Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
You think only 1000 people died as a result of Covid, seriously? You think 100k+ other people were imminently about to die without Covid?
If I had a mild case of cancer which was non-threatening, and then got Covid and died, you'd say Covid had nothing to do with it?
It's utter nonsense. Andy_JS is one step away from "crisis actors" levels of disinformation. Arrant bollocks and completely reprehensible.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Quite obvious? Are you sure about that? Something in the news recently about how it saved "only" 1700 people. You might have been one of those people, or someone you know.
And before anyone comes at me with figures about the cost to the economy, please make sure we're talking about the same thing. The 1700 people was those saved over and above those saved by the voluntary behavioural changes. If you want to do a cost-benefit analysis, split the economic costs into similar categories of voluntary/mandatory so we don't mislead anyone, thanks.
I don't know whether lockdown was worth it or not, but I'm not going to be guided by the wankers in Tufton Street into casually dismissing the lives of hundreds and hundreds of people without a proper balanced analysis.
Oh, yeah, that "study" by the trio of fervent anti-lockdowner economists.
To believe it, you only need to believe that ANY intervention is lockdown. Including a mask mandate on its own. Or requiring people to quarantine if found to have the virus. Meaning, for example, that Sweden had a longer "lockdown" than we did. Which means those citing this report can't possibly try to cite "Sweden," of course.
You need to believe that mask mandates, despite being "lockdowns" and therefore unhelpful, did actually reduce deaths considerably (when you look at their tables). So, those arguing this are arguing in favour of mask mandates (curiously, they don't seem to do so).
You need to believe that the correlation between restrictions being brought in and deaths is only one way. That is - there can't POSSIBLY be a correlation between deaths spiralling upwards and countries desperately increasing restrictions, can there?
You need to believe that Australia and New Zealand avoided massive deaths during the worst of the pandemic by sheer luck, because all of their efforts were now PROVEN to be completely ineffective.
And, of course, to do all of what they did, they had to discount studies by epidemiologists (because what do THEY know about epidemiology?) or any studies comparing trajectories of before and after (because you can't look at trajectories before restrictions because that's just hypothetical).
Naturally, the Telegraph, GB News, and the usual suspects trumpeted this as a triumph...
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Now that's a damascene conversion to match any on PB - you spent two years demanding more, longer and harder lockdowns.
Actually the first lockdown was necessary.
But the subsequent two could have been avoided if the government had restricted foreign holidays for a year.
I know the Telegraph is a joke but this reads like a parody.
The mortgage bomb about to explode under middle-class Britain
The mercury is rising and so are interest rates: the scene appears to be set for a midsummer nightmare in the mortgage market. With nearly half a million home loan borrowers rolling their fixed-term loans every three months over the course of this year, the ratchet is tightening. As someone wryly pointed out on Twitter recently, “When does your fixed rate end?” has become the new “Have you watched any good box sets recently?” go-to dinner party conversation starter.
Don’t ask Adam Fraser*, 42, and his wife, who bought their £7 million house in Berkshire in July last year having secured a mortgage in the January. “It was at the tail end of when there were still good deals to be had,” says Fraser. “We passed our affordability test with flying colours and so I had no problem buying at the top of the market.”
If that's the Telegraph's idea of middle class then I must be working class.
Journalists routintely talk about a middle-class that by any normal definition is usually the upper quintile. This has been the case for as long as I can recall. The very people who journalists think need help are the group that basically needs no help at all and ought to be paying more tax.
I did laugh at the idea the Telegraph goes to interview these multi-millionaires who we are apparently supposed to feel sympathy for. It does rather explain their current position if this is what they think the country wants to hear.
Won't no one think of the mega-rich, in desperate need of tax cuts in order to pay £45 000 per year school fees?
I recall a US commentator arguing in a debate that 250k per year in New York was close to poverty. Those poor people.
There was this hilarious bit on BBC QT with Richard Burgon and an audience member too:
It's ok though, because it was heat of the moment.
Huh? I suspect few on here have ever assaulted anyone in that way. If I tried that, I would expect to be both subsequently eating through a straw and summoned for an appointment with a magistrate.
First thing I read in the Sunday Times: "Labour are forecast to win a majority of Scottish seats by returning 26 MPs". I don't think 26 seats would be a majority, even after boundary changes. Maybe by majority they mean more seats than anyone else.
Yes, it appears you are right. New boundary seats in Scotland = 57. McHeinz varieties, if you will.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Utter nonsense. Infections would have spiralled out of control, the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed and tens of thousands more would have died.
The first lockdown was necessary and proportionate for the surging crisis. I don't think it would have worked without legal measures either, not to get the necessary level of compliance to prevent being overwhelmed. I don't think pre-vaccine we could have coped with loosened arrangements.
Could some other lockdowns have been avoided or ended sooner, or done on a more urged behaviour than legal threat basis? Possibly.
Whilst we need to look back on what we did, I do think there is a bit of lockdown remorse going on which is stretching too far from 'Some were not needed/should not have been so long or restrictive' to 'they were not necessary at any time'.
The first lockdown worked. Infection levels were way down. And then Sunak had his bright idea of Eat Out to Catch Covid and back into lockdown we went.
Then you had the nonsense tier system with the pubs in Leeds shut and the pubs in York open. Thereby encouraging more travel and more spread.
There was lots wrong in the government's response to Covid. However, blanket lockdown was the one policy that they got right.
People going to restaurants wouldn't have spread covid if nobody had it.
It was allowing covid to be imported again in summer 2020 which was the mistake.
While the media were obsessing about the dangers of covid free Bournemouth beach it was being brought back on ever flight from Spain.
It's ok though, because it was heat of the moment.
Huh? I suspect few on here have ever assaulted anyone in that way. If I tried that, I would expect to be both subsequently eating through a straw and summoned for an appointment with a magistrate.
I noticed in Glenda Jackson's obituaries that she said she'd never been in a relationship where she had not been beaten by her partner.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
If you believe that you need lessons in reality.
Out of 220,000 death certificates which mention COVID as a contributory factor you are dismissing 219,000 as COVID irrelevant. That's absurd
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Now that's a damascene conversion to match any on PB - you spent two years demanding more, longer and harder lockdowns.
Actually the first lockdown was necessary.
But the subsequent two could have been avoided if the government had restricted foreign holidays for a year.
Subsequent lockdowns may have been avoidable if the Government had done more to get people with symptoms to test and done more to support people self-isolating.
It's ok though, because it was heat of the moment.
Huh? I suspect few on here have ever assaulted anyone in that way. If I tried that, I would expect to be both subsequently eating through a straw and summoned for an appointment with a magistrate.
He probably was thinking ‘all of them have shaken hands with me so they’ve all touched an arse.’
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
Um - to get that number, you have to discount people who had anything other than a bald one-liner of "Covid-19"
For example, someone who died from:
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome caused by Viral pneumonia caused by Covid-19
... is NOT someone who "died directly from Covid-19", in those criteria. Because it had ARDS and pneumonia on their death certificate. And I'm not taking the piss. That's literally what they had to do to get this number. Seriously.
They've switched to monitoring covid-19 deaths against death certificates, of which more than 80% had covid-19 as the CAUSE of death. That's over 130,000 deaths due to covid-19 (not with "incidental" covid-19, or just happened to push dying people over the edge sort of things) by April 2021*, as the winter wave finally receded.
I think you've been listening to the Toby Youngs, Ivor Cummins, and the like a bit too much.
