch in her pomp: The Road to Serfdom, a profound warning to us all about the threats to our freedom. HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
Thatcher was more a Gladstone Manchester School free market Liberal than traditional landed Tory
*PUTIN ORDERS JAN. 6-7 CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE, KREMLIN SAYS
I assume he realises that is when the Ukrainian offensive is likely to occur and so can accuse Ukraine of ignoring a peace overture. It looks like a tactical ploy, nothing more.
Seems like there has been some progress in the last 24 hours in The Speaker Saga, but no-one seems to know if it will be enough to make anyone change their vote, and there also seems to be a hardcore subset of the 20 rebels who are simply digging their heels in and refusing to back McCarthy come what may.
If the House follows precedent, switches to plurality voting and the Dems win the Speakership as a result, will those twenty get primaried?
Indeed, could they be recalled?
To switch to plurality voting there will need to be a majority of Reps who are willing to do so. So it requires cross-party buy in (assuming the awkward squad don’t back it - and why would they?
The rest of the GOP won’t switch to plurality unless it guarantees a GOP speaker.
So unless McCarthy steps aside or manages to broker a deal in the next couple of days I think this saga still has a bit to run.
Recall I think depends on whether the particular state allows it but someone with greater knowledge of US politics will probably set me right on that.
Why would you need a majority of Republicans? You just need 10 of them.
I should have written representatives (which is what I meant) rather than Reps, that muddied the water somewhat!
Not sure how you get those 10 to do so though unless it guarantees a GOP speaker. Otherwise they are de facto voting for a Democratic speaker which I cant see.
I suppose if they force through plurality with democratic help they can try and call Boebert et als bluff by saying “vote McCarthy or get Jeffreys,” but it’s a high risk strategy.
But project this forward. McCarthy has offered everything that is even halfway reasonable. Still it's not enough for them. The centrist Republicans won't vote for an actual freedom caucus nutter. So the 20 aren't going to get anything more. So they are going to do a week of this.
At that point might a handful of the most reasonable Republicans think screw this, my party is a joke. I will punish these nutters by showing them what they get. If the base hates them over it, they can defect to the Dems.
One of the things that has been (far) less commented on about the Midterms is that, despite the poor results vs expectations, the GOP polled nearly 3% ahead of the Democrats in the popular vote (when it came to seat redistricting, many D states like Illinois resorted to rolling the dice and focusing on maximising seat numbers, not majorities, in contrast to many GOP states). That was with some batshit crazy / poor quality candidates.
Every single story on here gets turned into a "This will kill the GOP" but the fact is that a large percentage of the American population won't vote Democratic and - maybe a surprise to people on here - sees many of the Democrats as batshit crazy in their own way.
Anyone hoping this is Death Knell 2001 for the GOP is going to be disappointed severely.
To be fair, "signalling one's intellectual superiority over the libs by effortfully puffing up extremists" is also a trope on here; see Leon if you want to set up a club. On the specifics, talking about the House is cherry-picking a mid-term election where the GOP under-performed at state and US Senate levels, and those are the places where the awful candidates get highlighted by big money. For example, consider Congressman-elect Santos whose delusions were only exposed months after the election; that wouldn't happen in an election for governor where each side has much more money to spend on opposition research, advertising across a media market and so on.
Keir needs to reform the NHS into a Swiss system. Today he has given himself the room to do that.
I agree that the NHS needs radical reform - the only way any kind of insurance element would be accepted is if it was compulsory and even then I suspect the bulk of the left simply would not countenance it. It opens the door to extras for those prepared to pay more. It's what happens here in Spain which has an ok NHS but also a thriving private sector which is way cheaper than anything you'd get in the UK and as a result is accessed by a significant minority of moderately well off people. Incidentally, pay levels for doctors certainly and I suspect nurses too are also considerably less than in the UK. The public V private debate is a hot issue in many areas. I have private cover here - currently 135€ a month which includes a private GP service, a range of clinical services and all hospital costs as standard. Prescriptions can be a pricey extra on top. I reckon at my age - 68 - the quivalemnt service if it existed would be at least 3 or 4 times as much.
Already plenty of bits of the NHS that can be topped up by paying extra - private rooms, meals etc.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
I've always assumed the Tories' goal is the return of the workhouse, but now I see I have failed to understand the extent of their ambition - a full on return to serfdom.