*There are over 220,000 with covid on death certificates as of now, but the proportion dying "of covid" rather than "with covid" did decrease noticeably since the vaccine roll-out, thank God.
PlatoSaid last posted in March 2017 after her previous personas had been banned or malfunctioned. In real life she was a woman in her fifties called Philippa. Some people treat politics as a witty entertainment, but to their credit others give it their full measure and of those some are sadly lost in the giving. She started off with only tangential interest in politics but in her later years became more devoted to the wilder alt-right shores and left by mutual agreement. Nevertheless she was missed and several months later people started to comment on her absence, initially jokingly, then with more concern. Eventually her brother contacted OGH after finding a link and told him that she had died. Her friends and lived ones are not known to us, but even those who disagreed with her on PB will remember her fondly.
[I used to do obituaries for PB members but Mike refused to publish it. It's about a year out of date now - somebody died in 2022 and I missed it - but it contains obits of five PBers]
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Utter nonsense. Infections would have spiralled out of control, the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed and tens of thousands more would have died.
The first lockdown was necessary and proportionate for the surging crisis. I don't think it would have worked without legal measures either, not to get the necessary level of compliance to prevent being overwhelmed. I don't think pre-vaccine we could have coped with loosened arrangements.
Could some other lockdowns have been avoided or ended sooner, or done on a more urged behaviour than legal threat basis? Possibly.
Whilst we need to look back on what we did, I do think there is a bit of lockdown remorse going on which is stretching too far from 'Some were not needed/should not have been so long or restrictive' to 'they were not necessary at any time'.
The first lockdown worked. Infection levels were way down. And then Sunak had his bright idea of Eat Out to Catch Covid and back into lockdown we went.
Then you had the nonsense tier system with the pubs in Leeds shut and the pubs in York open. Thereby encouraging more travel and more spread.
There was lots wrong in the government's response to Covid. However, blanket lockdown was the one policy that they got right.
I'm quite looking forward to finding out how some of the more odd (to my mind) rules were arrived at during the 'tiering phase'. Assuming we do of course. I remember one local rule we had was you were allowed to meet up outdoors in groups of upto 20 (or rather 'two groups of upto 10') - but you *must* stay at least a metre apart. And wondering at the time how they arrived at that.
That's really interesting - the basic Scots oatcake/bannock cookery method, at the fire in the ashes or on a plate/stone, would be much the same as the original local methods anyway. So ti would depend on the details of the bannock whether anything other than the name was Scots in origin.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Now that's a damascene conversion to match any on PB - you spent two years demanding more, longer and harder lockdowns.
Actually the first lockdown was necessary.
But the subsequent two could have been avoided if the government had restricted foreign holidays for a year.
Subsequent lockdowns may have been avoidable if the Government had done more to get people with symptoms to test and done more to support people self-isolating.
Better air filtration and ventilation could also have helped a lot - and would help a lot in future during future respiratory virus pandemics.
Good quality HEPA filters and far-UV treatment of air in all schools and hospitals. That way we could look to avoiding closing schools.
I don't know why you blame journalists. That's what the whole middle class thinks. (I will steer clear of definitional issues for the moment.) "It's always the people in the middle that get squeezed the most", etc. Whingeing c*nts.
There is a lot of truth in that. Probably because most people think they are normal and average, rather than exceptional, and because the people they mix with and live amongst look like them, so "this" must be the norm.
I still blame journalists because even the thickest of them ought to be able to quickly look up some data about income and household wealth and wonder "is this really middle class?"
Setting any sympathy aside, in terms of the economic effect (and this effectiveness) of the interest rate rises, that on middle class home owners is pretty significant. Which is the point of them, rather than an argument against them.
Middle class home owners with big mortgages.
Middle class home owners without big mortgages will be having their spending power increased as they get interest on their savings.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Now that's a damascene conversion to match any on PB - you spent two years demanding more, longer and harder lockdowns.
Actually the first lockdown was necessary.
But the subsequent two could have been avoided if the government had restricted foreign holidays for a year.
Subsequent lockdowns may have been avoidable if the Government had done more to get people with symptoms to test and done more to support people self-isolating.
Better air filtration and ventilation could also have helped a lot - and would help a lot in future during future respiratory virus pandemics.
Good quality HEPA filters and far-UV treatment of air in all schools and hospitals. That way we could look to avoiding closing schools.
It would help a lot just during the ordinary cold and flu season.
I see we have a new candidate for a protected characteristic in discrimination legislation. Mark Rylance thinks "difficult" people are not tolerated in the theatre these days: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65942440
Reading this really made me angry. I think it's so unfair that difficult people are being discriminated against in the theatre, I have never read any hint that there was any bias at all against difficult actors in the good old days. The law really should be changed so that discrimination against difficult people is outlawed.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Now that's a damascene conversion to match any on PB - you spent two years demanding more, longer and harder lockdowns.
Actually the first lockdown was necessary.
But the subsequent two could have been avoided if the government had restricted foreign holidays for a year.
Subsequent lockdowns may have been avoidable if the Government had done more to get people with symptoms to test and done more to support people self-isolating.
Better air filtration and ventilation could also have helped a lot - and would help a lot in future during future respiratory virus pandemics.
Good quality HEPA filters and far-UV treatment of air in all schools and hospitals. That way we could look to avoiding closing schools.
It would help a lot just during the ordinary cold and flu season.
Especially teachers and anyone else in contact with the mobile petri dishes called "children".
It's ok though, because it was heat of the moment.
Huh? I suspect few on here have ever assaulted anyone in that way. If I tried that, I would expect to be both subsequently eating through a straw and summoned for an appointment with a magistrate.
I noticed in Glenda Jackson's obituaries that she said she'd never been in a relationship where she had not been beaten by her partner.
I suspect that the propensity to assault one's partner or children unfettered at home is more prevalent than casually assaulting a random stranger in the street.
Now for all those lockdown deniers with whom I normally defend the policy, I suspect they have a point when they reference domestic abuse and violence during lockdowns as a much under reported crime. For those locked up with a violent partner or parent, lockdowns must have been hell on earth.
That's really interesting - the basic Scots oatcake/bannock cookery method, at the fire in the ashes or on a plate/stone, would be much the same as the original local methods anyway. So ti would depend on the details of the bannock whether anything other than the name was Scots in origin.
Yes. Essentially, they both made the same thing, more or less. With regional variations of both. It's got the Scottish name, cos early settlers knew damn well what it was.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Utter nonsense. Infections would have spiralled out of control, the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed and tens of thousands more would have died.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
People with conditions are still PEOPLE. They wouldn’t have died were it not for COVID.
Did anyone say they weren't? The point is the lockdown probably caused more damage than it prevented.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Utter nonsense. Infections would have spiralled out of control, the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed and tens of thousands more would have died.
The first lockdown was necessary and proportionate for the surging crisis. I don't think it would have worked without legal measures either, not to get the necessary level of compliance to prevent being overwhelmed. I don't think pre-vaccine we could have coped with loosened arrangements.
Could some other lockdowns have been avoided or ended sooner, or done on a more urged behaviour than legal threat basis? Possibly.
Whilst we need to look back on what we did, I do think there is a bit of lockdown remorse going on which is stretching too far from 'Some were not needed/should not have been so long or restrictive' to 'they were not necessary at any time'.
The first lockdown worked. Infection levels were way down. And then Sunak had his bright idea of Eat Out to Catch Covid and back into lockdown we went.