Thatch in her pomp: The Road to Serfdom, a profound warning to us all about the threats to our freedom. HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
Thatcher was more a Gladstone Manchester School free market Liberal than traditional landed Tory
So what ?
What proportion of the electorate consists of "traditional landed Tories", FFS ?
Keir needs to reform the NHS into a Swiss system. Today he has given himself the room to do that.
I agree that the NHS needs radical reform - the only way any kind of insurance element would be accepted is if it was compulsory and even then I suspect the bulk of the left simply would not countenance it. It opens the door to extras for those prepared to pay more. It's what happens here in Spain which has an ok NHS but also a thriving private sector which is way cheaper than anything you'd get in the UK and as a result is accessed by a significant minority of moderately well off people. Incidentally, pay levels for doctors certainly and I suspect nurses too are also considerably less than in the UK. The public V private debate is a hot issue in many areas. I have private cover here - currently 135€ a month which includes a private GP service, a range of clinical services and all hospital costs as standard. Prescriptions can be a pricey extra on top. I reckon at my age - 68 - the quivalemnt service if it existed would be at least 3 or 4 times as much.
Already plenty of bits of the NHS that can be topped up by paying extra - private rooms, meals etc.
Really? I thought it was verboten to mix & match private and NHS. Or is that just treatment.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
I've always assumed the Tories' goal is the return of the workhouse, but now I see I have failed to understand the extent of their ambition - a full on return to serfdom.
Thatch in her pomp: The Road to Serfdom, a profound warning to us all about the threats to our freedom. HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
Thatcher was more a Gladstone Manchester School free market Liberal than traditional landed Tory
So what ?
What proportion of the electorate consists of "traditional landed Tories", FFS ?
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
I've always assumed the Tories' goal is the return of the workhouse, but now I see I have failed to understand the extent of their ambition - a full on return to serfdom.
Thatch in her pomp: The Road to Serfdom, a profound warning to us all about the threats to our freedom. HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
And as ever, the extremes meet.
I'm thinking of a Watermelon Green who I met - The future would be that everyone lived in minimal spaces in giant apartment buildings. All work would be assigned by the government and provided by the government. All food would be allocated and provided by government. All travel would be allocated and allowed by the government.
*PUTIN ORDERS JAN. 6-7 CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE, KREMLIN SAYS
I assume he realises that is when the Ukrainian offensive is likely to occur and so can accuse Ukraine of ignoring a peace overture. It looks like a tactical ploy, nothing more.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
I've always assumed the Tories' goal is the return of the workhouse, but now I see I have failed to understand the extent of their ambition - a full on return to serfdom.
Thatch in her pomp: The Road to Serfdom, a profound warning to us all about the threats to our freedom. HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
Thatcher was more a Gladstone Manchester School free market Liberal than traditional landed Tory
So what ?
What proportion of the electorate consists of "traditional landed Tories", FFS ?
They have always been the Tories core support. Merchants, bankers and industrialists and factory owners used to be Whigs and then Liberals and only really joined with the Tories to form today's Conservative Party to keep Labour and socialists out as the franchise expanded and the working class got the vote
Seems like there has been some progress in the last 24 hours in The Speaker Saga, but no-one seems to know if it will be enough to make anyone change their vote, and there also seems to be a hardcore subset of the 20 rebels who are simply digging their heels in and refusing to back McCarthy come what may.
If the House follows precedent, switches to plurality voting and the Dems win the Speakership as a result, will those twenty get primaried?
Indeed, could they be recalled?
To switch to plurality voting there will need to be a majority of Reps who are willing to do so. So it requires cross-party buy in (assuming the awkward squad don’t back it - and why would they?
The rest of the GOP won’t switch to plurality unless it guarantees a GOP speaker.
So unless McCarthy steps aside or manages to broker a deal in the next couple of days I think this saga still has a bit to run.
Recall I think depends on whether the particular state allows it but someone with greater knowledge of US politics will probably set me right on that.
Why would you need a majority of Republicans? You just need 10 of them.
I should have written representatives (which is what I meant) rather than Reps, that muddied the water somewhat!
Not sure how you get those 10 to do so though unless it guarantees a GOP speaker. Otherwise they are de facto voting for a Democratic speaker which I cant see.
I suppose if they force through plurality with democratic help they can try and call Boebert et als bluff by saying “vote McCarthy or get Jeffreys,” but it’s a high risk strategy.
But project this forward. McCarthy has offered everything that is even halfway reasonable. Still it's not enough for them. The centrist Republicans won't vote for an actual freedom caucus nutter. So the 20 aren't going to get anything more. So they are going to do a week of this.
At that point might a handful of the most reasonable Republicans think screw this, my party is a joke. I will punish these nutters by showing them what they get. If the base hates them over it, they can defect to the Dems.
One of the things that has been (far) less commented on about the Midterms is that, despite the poor results vs expectations, the GOP polled nearly 3% ahead of the Democrats in the popular vote (when it came to seat redistricting, many D states like Illinois resorted to rolling the dice and focusing on maximising seat numbers, not majorities, in contrast to many GOP states). That was with some batshit crazy / poor quality candidates.
Every single story on here gets turned into a "This will kill the GOP" but the fact is that a large percentage of the American population won't vote Democratic and - maybe a surprise to people on here - sees many of the Democrats as batshit crazy in their own way.
Anyone hoping this is Death Knell 2001 for the GOP is going to be disappointed severely.
To be fair, "signalling one's intellectual superiority over the libs by effortfully puffing up extremists" is also a trope on here; see Leon if you want to set up a club. On the specifics, talking about the House is cherry-picking a mid-term election where the GOP under-performed at state and US Senate levels, and those are the places where the awful candidates get highlighted by big money. For example, consider Congressman-elect Santos whose delusions were only exposed months after the election; that wouldn't happen in an election for governor where each side has much more money to spend on opposition research, advertising across a media market and so on.
Indeed Santos is one example of where the US just falls down when it comes to the House.
Point of order though. 6-8 weeks ago pre-election, the betting was against the GOP taking the Senate and there was probably no Governorship result that came as an absolute shock (arguably the biggest shocks were DeSantis' and Abbott's margins, and that Zeldin ran Hochul so close in NY). What turned it into a blow for the GOP was the ramping up of expectations due to biased polls, which is why you could get 8/1 for the GOP on 49 seats in the Senate the week before the election (thanks @rcs1000 ), even though they were defending two states they lost in 2020 (PA and WI).
Keir needs to reform the NHS into a Swiss system. Today he has given himself the room to do that.
I agree that the NHS needs radical reform - the only way any kind of insurance element would be accepted is if it was compulsory and even then I suspect the bulk of the left simply would not countenance it. It opens the door to extras for those prepared to pay more. It's what happens here in Spain which has an ok NHS but also a thriving private sector which is way cheaper than anything you'd get in the UK and as a result is accessed by a significant minority of moderately well off people. Incidentally, pay levels for doctors certainly and I suspect nurses too are also considerably less than in the UK. The public V private debate is a hot issue in many areas. I have private cover here - currently 135€ a month which includes a private GP service, a range of clinical services and all hospital costs as standard. Prescriptions can be a pricey extra on top. I reckon at my age - 68 - the quivalemnt service if it existed would be at least 3 or 4 times as much.
Already plenty of bits of the NHS that can be topped up by paying extra - private rooms, meals etc.
Really? I thought it was verboten to mix & match private and NHS. Or is that just treatment.
You can pay for a private ward within a NHS hospital though I don't see where the fun in that is. No opportunity for private deadpooling. Food wise best to get your visitors to bring you m&s packed lunches.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
Cities and castles. Almost everybody lives in the countryside, including all serfs.
Completely offtopic, but nice to see another poster named after a Scottish peak* (after Eabhal).
Need some more respresentation from the rest of the UK though - no Glyder Fawr, Yr Wyddfa or S Pike
*I assume, anyway? I've been up there. Unless there is another meaning.
My favourite Munro. I am always pleased in Ireland to note that the instructions at traffic lights say stop here when the light is dearg.
Surely the best Beinn Dearg is the one which fails to be a Munro by a miniscule amount? The Atholl one is very dull, although the Ullapool one does have a decent collection of alpines.
*PUTIN ORDERS JAN. 6-7 CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE, KREMLIN SAYS
Quite clever and puts pressure on Ukraine to do likewise of course, but timing wise I don't think it's a problem. The new offensive (my money is on a big push in the North i.e. Kreminna/Svatove) can only get going once the ground freezes, which is Sunday/Monday onwards.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
Cities and castles. Almost everybody lives in the countryside, including all serfs.