Then you had the nonsense tier system with the pubs in Leeds shut and the pubs in York open. Thereby encouraging more travel and more spread.
There was lots wrong in the government's response to Covid. However, blanket lockdown was the one policy that they got right.
People going to restaurants wouldn't have spread covid if nobody had it.
It was allowing covid to be imported again in summer 2020 which was the mistake.
The stupidity of these comments is absolutely breathtaking.
In the Moon and Starfish, a Wetherspoon’s pub on the Clacton seafront, the day drinking crowd were well into their third pints by Thursday lunchtime. When I brought up Brexit, it was viewed with a sense of wasted opportunity, like a football team who had thrown away a two-goal lead.
“I expected problems from day one. It’s the British way,” said Trevor, 77, a retired commodities trader. “I hoped it would be good, but it hasn’t panned out; the politicians have let us down as usual. Boris is an arsehole. He’s always been an arsehole.”
“Independence” and “standing on our own two feet” were the most common rationales I heard for Brexit, but, like many in Clacton, Trevor had also hoped that leaving the EU would allow the government to drastically reduce immigration. Clearly, this hasn’t happened. “We need to stop the boats — this country is full,” he said. Then he looked at me. “I’m not being rude to you, but it’s to stop the n*****s coming in.” Right then.
I hear similar all the time from people of that generation. I’m not racist but….. type stuff. From the Boomer generation who grew up in a white country.
The question is how different are the Gen Xers and Millennials who have grown up in an increasingly multicultural society? Much more tolerant in the main? If Brexit was primarily about enabling a dying generation to express its racism, then it’s unsustainable.
One of the things that struck me about the Yorkshire Cricket Club racism scandal is that those involved were considerably younger than me. Ditto police officers who get caught up in such scandals.
I’m Gen X.
Anyone thinking that the young are somehow free of prejudice needs to get out into the real world. Look at the misogyny, racism and homophobia we have seen described in many institutions and the people exhibiting these - many of them young. These prejudices just take different forms and get packaged differently. Sexism towards women is quite shocking and often comes from young men against women of all ages, for instance. There are also some pretty unpleasant descriptions of old people by the young - sometimes on this forum.
Your general point is true, and you can get some strong sexism from a 20 year old bro who knows all the right terms and forms to present as being free from prejudice.
But I am interested in what you consider over the line in terms of prejudice against the old. Is someone railing against the government reliant on and thus wholly focused on the needs of retirees over the line? Is someone blaming that cohorts priorities on housing or immigration over the line, wrong, or just exaggerating? Is all that fine so long as bad words are not used?
The idea that prejudice can be removed from the human experience is one that I find absolutely deranged and comical, but this is consistent with a long history of progressive ideas. In the end all these projects end in tragedy and failure.
I've mentioned the initiative below a few times, 'prejudice reporting in education', an example of the phenomenon I am raising.
Indeed. I think the sane view is that *something approaching* an unbiased view of people can only be achieved through continuous self examination.
Anyone who says “I can’t be biased, I am X/a member of Y” can be presumed to be biased.
We all have prejudices, and it it examination and acknowledgement of these that allows us to overcome them.
It needs to be in a supportive culture though, not Maoist Cultural Revolution style self criticism.
Sadly, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Some people react with horrified fury at the idea of unconscious bias and if they can be persuaded to take those little tests that purport to identify them, reject them wholeheartedly.
The issue, I think, is the stigma admitting bias. But if we can get past that and be comfortable with seeing our own biases, it's not the end of the world and it can save us from making embarrassing mistakes.
One of my biases is around around gender. I suspect it's very common. If I hear certain genderless job names, like "doctor" or "nurse", I have a tendency to picture one gender or the other. Now that I know I do this, I can consciously remember not to carry that assumption forward into saying something stupid. (Of course, I still say many other stupid things).
I don't blame myself for having those early-learned gendered ideas, and I don't think anyone else should either. But a lot of people are terrified of being seen as having biases and so will avoid doing something about them.
I think unconscious bias is definitely a thing, as you say it might be around instinctively picturing something, and you probably would not act any differently were that instinct incorrect.
I do think that the impact of it can be vastly overstated, and there have been some comical examples of advice and training on the subject which seems to me to be likely to have the opposite effect - like the one about not making enough eye contact with some people, which seemed likely to result in people making too much eye contact at people of a specific race, etc, in an effort to overcome it.
I do think microaggressions are utter bullshit though- far too open to abuse to condemn people for something both slight and unintentional (if even real), and to make people hyper aware and sensitive to see slights where there are none.
This is where nuance is important. Micro aggressions cross a wide spectrum. There’s a big difference between “so you’re Italian, bet you get cross when people put pineapple on pizza” and “calm down dear” or “let me feel your fuzzy hair”.
I had a someone at work complain to me that a senior colleague had described him (a Mexican) as South American. On the basis this level of geographical ignorance was borderline racist. I couldn’t get excited by that when most Americans think we live in a country called England and half the world thinks it’s always foggy in London.
I eat pineapple on pizza and if some Italian tries to stop me you won't see a microaggression from me, I will make war on the whole country. Tanks on the Piazza di Siena. Internment camps, war crimes THE WORKS.
I had pizza with pineapple in Pisa. And very nice it was too.
Pizza condemnation should be reserved for those where the base is several inches thick and resembles a stottie cake.
If you have a piece a pizza in Pisa, you have no reason to expect authenticity. Everyone knows pizza is an American invention and the pineapple version is Canadian. Possibly the only Canadian national dish.
Poutine. Bannock.
Poutine is definitively Quebecois. I don't think it's a feature in Winnipeg.
Bannock is of course Scottish, most famously from Selkirk, but also giving its name to the field where that famous battle took place.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
People with conditions are still PEOPLE. They wouldn’t have died were it not for COVID.
Did anyone say they weren't? The point is the lockdown probably caused more damage than it prevented.
How can you judge what damage it prevented? What study are you relying on for that?
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
Um - to get that number, you have to discount people who had anything other than a bald one-liner of "Covid-19"
For example, someone who died from:
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome caused by Viral pneumonia caused by Covid-19
... is NOT someone who "died directly from Covid-19", in those criteria. Because it had ARDS and pneumonia on their death certificate. And I'm not taking the piss. That's literally what they had to do to get this number. Seriously.
They've switched to monitoring covid-19 deaths against death certificates, of which more than 80% had covid-19 as the CAUSE of death. That's over 130,000 deaths due to covid-19 (not with "incidental" covid-19, or just happened to push dying people over the edge sort of things) by April 2021*, as the winter wave finally receded.
I think you've been listening to the Toby Youngs, Ivor Cummins, and the like a bit too much.
*There are over 220,000 with covid on death certificates as of now, but the proportion dying "of covid" rather than "with covid" did decrease noticeably since the vaccine roll-out, thank God.
You do not understand how death certificates works.
I see we have a new candidate for a protected characteristic in discrimination legislation. Mark Rylance thinks "difficult" people are not tolerated in the theatre these days: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65942440
Reading this really made me angry. I think it's so unfair that difficult people are being discriminated against in the theatre, I have never read any hint that there was any bias at all against difficult actors in the good old days. The law really should be changed so that discrimination against difficult people is outlawed.