Completely offtopic, but nice to see another poster named after a Scottish peak* (after Eabhal).
Need some more respresentation from the rest of the UK though - no Glyder Fawr, Yr Wyddfa or S Pike
*I assume, anyway? I've been up there. Unless there is another meaning.
My favourite Munro. I am always pleased in Ireland to note that the instructions at traffic lights say stop here when the light is dearg.
Surely the best Beinn Dearg is the one which fails to be a Munro by a miniscule amount? The Atholl one is very dull, although the Ullapool one does have a decent collection of alpines.
I mean the Ullapool one. But yes Torridon also good.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
Ummm - you didn't have high streets. That's a Georgian thing at the earliest.
You had guild streets, but only in boroughs. Most people lived a long way from boroughs and did their own butchering, baking and smithing, and even leatherwork and cloth making.
There were plenty of professional butchers, bakers and blacksmiths in the Middle Ages, more probably percentage wise of the population than now
Did you just make that up? I doubt it with butchery: poshos ate a lot of hunted game which would be fealt with by hunt staff, not butchers. Peasants couldn't afford proper meat and what they got, they could butcher themselves. Bakers and blacksmiths are less likely to be DIY because it is cost ineffective to run a lot of little individual fires vs one central one.
Cities and castles. Almost everybody lives in the countryside, including all serfs.
Completely offtopic, but nice to see another poster named after a Scottish peak* (after Eabhal).
Need some more respresentation from the rest of the UK though - no Glyder Fawr, Yr Wyddfa or S Pike
*I assume, anyway? I've been up there. Unless there is another meaning.
My favourite Munro. I am always pleased in Ireland to note that the instructions at traffic lights say stop here when the light is dearg.
Surely the best Beinn Dearg is the one which fails to be a Munro by a miniscule amount? The Atholl one is very dull, although the Ullapool one does have a decent collection of alpines.
Regarding posters names after RUK mountains, Lord Hereford's Knob is still available.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
I've always assumed the Tories' goal is the return of the workhouse, but now I see I have failed to understand the extent of their ambition - a full on return to serfdom.
Thatch in her pomp: The Road to Serfdom, a profound warning to us all about the threats to our freedom. HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
And as ever, the extremes meet.
I'm thinking of a Watermelon Green who I met - The future would be that everyone lived in minimal spaces in giant apartment buildings. All work would be assigned by the government and provided by the government. All food would be allocated and provided by government. All travel would be allocated and allowed by the government.
You mean the Chinese system? Social credits and all.
Keir needs to reform the NHS into a Swiss system. Today he has given himself the room to do that.
I agree that the NHS needs radical reform - the only way any kind of insurance element would be accepted is if it was compulsory and even then I suspect the bulk of the left simply would not countenance it. It opens the door to extras for those prepared to pay more. It's what happens here in Spain which has an ok NHS but also a thriving private sector which is way cheaper than anything you'd get in the UK and as a result is accessed by a significant minority of moderately well off people. Incidentally, pay levels for doctors certainly and I suspect nurses too are also considerably less than in the UK. The public V private debate is a hot issue in many areas. I have private cover here - currently 135€ a month which includes a private GP service, a range of clinical services and all hospital costs as standard. Prescriptions can be a pricey extra on top. I reckon at my age - 68 - the quivalemnt service if it existed would be at least 3 or 4 times as much.
Already plenty of bits of the NHS that can be topped up by paying extra - private rooms, meals etc.
Really? I thought it was verboten to mix & match private and NHS. Or is that just treatment.
You can pay for a private ward within a NHS hospital though I don't see where the fun in that is. No opportunity for private deadpooling. Food wise best to get your visitors to bring you m&s packed lunches.
You can mix and match treatment pretty easily as well. And GPs will re-write private prescriptions into NHS ones at the drop of hat.
Seems like there has been some progress in the last 24 hours in The Speaker Saga, but no-one seems to know if it will be enough to make anyone change their vote, and there also seems to be a hardcore subset of the 20 rebels who are simply digging their heels in and refusing to back McCarthy come what may.
If the House follows precedent, switches to plurality voting and the Dems win the Speakership as a result, will those twenty get primaried?
Indeed, could they be recalled?
To switch to plurality voting there will need to be a majority of Reps who are willing to do so. So it requires cross-party buy in (assuming the awkward squad don’t back it - and why would they?
The rest of the GOP won’t switch to plurality unless it guarantees a GOP speaker.
So unless McCarthy steps aside or manages to broker a deal in the next couple of days I think this saga still has a bit to run.
Recall I think depends on whether the particular state allows it but someone with greater knowledge of US politics will probably set me right on that.
Why would you need a majority of Republicans? You just need 10 of them.
I should have written representatives (which is what I meant) rather than Reps, that muddied the water somewhat!
Not sure how you get those 10 to do so though unless it guarantees a GOP speaker. Otherwise they are de facto voting for a Democratic speaker which I cant see.
I suppose if they force through plurality with democratic help they can try and call Boebert et als bluff by saying “vote McCarthy or get Jeffreys,” but it’s a high risk strategy.
But project this forward. McCarthy has offered everything that is even halfway reasonable. Still it's not enough for them. The centrist Republicans won't vote for an actual freedom caucus nutter. So the 20 aren't going to get anything more. So they are going to do a week of this.
At that point might a handful of the most reasonable Republicans think screw this, my party is a joke. I will punish these nutters by showing them what they get. If the base hates them over it, they can defect to the Dems.
One of the things that has been (far) less commented on about the Midterms is that, despite the poor results vs expectations, the GOP polled nearly 3% ahead of the Democrats in the popular vote (when it came to seat redistricting, many D states like Illinois resorted to rolling the dice and focusing on maximising seat numbers, not majorities, in contrast to many GOP states). That was with some batshit crazy / poor quality candidates.
Every single story on here gets turned into a "This will kill the GOP" but the fact is that a large percentage of the American population won't vote Democratic and - maybe a surprise to people on here - sees many of the Democrats as batshit crazy in their own way.
Anyone hoping this is Death Knell 2001 for the GOP is going to be disappointed severely.
To be fair, "signalling one's intellectual superiority over the libs by effortfully puffing up extremists" is also a trope on here; see Leon if you want to set up a club. On the specifics, talking about the House is cherry-picking a mid-term election where the GOP under-performed at state and US Senate levels, and those are the places where the awful candidates get highlighted by big money. For example, consider Congressman-elect Santos whose delusions were only exposed months after the election; that wouldn't happen in an election for governor where each side has much more money to spend on opposition research, advertising across a media market and so on.
Indeed Santos is one example of where the US just falls down when it comes to the House.
Point of order though. 6-8 weeks ago pre-election, the betting was against the GOP taking the Senate and there was probably no Governorship result that came as an absolute shock (arguably the biggest shocks were DeSantis' and Abbott's margins, and that Zeldin ran Hochul so close in NY). What turned it into a blow for the GOP was the ramping up of expectations due to biased polls, which is why you could get 8/1 for the GOP on 49 seats in the Senate the week before the election (thanks @rcs1000 ), even though they were defending two states they lost in 2020 (PA and WI).
In an election that’s not predicted to be close, it can make sense to run extreme & absurd candidates.
The whackjobs can then get elected easier. And you may have a strong goal to push policies in one direction or another (whether left or right). So it is not completely stupid to put up extreme & absurd candidates, as they can shift the centre of gravity, even if their ideas are insane.
Now, recollect. If you go back a year ago, the mid-term elections didn’t seem like they’d be close.
So then, if you want an ignorant idiot and serial women abuser (like Herschel Walker) to get elected, you put him up as Republican nominee for Georgia. He will lose a few per cent of the vote, but it's not going to be close, so it won't make much of a difference.
But something happened that the GOP had not anticipated (it seems).
The midterms turned out not to be a referendum on the incumbent President. The pendulum did not swing back to the GOP.
The Supreme Court changed the meaning of the midterms.
So, for the first time in my life, I agree with Donald Trump.
He is correct when he says the ‘abortion issue’ sunk the GOP in the midterms.
And the losses were all the greater because they put up some crazy candidates in what turned out (against their expectation) to be close-run fights. So, the few percent that Herschel Walker (or Mehmet Oz) lost because they were crazy or extreme turned out to be the difference between winning and losing key Senate seats.