Remarkable how you have taken that intreview (which I watched) and managed to make it seem like he was trying to make it some sort of victimhood. He wasn't. He was simply speaking up for those who are difficult and think outside the box and, when directly asked, said he didn't think people like him would make it in the theatre and film today because they were difficult to get along with. If anything it was a recognition of his own failings with a thought that perhaps the world needs more difficult people as they make change happen.
The closest it got to special pleading was a call for being more tolerant of thise who do not always ascribe to mainstream views.
@iainjwatson But @michaelgove doesn't advocate stripping Shaun Bailey and Ben Mallett (the latter is in the video) of their honours - saying the responsibility for that honours list was @BorisJohnson 's
The whole of British politics is not "how do I fix this problem" but instead "how do I blame somebody else for it"
That it utterly incorrect.
The whole of public life is about avoiding responsibility for those at the top. Blaming someone else would mean, eventually, blame would come to you.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Now that's a damascene conversion to match any on PB - you spent two years demanding more, longer and harder lockdowns.
Actually the first lockdown was necessary.
But the subsequent two could have been avoided if the government had restricted foreign holidays for a year.
Am I not allowed to change my mind?
I was never a lockdown enthusiast, and think they generally went on too long, albeit with relatively less restrictive features.
Worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of a true lockdown, cases often go up as family members are confined together, before dropping.
There was a lot of absurdity about wearing masks moving about in restaurants and pubs, but not while seated, one way systems, whether a Scotch Egg constitutes a meal etc.
Keeping schools and universities open would have presented its own problems, not least in transmission but also in the inevitable difficulties with teachers being off sick etc.
I think furlough etc went on far too long, and was the expensive bit, and prone to sharp practice like business support.
I don't think it will be needed again as Covid was a fairly unique pandemic in an immune naive population with a virus most infective while pre-symptomatic. We now have endemic covid but also herd immunity.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
Um - to get that number, you have to discount people who had anything other than a bald one-liner of "Covid-19"
For example, someone who died from:
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome caused by Viral pneumonia caused by Covid-19
... is NOT someone who "died directly from Covid-19", in those criteria. Because it had ARDS and pneumonia on their death certificate. And I'm not taking the piss. That's literally what they had to do to get this number. Seriously.
They've switched to monitoring covid-19 deaths against death certificates, of which more than 80% had covid-19 as the CAUSE of death. That's over 130,000 deaths due to covid-19 (not with "incidental" covid-19, or just happened to push dying people over the edge sort of things) by April 2021*, as the winter wave finally receded.
I think you've been listening to the Toby Youngs, Ivor Cummins, and the like a bit too much.
*There are over 220,000 with covid on death certificates as of now, but the proportion dying "of covid" rather than "with covid" did decrease noticeably since the vaccine roll-out, thank God.
You do not understand how death certificates works.
Wouldn't changing pension increases back to inflation only be a way of taking future demand out of the system ?
As well as making the country a little fairer.
State Pensions? They *are* at inflation. And recently changed to the lower variant (CPI not RPI).
(IIRC thewre is a minimum 2 percentahge point increase, to raise state pensions towards the average wage. But this is moot at present, obviously.)
Sure but inflation is likely to drop below the rate of pay rises soon so next year's increase will be affected.
Maybe it only affects demand of such things as Werthers Originals and Sunday carveries in chain pubs.
But that's the way the system works. The increase at the start of each FY is the inflation *over the previous year*. What happens during the next FY is irrelevant, in that sense. (And the state pensioner has had to put up with a year's worth of inflation, meantime.)
You'd need actual deflation for real anomalies.
The above applies, of course, also to workers and pay rises, which deal with inflation which is now baked in, not what will happen next year - often carefully ignored by right-wing commentators.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
Um - to get that number, you have to discount people who had anything other than a bald one-liner of "Covid-19"
For example, someone who died from:
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome caused by Viral pneumonia caused by Covid-19
... is NOT someone who "died directly from Covid-19", in those criteria. Because it had ARDS and pneumonia on their death certificate. And I'm not taking the piss. That's literally what they had to do to get this number. Seriously.
They've switched to monitoring covid-19 deaths against death certificates, of which more than 80% had covid-19 as the CAUSE of death. That's over 130,000 deaths due to covid-19 (not with "incidental" covid-19, or just happened to push dying people over the edge sort of things) by April 2021*, as the winter wave finally receded.
I think you've been listening to the Toby Youngs, Ivor Cummins, and the like a bit too much.
*There are over 220,000 with covid on death certificates as of now, but the proportion dying "of covid" rather than "with covid" did decrease noticeably since the vaccine roll-out, thank God.
You do not understand how death certificates works.
Could you explain my misunderstanding?
That would be a lengthy discussion, but probably it comes down to some mixture of stupidity and a desire to believe in partisan fantasies.
In the Moon and Starfish, a Wetherspoon’s pub on the Clacton seafront, the day drinking crowd were well into their third pints by Thursday lunchtime. When I brought up Brexit, it was viewed with a sense of wasted opportunity, like a football team who had thrown away a two-goal lead.
“I expected problems from day one. It’s the British way,” said Trevor, 77, a retired commodities trader. “I hoped it would be good, but it hasn’t panned out; the politicians have let us down as usual. Boris is an arsehole. He’s always been an arsehole.”
“Independence” and “standing on our own two feet” were the most common rationales I heard for Brexit, but, like many in Clacton, Trevor had also hoped that leaving the EU would allow the government to drastically reduce immigration. Clearly, this hasn’t happened. “We need to stop the boats — this country is full,” he said. Then he looked at me. “I’m not being rude to you, but it’s to stop the n*****s coming in.” Right then.
I hear similar all the time from people of that generation. I’m not racist but….. type stuff. From the Boomer generation who grew up in a white country.
The question is how different are the Gen Xers and Millennials who have grown up in an increasingly multicultural society? Much more tolerant in the main? If Brexit was primarily about enabling a dying generation to express its racism, then it’s unsustainable.
One of the things that struck me about the Yorkshire Cricket Club racism scandal is that those involved were considerably younger than me. Ditto police officers who get caught up in such scandals.
I’m Gen X.
Anyone thinking that the young are somehow free of prejudice needs to get out into the real world. Look at the misogyny, racism and homophobia we have seen described in many institutions and the people exhibiting these - many of them young. These prejudices just take different forms and get packaged differently. Sexism towards women is quite shocking and often comes from young men against women of all ages, for instance. There are also some pretty unpleasant descriptions of old people by the young - sometimes on this forum.
Your general point is true, and you can get some strong sexism from a 20 year old bro who knows all the right terms and forms to present as being free from prejudice.
But I am interested in what you consider over the line in terms of prejudice against the old. Is someone railing against the government reliant on and thus wholly focused on the needs of retirees over the line? Is someone blaming that cohorts priorities on housing or immigration over the line, wrong, or just exaggerating? Is all that fine so long as bad words are not used?
The idea that prejudice can be removed from the human experience is one that I find absolutely deranged and comical, but this is consistent with a long history of progressive ideas. In the end all these projects end in tragedy and failure.
I've mentioned the initiative below a few times, 'prejudice reporting in education', an example of the phenomenon I am raising.
Indeed. I think the sane view is that *something approaching* an unbiased view of people can only be achieved through continuous self examination.
Anyone who says “I can’t be biased, I am X/a member of Y” can be presumed to be biased.
We all have prejudices, and it it examination and acknowledgement of these that allows us to overcome them.
It needs to be in a supportive culture though, not Maoist Cultural Revolution style self criticism.