Keir needs to reform the NHS into a Swiss system. Today he has given himself the room to do that.
Lol, as if. The Swiss healthcare system is fully privatised and insurance based with subsidies offered by the state to low wage workers and unemployed people. Otherwise there is nothing like the NHS in Switzerland, all healthcare providers are privately owned and run for profit and insurers are owned and run privately for profit. There is no scenario where any party will ever propose to switch the UK to Swiss style healthcare, it would mean dismantling the NHS completely, privatising all hospitals and trusts, mandating insurance. It's a non-starter.
John Bull @garius · 16s Replying to @garius QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: If the French back a Harry-led invasion and seizure of the crown, then he reasserts his right to the French throne, reverse invades and restores the French monarchy in a personal union with the British one...
...does that get us back into the EU?
Yes.
Harry for King!
Harry is lucky he lives in the modern age not the Middle Ages when traitors to the Crown would have been beheaded, even if of royal birth
To be fair we nearly all are. Being a commoner I would likely be living in a mud hut, if I was lucky.
The Crown, aristocracy and Church (then still Roman Catholic here) had more power then so it was better for them.
Even serfs arguably had a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of land for their own basic needs even with lower life expectancy and provided they did not get into trouble with the law.
High streets in most towns also had a butcher and baker and blacksmith etc which not all of them have now
I've always assumed the Tories' goal is the return of the workhouse, but now I see I have failed to understand the extent of their ambition - a full on return to serfdom.
Thatch in her pomp: The Road to Serfdom, a profound warning to us all about the threats to our freedom. HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
Thatcher was more a Gladstone Manchester School free market Liberal than traditional landed Tory
So what ?
What proportion of the electorate consists of "traditional landed Tories", FFS ?
They have always been the Tories core support. Merchants, bankers and industrialists and factory owners used to be Whigs and then Liberals and only really joined with the Tories to form today's Conservative Party to keep Labour and socialists out as the franchise expanded and the working class got the vote
The first Liberal candidate I worked for( in the 1950s) owned a carpet factory. He remembered when he used to take all his workforce down to the polling station on election day.
Keir needs to reform the NHS into a Swiss system. Today he has given himself the room to do that.
Lol, as if. The Swiss healthcare system is fully privatised and insurance based with subsidies offered by the state to low wage workers and unemployed people. Otherwise there is nothing like the NHS in Switzerland, all healthcare providers are privately owned and run for profit and insurers are owned and run privately for profit. There is no scenario where any party will ever propose to switch the UK to Swiss style healthcare, it would mean dismantling the NHS completely, privatising all hospitals and trusts, mandating insurance. It's a non-starter.
That's ultimately what we need Max. NHS is not fit for purpose.
Seems like there has been some progress in the last 24 hours in The Speaker Saga, but no-one seems to know if it will be enough to make anyone change their vote, and there also seems to be a hardcore subset of the 20 rebels who are simply digging their heels in and refusing to back McCarthy come what may.
If the House follows precedent, switches to plurality voting and the Dems win the Speakership as a result, will those twenty get primaried?
Indeed, could they be recalled?
To switch to plurality voting there will need to be a majority of Reps who are willing to do so. So it requires cross-party buy in (assuming the awkward squad don’t back it - and why would they?
The rest of the GOP won’t switch to plurality unless it guarantees a GOP speaker.
So unless McCarthy steps aside or manages to broker a deal in the next couple of days I think this saga still has a bit to run.
Recall I think depends on whether the particular state allows it but someone with greater knowledge of US politics will probably set me right on that.
Why would you need a majority of Republicans? You just need 10 of them.
I should have written representatives (which is what I meant) rather than Reps, that muddied the water somewhat!
Not sure how you get those 10 to do so though unless it guarantees a GOP speaker. Otherwise they are de facto voting for a Democratic speaker which I cant see.
I suppose if they force through plurality with democratic help they can try and call Boebert et als bluff by saying “vote McCarthy or get Jeffreys,” but it’s a high risk strategy.
But project this forward. McCarthy has offered everything that is even halfway reasonable. Still it's not enough for them. The centrist Republicans won't vote for an actual freedom caucus nutter. So the 20 aren't going to get anything more. So they are going to do a week of this.
At that point might a handful of the most reasonable Republicans think screw this, my party is a joke. I will punish these nutters by showing them what they get. If the base hates them over it, they can defect to the Dems.
One of the things that has been (far) less commented on about the Midterms is that, despite the poor results vs expectations, the GOP polled nearly 3% ahead of the Democrats in the popular vote (when it came to seat redistricting, many D states like Illinois resorted to rolling the dice and focusing on maximising seat numbers, not majorities, in contrast to many GOP states). That was with some batshit crazy / poor quality candidates.
Every single story on here gets turned into a "This will kill the GOP" but the fact is that a large percentage of the American population won't vote Democratic and - maybe a surprise to people on here - sees many of the Democrats as batshit crazy in their own way.
Anyone hoping this is Death Knell 2001 for the GOP is going to be disappointed severely.
To be fair, "signalling one's intellectual superiority over the libs by effortfully puffing up extremists" is also a trope on here; see Leon if you want to set up a club. On the specifics, talking about the House is cherry-picking a mid-term election where the GOP under-performed at state and US Senate levels, and those are the places where the awful candidates get highlighted by big money. For example, consider Congressman-elect Santos whose delusions were only exposed months after the election; that wouldn't happen in an election for governor where each side has much more money to spend on opposition research, advertising across a media market and so on.
Indeed Santos is one example of where the US just falls down when it comes to the House.
Point of order though. 6-8 weeks ago pre-election, the betting was against the GOP taking the Senate and there was probably no Governorship result that came as an absolute shock (arguably the biggest shocks were DeSantis' and Abbott's margins, and that Zeldin ran Hochul so close in NY). What turned it into a blow for the GOP was the ramping up of expectations due to biased polls, which is why you could get 8/1 for the GOP on 49 seats in the Senate the week before the election (thanks @rcs1000 ), even though they were defending two states they lost in 2020 (PA and WI).
In an election that’s not predicted to be close, it can make sense to run extreme & absurd candidates.
The whackjobs can then get elected easier. And you may have a strong goal to push policies in one direction or another (whether left or right). So it is not completely stupid to put up extreme & absurd candidates, as they can shift the centre of gravity, even if their ideas are insane.
Now, recollect. If you go back a year ago, the mid-term elections didn’t seem like they’d be close.
So then, if you want an ignorant idiot and serial women abuser (like Herschel Walker) to get elected, you put him up as Republican nominee for Georgia. He will lose a few per cent of the vote, but it's not going to be close, so it won't make much of a difference.
But something happened that the GOP had not anticipated (it seems).
The midterms turned out not to be a referendum on the incumbent President. The pendulum did not swing back to the GOP.
The Supreme Court changed the meaning of the midterms.
So, for the first time in my life, I agree with Donald Trump.
He is correct when he says the ‘abortion issue’ sunk the GOP in the midterms.
And the losses were all the greater because they put up some crazy candidates in what turned out (against their expectation) to be close-run fights. So, the few percent that Herschel Walker (or Mehmet Oz) lost because they were crazy or extreme turned out to be the difference between winning and losing key Senate seats.
Were the GOP really stupid enough to think, at time of nominations, that Georgia wasn't going to be close and they could afford to lose a few percent? They'd have been hopeful, certainly, but Warnock was a strong incumbent in a purple state - and most Republicans felt he was beatable but not a total pushover.
Similarly, they knew Pennsylvania was going to the wire, and picked a weak candidate. Meanwhile, they'd certainly not have assumed New Hampshire was in the bag, but would have hoped it'd be competitive - and didn't help themselves one bit with the candidate.
The GOP were choosing some eccentric candidates in various places - it's not just that they mistakenly thought they could afford to risk the luxury of a maniac candidate in pretty solid seats (like the Joe Kent loss in the House elections) - they were doing it in all sorts of places which they knew were battlegrounds even if the abortion issue hadn't come up.
Comments
Football: 3 tips, plus a free bet suggestion if you have one (all La Liga).
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/01/serie-and-la-liga-thoughts-5-january.html
Morris Dancer, away!
That matches what I read. Nothing in there suggesting any expertise in epidemic/pandemic response or even general public health. I'm not doubting her expertise in her area of specialism.
I'm an epidemiologist, which puts me (on the evidence presented) rather closer to having expertise on how to respond to a pandemic than her, but I - not working at all in infectious disease, but having some understanding of the knowledge required, at least - know that I know bugger all about pandemic response.