Sadly, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Some people react with horrified fury at the idea of unconscious bias and if they can be persuaded to take those little tests that purport to identify them, reject them wholeheartedly.
The issue, I think, is the stigma admitting bias. But if we can get past that and be comfortable with seeing our own biases, it's not the end of the world and it can save us from making embarrassing mistakes.
One of my biases is around around gender. I suspect it's very common. If I hear certain genderless job names, like "doctor" or "nurse", I have a tendency to picture one gender or the other. Now that I know I do this, I can consciously remember not to carry that assumption forward into saying something stupid. (Of course, I still say many other stupid things).
I don't blame myself for having those early-learned gendered ideas, and I don't think anyone else should either. But a lot of people are terrified of being seen as having biases and so will avoid doing something about them.
I think unconscious bias is definitely a thing, as you say it might be around instinctively picturing something, and you probably would not act any differently were that instinct incorrect.
I do think that the impact of it can be vastly overstated, and there have been some comical examples of advice and training on the subject which seems to me to be likely to have the opposite effect - like the one about not making enough eye contact with some people, which seemed likely to result in people making too much eye contact at people of a specific race, etc, in an effort to overcome it.
I do think microaggressions are utter bullshit though- far too open to abuse to condemn people for something both slight and unintentional (if even real), and to make people hyper aware and sensitive to see slights where there are none.
This is where nuance is important. Micro aggressions cross a wide spectrum. There’s a big difference between “so you’re Italian, bet you get cross when people put pineapple on pizza” and “calm down dear” or “let me feel your fuzzy hair”.
I had a someone at work complain to me that a senior colleague had described him (a Mexican) as South American. On the basis this level of geographical ignorance was borderline racist. I couldn’t get excited by that when most Americans think we live in a country called England and half the world thinks it’s always foggy in London.
I eat pineapple on pizza and if some Italian tries to stop me you won't see a microaggression from me, I will make war on the whole country. Tanks on the Piazza di Siena. Internment camps, war crimes THE WORKS.
I had pizza with pineapple in Pisa. And very nice it was too.
Pizza condemnation should be reserved for those where the base is several inches thick and resembles a stottie cake.
If you have a piece a pizza in Pisa, you have no reason to expect authenticity. Everyone knows pizza is an American invention and the pineapple version is Canadian. Possibly the only Canadian national dish.
Poutine. Bannock.
Poutine is definitively Quebecois. I don't think it's a feature in Winnipeg.
Bannock is of course Scottish, most famously from Selkirk, but also giving its name to the field where that famous battle took place.
And should add Pizza Hawaii is the most Canadian thing ever. Invented by a Greek immigrant in Ontario based on his having previously prepared Chinese sweet and sour dishes. We should celebrate the sheer multiculturalism of the concept, even if the dish itself is a bit suspect.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Utter nonsense. Infections would have spiralled out of control, the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed and tens of thousands more would have died.
How did Sweden survive in that case
We're not going to rehash the 10,000 posts discussing Sweden are we?
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Utter nonsense. Infections would have spiralled out of control, the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed and tens of thousands more would have died.
How did Sweden survive in that case
Far lower population density. Compare Sweden with its neightbours in Norway or even Denmark to see how badly they fared. Then extrapolate that from a population density that is more than 12 times larger.
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
Also the creator of a “Utopia” plan so stupid, that his fanboys claim it was satire.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Utter nonsense. Infections would have spiralled out of control, the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed and tens of thousands more would have died.
How did Sweden survive in that case
One thing different is that the NHS runs at bed occupancy rates (really an issue of estate and staffing rather than beds themselves) far higher than other countries. This has been deliberate government policy to control spending under all governments.
While this looks like a "lean organisation" to management theorists, it does mean that surge activity can only be achieved by stopping elective work (such as orthopaedics) in order to meet emergency demand.
That high "bed occupancy rate" is also why we are struggling much more with post covid backlogs than other countries. We simply don't have the physical and workforce infrastructure to catch up with that work as fast as Germany or Sweden.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
Um - to get that number, you have to discount people who had anything other than a bald one-liner of "Covid-19"
For example, someone who died from:
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome caused by Viral pneumonia caused by Covid-19
... is NOT someone who "died directly from Covid-19", in those criteria. Because it had ARDS and pneumonia on their death certificate. And I'm not taking the piss. That's literally what they had to do to get this number. Seriously.
They've switched to monitoring covid-19 deaths against death certificates, of which more than 80% had covid-19 as the CAUSE of death. That's over 130,000 deaths due to covid-19 (not with "incidental" covid-19, or just happened to push dying people over the edge sort of things) by April 2021*, as the winter wave finally receded.
I think you've been listening to the Toby Youngs, Ivor Cummins, and the like a bit too much.
*There are over 220,000 with covid on death certificates as of now, but the proportion dying "of covid" rather than "with covid" did decrease noticeably since the vaccine roll-out, thank God.
You do not understand how death certificates works.
Could you explain my misunderstanding?
That would be a lengthy discussion, but probably it comes down to some mixture of stupidity and a desire to believe in partisan fantasies.
???
Are you confusing Andys here?
I am not Andy_JS, and he is not me.
My stance is that to get that ridiculously small number, you have to only take death certificates that were filled out incorrectly and only state the words Covid-19 on them, rather than the sequence that led to the death of which Covid-19 was the underlying cause.
In the Moon and Starfish, a Wetherspoon’s pub on the Clacton seafront, the day drinking crowd were well into their third pints by Thursday lunchtime. When I brought up Brexit, it was viewed with a sense of wasted opportunity, like a football team who had thrown away a two-goal lead.
“I expected problems from day one. It’s the British way,” said Trevor, 77, a retired commodities trader. “I hoped it would be good, but it hasn’t panned out; the politicians have let us down as usual. Boris is an arsehole. He’s always been an arsehole.”
“Independence” and “standing on our own two feet” were the most common rationales I heard for Brexit, but, like many in Clacton, Trevor had also hoped that leaving the EU would allow the government to drastically reduce immigration. Clearly, this hasn’t happened. “We need to stop the boats — this country is full,” he said. Then he looked at me. “I’m not being rude to you, but it’s to stop the n*****s coming in.” Right then.
I hear similar all the time from people of that generation. I’m not racist but….. type stuff. From the Boomer generation who grew up in a white country.
The question is how different are the Gen Xers and Millennials who have grown up in an increasingly multicultural society? Much more tolerant in the main? If Brexit was primarily about enabling a dying generation to express its racism, then it’s unsustainable.
One of the things that struck me about the Yorkshire Cricket Club racism scandal is that those involved were considerably younger than me. Ditto police officers who get caught up in such scandals.
I’m Gen X.
Anyone thinking that the young are somehow free of prejudice needs to get out into the real world. Look at the misogyny, racism and homophobia we have seen described in many institutions and the people exhibiting these - many of them young. These prejudices just take different forms and get packaged differently. Sexism towards women is quite shocking and often comes from young men against women of all ages, for instance. There are also some pretty unpleasant descriptions of old people by the young - sometimes on this forum.
Your general point is true, and you can get some strong sexism from a 20 year old bro who knows all the right terms and forms to present as being free from prejudice.
But I am interested in what you consider over the line in terms of prejudice against the old. Is someone railing against the government reliant on and thus wholly focused on the needs of retirees over the line? Is someone blaming that cohorts priorities on housing or immigration over the line, wrong, or just exaggerating? Is all that fine so long as bad words are not used?
The idea that prejudice can be removed from the human experience is one that I find absolutely deranged and comical, but this is consistent with a long history of progressive ideas. In the end all these projects end in tragedy and failure.
I've mentioned the initiative below a few times, 'prejudice reporting in education', an example of the phenomenon I am raising.
Indeed. I think the sane view is that *something approaching* an unbiased view of people can only be achieved through continuous self examination.
Anyone who says “I can’t be biased, I am X/a member of Y” can be presumed to be biased.
We all have prejudices, and it it examination and acknowledgement of these that allows us to overcome them.
It needs to be in a supportive culture though, not Maoist Cultural Revolution style self criticism.
Sadly, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Some people react with horrified fury at the idea of unconscious bias and if they can be persuaded to take those little tests that purport to identify them, reject them wholeheartedly.
The issue, I think, is the stigma admitting bias. But if we can get past that and be comfortable with seeing our own biases, it's not the end of the world and it can save us from making embarrassing mistakes.
One of my biases is around around gender. I suspect it's very common. If I hear certain genderless job names, like "doctor" or "nurse", I have a tendency to picture one gender or the other. Now that I know I do this, I can consciously remember not to carry that assumption forward into saying something stupid. (Of course, I still say many other stupid things).
I don't blame myself for having those early-learned gendered ideas, and I don't think anyone else should either. But a lot of people are terrified of being seen as having biases and so will avoid doing something about them.
I think unconscious bias is definitely a thing, as you say it might be around instinctively picturing something, and you probably would not act any differently were that instinct incorrect.
I do think that the impact of it can be vastly overstated, and there have been some comical examples of advice and training on the subject which seems to me to be likely to have the opposite effect - like the one about not making enough eye contact with some people, which seemed likely to result in people making too much eye contact at people of a specific race, etc, in an effort to overcome it.
I do think microaggressions are utter bullshit though- far too open to abuse to condemn people for something both slight and unintentional (if even real), and to make people hyper aware and sensitive to see slights where there are none.
This is where nuance is important. Micro aggressions cross a wide spectrum. There’s a big difference between “so you’re Italian, bet you get cross when people put pineapple on pizza” and “calm down dear” or “let me feel your fuzzy hair”.
I had a someone at work complain to me that a senior colleague had described him (a Mexican) as South American. On the basis this level of geographical ignorance was borderline racist. I couldn’t get excited by that when most Americans think we live in a country called England and half the world thinks it’s always foggy in London.
I eat pineapple on pizza and if some Italian tries to stop me you won't see a microaggression from me, I will make war on the whole country. Tanks on the Piazza di Siena. Internment camps, war crimes THE WORKS.
I had pizza with pineapple in Pisa. And very nice it was too.
Pizza condemnation should be reserved for those where the base is several inches thick and resembles a stottie cake.
If you have a piece a pizza in Pisa, you have no reason to expect authenticity. Everyone knows pizza is an American invention and the pineapple version is Canadian. Possibly the only Canadian national dish.
Just back from the local Tesco's which has turned into Sunday Morning Fight Club - not over eggs or toilet rolls but people with trolleys trying to dodge the queues (families shop on a Sunday morning) at the tills and heading for the self checkout area (the preserve of we sad basket shoppers). One man started arguing, he then pushed the Tesco employee which provoked a Las Vegas-casino type response in terms of security.
Back to less prescient matters - Lockdown 2 was inevitable once Lockdown 1 ended. We had this Johnsonian "freedom day" when everything re-opened in July 2020 and of course all that did was get people "cheek by jowl" (B.Johnson) on top of which some numbskull decided to get everyone even closer by encouraging them to eat out. Fine - I got we were trying to help the hospitality industry but the hospitality industry helped itself by cramming as many covers in as possible thereby guaranteeing space for the virus to spread.
I wrote on here in August 2020 "if we have another lockdown, the public will only have themselves to blame". This was before any vaccine and in the midst of the disastrous "track and test" where we were supposed to record every place we visited (no one did of course).
We now know the virus was still active and prevalent and needed no encouragement to get into the population once the autumn began and we were forced indoors.
I recognise the personal philosophical dilemma Johnson was facing - he offered levitas when we needed gravitas - but the way we unlocked in the summer of 2020 was part of the problem.
Where credit must always be given is the speed of a developed vaccine and its initial rollout which didn't save Christmas 2020 but ensured we wouldn't have the same issues in the future.
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
Utter nonsense. Infections would have spiralled out of control, the NHS would have been completely overwhelmed and tens of thousands more would have died.
The first lockdown was necessary and proportionate for the surging crisis. I don't think it would have worked without legal measures either, not to get the necessary level of compliance to prevent being overwhelmed. I don't think pre-vaccine we could have coped with loosened arrangements.
Could some other lockdowns have been avoided or ended sooner, or done on a more urged behaviour than legal threat basis? Possibly.
Whilst we need to look back on what we did, I do think there is a bit of lockdown remorse going on which is stretching too far from 'Some were not needed/should not have been so long or restrictive' to 'they were not necessary at any time'.
The first lockdown worked. Infection levels were way down. And then Sunak had his bright idea of Eat Out to Catch Covid and back into lockdown we went.
Then you had the nonsense tier system with the pubs in Leeds shut and the pubs in York open. Thereby encouraging more travel and more spread.
There was lots wrong in the government's response to Covid. However, blanket lockdown was the one policy that they got right.
People going to restaurants wouldn't have spread covid if nobody had it.
It was allowing covid to be imported again in summer 2020 which was the mistake.
The stupidity of these comments is absolutely breathtaking.
Explain why.
Having at great social and economic cost reduced covid to minimal levels by July 2020 the government then casually allowed foreign holidays to restart to countries with higher levels of covid.
Unsurprisingly people who went on such holidays were those most likely to both catch it and then subsequently spread it upon their return to the UK.
Weird woman on here who went full MAGA shitbird then died.
Before that she was "Poster of the Year".
Certainy not something that would ever be awarded to Dura Ace if it was still in existence.
I don't know about that. He's a massive weirdo but he's the most stylish poster on here by a long way, in terms of wordsmithery. A mad poet.
PB would be less interesting without his Larkin about.
And his putting the finger on such things as MoD refusal to install fixed torpedo tubes in a new class of combat ships, and why this is a crap decision, is a very useful contribution to debate.
Weird woman on here who went full MAGA shitbird then died.
Before that she was "Poster of the Year".
Certainy not something that would ever be awarded to Dura Ace if it was still in existence.
Richard you okay mate? You're been very angry this last week, hope everything is actually okay
Not angry at all. Having a whale of a time. One day you will learn there is a difference between being angry and being intolerent of wilful idiocy.
Don't know why you've decided to get your bee in a bonnet over me all of a sudden, all I did was checked in on you, get to fuck then if you are going to respond in this way
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
Um - to get that number, you have to discount people who had anything other than a bald one-liner of "Covid-19"
For example, someone who died from:
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome caused by Viral pneumonia caused by Covid-19
... is NOT someone who "died directly from Covid-19", in those criteria. Because it had ARDS and pneumonia on their death certificate. And I'm not taking the piss. That's literally what they had to do to get this number. Seriously.
They've switched to monitoring covid-19 deaths against death certificates, of which more than 80% had covid-19 as the CAUSE of death. That's over 130,000 deaths due to covid-19 (not with "incidental" covid-19, or just happened to push dying people over the edge sort of things) by April 2021*, as the winter wave finally receded.