Another reason Truss may have been a Lib Dem sleeper agent.
And similarly, it isn't very reassuring.
Do British voters approve or disapprove of the Govt's performance on the NHS? (2-3 Jan.)
Disapprove: 62% (+6)
Approve: 16% (-3)
Net Approval: -46% (-9)
Changes +/- 11 Dec. https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1611012194128351232/photo/1
The superb Happy Valley is back (BBC). And Fauda (Netflix).
The Hound for Reaction.
https://reaction.life/odds-shorten-on-starmer-after-big-new-year-speech/ https://twitter.com/reactionlife/status/1611012146258657283/photo/1
"Vote Tory for a simpler life, working in the fields all day with a hut with a piece of (your landlord's) land for your basic needs, with lower life expectancy obvs, and provided you do not get into trouble with the law."
https://marriott-stats.com/nigels-blog/
"Nigel Marriott's Blog
An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future"
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1611014224330870785
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1611011803189809153
Need some more respresentation from the rest of the UK though - no Glyder Fawr, Yr Wyddfa or S Pike
*I assume, anyway? I've been up there. Unless there is another meaning.
Made me smile. Sorry if it's a repeat
What's wrong with the hide? If 't were good enough for Swein Godwinson....
Every single story on here gets turned into a "This will kill the GOP" but the fact is that a large percentage of the American population won't vote Democratic and - maybe a surprise to people on here - sees many of the Democrats as batshit crazy in their own way.
Anyone hoping this is Death Knell 2001 for the GOP is going to be disappointed severely.
"It's insulting to key workers that Rishi Sunak thinks that threatening teachers and nurses with the sack will end strikes"
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1611018173322493959
HYUFD: serfdom was quite good actually.
What proportion of the electorate consists of "traditional landed Tories", FFS ?
Don’t give into the strikers Rishi.
Striking medical professionals have blood on their hands.
I'm thinking of a Watermelon Green who I met - The future would be that everyone lived in minimal spaces in giant apartment buildings. All work would be assigned by the government and provided by the government. All food would be allocated and provided by government. All travel would be allocated and allowed by the government.
Point of order though. 6-8 weeks ago pre-election, the betting was against the GOP taking the Senate and there was probably no Governorship result that came as an absolute shock (arguably the biggest shocks were DeSantis' and Abbott's margins, and that Zeldin ran Hochul so close in NY). What turned it into a blow for the GOP was the ramping up of expectations due to biased polls, which is why you could get 8/1 for the GOP on 49 seats in the Senate the week before the election (thanks @rcs1000 ), even though they were defending two states they lost in 2020 (PA and WI).
The whackjobs can then get elected easier. And you may have a strong goal to push policies in one direction or another (whether left or right). So it is not completely stupid to put up extreme & absurd candidates, as they can shift the centre of gravity, even if their ideas are insane.
Now, recollect. If you go back a year ago, the mid-term elections didn’t seem like they’d be close.
So then, if you want an ignorant idiot and serial women abuser (like Herschel Walker) to get elected, you put him up as Republican nominee for Georgia. He will lose a few per cent of the vote, but it's not going to be close, so it won't make much of a difference.
But something happened that the GOP had not anticipated (it seems).
The midterms turned out not to be a referendum on the incumbent President. The pendulum did not swing back to the GOP.
The Supreme Court changed the meaning of the midterms.
So, for the first time in my life, I agree with Donald Trump.
He is correct when he says the ‘abortion issue’ sunk the GOP in the midterms.
And the losses were all the greater because they put up some crazy candidates in what turned out (against their expectation) to be close-run fights. So, the few percent that Herschel Walker (or Mehmet Oz) lost because they were crazy or extreme turned out to be the difference between winning and losing key Senate seats.
Similarly, they knew Pennsylvania was going to the wire, and picked a weak candidate. Meanwhile, they'd certainly not have assumed New Hampshire was in the bag, but would have hoped it'd be competitive - and didn't help themselves one bit with the candidate.
The GOP were choosing some eccentric candidates in various places - it's not just that they mistakenly thought they could afford to risk the luxury of a maniac candidate in pretty solid seats (like the Joe Kent loss in the House elections) - they were doing it in all sorts of places which they knew were battlegrounds even if the abortion issue hadn't come up.