I think you've been listening to the Toby Youngs, Ivor Cummins, and the like a bit too much.
*There are over 220,000 with covid on death certificates as of now, but the proportion dying "of covid" rather than "with covid" did decrease noticeably since the vaccine roll-out, thank God.
You do not understand how death certificates works.
Could you explain my misunderstanding?
That would be a lengthy discussion, but probably it comes down to some mixture of stupidity and a desire to believe in partisan fantasies.
???
Are you confusing Andys here?
I am not Andy_JS, and he is not me.
My stance is that to get that ridiculously small number, you have to only take death certificates that were filled out incorrectly and only state the words Covid-19 on them, rather than the sequence that led to the death of which Covid-19 was the underlying cause.
I see it was Gove (I wonder if he's enjoying life with a Lib Dem council) who was the sacrificial Sunday Roast this morning.
The simple questions are "you've led the Government for more than 13 years, what have you actually done in that time to make people's lives better?" and the follow on "why should we give you five more years to prolong your inertia and failure?". I accept these may be slightly leading questions - it would be nice if any news outlet asked them rather than the simpering guff offered to any Tory on GB News (which will presumably set itself up as the main voice of opposition once Labour are in power).
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
Michael Gove says sorry over Tory lockdown party video
What an absolute bunch of twats.
Has anyone ever denied that Michael Gove is a complete twat?
More to the point, did anyone at elite level in ANY part of British society BELIEVE all the government crap, served up for the proles and middle groups by white-coated scientists, advising people who WEREN'T chronically ill or in small high-risk groups that they should stay 2 metres away from everyone, and only leave the house to go shopping, and walk around wearing masks, in order to reduce the ever so high risk of spreading the killer lergy?
Seems quite obvious now that lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time, we should have protected the vulnerable and elderly with proper care and attention as they rightfully deserve and then let the rest of society get on with our lives. I am so angry that I put my life on hold for two years when the Government didn't care.
I was saying this right from the beginning, and throughout the entire period of the lockdowns. 1,000 people died directly from Covid-19 in the UK, the rest were people who already had conditions. Closing schools was going to do more damage than the virus itself.
Um - to get that number, you have to discount people who had anything other than a bald one-liner of "Covid-19"
For example, someone who died from:
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome caused by Viral pneumonia caused by Covid-19
... is NOT someone who "died directly from Covid-19", in those criteria. Because it had ARDS and pneumonia on their death certificate. And I'm not taking the piss. That's literally what they had to do to get this number. Seriously.
They've switched to monitoring covid-19 deaths against death certificates, of which more than 80% had covid-19 as the CAUSE of death. That's over 130,000 deaths due to covid-19 (not with "incidental" covid-19, or just happened to push dying people over the edge sort of things) by April 2021*, as the winter wave finally receded.
I think you've been listening to the Toby Youngs, Ivor Cummins, and the like a bit too much.
*There are over 220,000 with covid on death certificates as of now, but the proportion dying "of covid" rather than "with covid" did decrease noticeably since the vaccine roll-out, thank God.
You do not understand how death certificates works.
Could you explain my misunderstanding?
That would be a lengthy discussion, but probably it comes down to some mixture of stupidity and a desire to believe in partisan fantasies.
???
Are you confusing Andys here?
I am not Andy_JS, and he is not me.
My stance is that to get that ridiculously small number, you have to only take death certificates that were filled out incorrectly and only state the words Covid-19 on them, rather than the sequence that led to the death of which Covid-19 was the underlying cause.
My apologies. I confused Andys.
No worries; it's happened before. Probably far easier when Andys are having an argument.
In the Moon and Starfish, a Wetherspoon’s pub on the Clacton seafront, the day drinking crowd were well into their third pints by Thursday lunchtime. When I brought up Brexit, it was viewed with a sense of wasted opportunity, like a football team who had thrown away a two-goal lead.
“I expected problems from day one. It’s the British way,” said Trevor, 77, a retired commodities trader. “I hoped it would be good, but it hasn’t panned out; the politicians have let us down as usual. Boris is an arsehole. He’s always been an arsehole.”
“Independence” and “standing on our own two feet” were the most common rationales I heard for Brexit, but, like many in Clacton, Trevor had also hoped that leaving the EU would allow the government to drastically reduce immigration. Clearly, this hasn’t happened. “We need to stop the boats — this country is full,” he said. Then he looked at me. “I’m not being rude to you, but it’s to stop the n*****s coming in.” Right then.
I hear similar all the time from people of that generation. I’m not racist but….. type stuff. From the Boomer generation who grew up in a white country.
The question is how different are the Gen Xers and Millennials who have grown up in an increasingly multicultural society? Much more tolerant in the main? If Brexit was primarily about enabling a dying generation to express its racism, then it’s unsustainable.
One of the things that struck me about the Yorkshire Cricket Club racism scandal is that those involved were considerably younger than me. Ditto police officers who get caught up in such scandals.
I’m Gen X.
Anyone thinking that the young are somehow free of prejudice needs to get out into the real world. Look at the misogyny, racism and homophobia we have seen described in many institutions and the people exhibiting these - many of them young. These prejudices just take different forms and get packaged differently. Sexism towards women is quite shocking and often comes from young men against women of all ages, for instance. There are also some pretty unpleasant descriptions of old people by the young - sometimes on this forum.
Your general point is true, and you can get some strong sexism from a 20 year old bro who knows all the right terms and forms to present as being free from prejudice.
But I am interested in what you consider over the line in terms of prejudice against the old. Is someone railing against the government reliant on and thus wholly focused on the needs of retirees over the line? Is someone blaming that cohorts priorities on housing or immigration over the line, wrong, or just exaggerating? Is all that fine so long as bad words are not used?
The idea that prejudice can be removed from the human experience is one that I find absolutely deranged and comical, but this is consistent with a long history of progressive ideas. In the end all these projects end in tragedy and failure.
I've mentioned the initiative below a few times, 'prejudice reporting in education', an example of the phenomenon I am raising.
Indeed. I think the sane view is that *something approaching* an unbiased view of people can only be achieved through continuous self examination.
Anyone who says “I can’t be biased, I am X/a member of Y” can be presumed to be biased.
We all have prejudices, and it it examination and acknowledgement of these that allows us to overcome them.
It needs to be in a supportive culture though, not Maoist Cultural Revolution style self criticism.
Sadly, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Some people react with horrified fury at the idea of unconscious bias and if they can be persuaded to take those little tests that purport to identify them, reject them wholeheartedly.
The issue, I think, is the stigma admitting bias. But if we can get past that and be comfortable with seeing our own biases, it's not the end of the world and it can save us from making embarrassing mistakes.
One of my biases is around around gender. I suspect it's very common. If I hear certain genderless job names, like "doctor" or "nurse", I have a tendency to picture one gender or the other. Now that I know I do this, I can consciously remember not to carry that assumption forward into saying something stupid. (Of course, I still say many other stupid things).
I don't blame myself for having those early-learned gendered ideas, and I don't think anyone else should either. But a lot of people are terrified of being seen as having biases and so will avoid doing something about them.
I think unconscious bias is definitely a thing, as you say it might be around instinctively picturing something, and you probably would not act any differently were that instinct incorrect.
I do think that the impact of it can be vastly overstated, and there have been some comical examples of advice and training on the subject which seems to me to be likely to have the opposite effect - like the one about not making enough eye contact with some people, which seemed likely to result in people making too much eye contact at people of a specific race, etc, in an effort to overcome it.
I do think microaggressions are utter bullshit though- far too open to abuse to condemn people for something both slight and unintentional (if even real), and to make people hyper aware and sensitive to see slights where there are none.
This is where nuance is important. Micro aggressions cross a wide spectrum. There’s a big difference between “so you’re Italian, bet you get cross when people put pineapple on pizza” and “calm down dear” or “let me feel your fuzzy hair”.
I had a someone at work complain to me that a senior colleague had described him (a Mexican) as South American. On the basis this level of geographical ignorance was borderline racist. I couldn’t get excited by that when most Americans think we live in a country called England and half the world thinks it’s always foggy in London.
I eat pineapple on pizza and if some Italian tries to stop me you won't see a microaggression from me, I will make war on the whole country. Tanks on the Piazza di Siena. Internment camps, war crimes THE WORKS.
I had pizza with pineapple in Pisa. And very nice it was too.
Pizza condemnation should be reserved for those where the base is several inches thick and resembles a stottie cake.
If you have a piece a pizza in Pisa, you have no reason to expect authenticity. Everyone knows pizza is an American invention and the pineapple version is Canadian. Possibly the only Canadian national dish.
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
In the Moon and Starfish, a Wetherspoon’s pub on the Clacton seafront, the day drinking crowd were well into their third pints by Thursday lunchtime. When I brought up Brexit, it was viewed with a sense of wasted opportunity, like a football team who had thrown away a two-goal lead.
“I expected problems from day one. It’s the British way,” said Trevor, 77, a retired commodities trader. “I hoped it would be good, but it hasn’t panned out; the politicians have let us down as usual. Boris is an arsehole. He’s always been an arsehole.”
“Independence” and “standing on our own two feet” were the most common rationales I heard for Brexit, but, like many in Clacton, Trevor had also hoped that leaving the EU would allow the government to drastically reduce immigration. Clearly, this hasn’t happened. “We need to stop the boats — this country is full,” he said. Then he looked at me. “I’m not being rude to you, but it’s to stop the n*****s coming in.” Right then.
I hear similar all the time from people of that generation. I’m not racist but….. type stuff. From the Boomer generation who grew up in a white country.
The question is how different are the Gen Xers and Millennials who have grown up in an increasingly multicultural society? Much more tolerant in the main? If Brexit was primarily about enabling a dying generation to express its racism, then it’s unsustainable.
One of the things that struck me about the Yorkshire Cricket Club racism scandal is that those involved were considerably younger than me. Ditto police officers who get caught up in such scandals.
I’m Gen X.
Anyone thinking that the young are somehow free of prejudice needs to get out into the real world. Look at the misogyny, racism and homophobia we have seen described in many institutions and the people exhibiting these - many of them young. These prejudices just take different forms and get packaged differently. Sexism towards women is quite shocking and often comes from young men against women of all ages, for instance. There are also some pretty unpleasant descriptions of old people by the young - sometimes on this forum.
Your general point is true, and you can get some strong sexism from a 20 year old bro who knows all the right terms and forms to present as being free from prejudice.
But I am interested in what you consider over the line in terms of prejudice against the old. Is someone railing against the government reliant on and thus wholly focused on the needs of retirees over the line? Is someone blaming that cohorts priorities on housing or immigration over the line, wrong, or just exaggerating? Is all that fine so long as bad words are not used?
The idea that prejudice can be removed from the human experience is one that I find absolutely deranged and comical, but this is consistent with a long history of progressive ideas. In the end all these projects end in tragedy and failure.
I've mentioned the initiative below a few times, 'prejudice reporting in education', an example of the phenomenon I am raising.
Indeed. I think the sane view is that *something approaching* an unbiased view of people can only be achieved through continuous self examination.
Anyone who says “I can’t be biased, I am X/a member of Y” can be presumed to be biased.
We all have prejudices, and it it examination and acknowledgement of these that allows us to overcome them.
It needs to be in a supportive culture though, not Maoist Cultural Revolution style self criticism.
Sadly, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Some people react with horrified fury at the idea of unconscious bias and if they can be persuaded to take those little tests that purport to identify them, reject them wholeheartedly.
The issue, I think, is the stigma admitting bias. But if we can get past that and be comfortable with seeing our own biases, it's not the end of the world and it can save us from making embarrassing mistakes.
One of my biases is around around gender. I suspect it's very common. If I hear certain genderless job names, like "doctor" or "nurse", I have a tendency to picture one gender or the other. Now that I know I do this, I can consciously remember not to carry that assumption forward into saying something stupid. (Of course, I still say many other stupid things).
I don't blame myself for having those early-learned gendered ideas, and I don't think anyone else should either. But a lot of people are terrified of being seen as having biases and so will avoid doing something about them.
I think unconscious bias is definitely a thing, as you say it might be around instinctively picturing something, and you probably would not act any differently were that instinct incorrect.
I do think that the impact of it can be vastly overstated, and there have been some comical examples of advice and training on the subject which seems to me to be likely to have the opposite effect - like the one about not making enough eye contact with some people, which seemed likely to result in people making too much eye contact at people of a specific race, etc, in an effort to overcome it.
I do think microaggressions are utter bullshit though- far too open to abuse to condemn people for something both slight and unintentional (if even real), and to make people hyper aware and sensitive to see slights where there are none.
This is where nuance is important. Micro aggressions cross a wide spectrum. There’s a big difference between “so you’re Italian, bet you get cross when people put pineapple on pizza” and “calm down dear” or “let me feel your fuzzy hair”.
I had a someone at work complain to me that a senior colleague had described him (a Mexican) as South American. On the basis this level of geographical ignorance was borderline racist. I couldn’t get excited by that when most Americans think we live in a country called England and half the world thinks it’s always foggy in London.
I eat pineapple on pizza and if some Italian tries to stop me you won't see a microaggression from me, I will make war on the whole country. Tanks on the Piazza di Siena. Internment camps, war crimes THE WORKS.
I had pizza with pineapple in Pisa. And very nice it was too.
Pizza condemnation should be reserved for those where the base is several inches thick and resembles a stottie cake.
If you have a piece a pizza in Pisa, you have no reason to expect authenticity. Everyone knows pizza is an American invention and the pineapple version is Canadian. Possibly the only Canadian national dish.
I see it was Gove (I wonder if he's enjoying life with a Lib Dem council) who was the sacrificial Sunday Roast this morning.
The simple questions are "you've led the Government for more than 13 years, what have you actually done in that time to make people's lives better?" and the follow on "why should we give you five more years to prolong your inertia and failure?". I accept these may be slightly leading questions - it would be nice if any news outlet asked them rather than the simpering guff offered to any Tory on GB News (which will presumably set itself up as the main voice of opposition once Labour are in power).
It's a tough one for any Western government given the context of slow, apparently interminable, demographic decline, and ongoing climate-related narrowing of our technological options. And even if things get better after four years, it's a near certainty that they won't get better after 13 years.
Telling people "you continue to enjoy highish living standards in a society where energy is more rationed while fewer and fewer work", strangely, is not a saleable message!
I see it was Gove (I wonder if he's enjoying life with a Lib Dem council) who was the sacrificial Sunday Roast this morning.
The simple questions are "you've led the Government for more than 13 years, what have you actually done in that time to make people's lives better?" and the follow on "why should we give you five more years to prolong your inertia and failure?". I accept these may be slightly leading questions - it would be nice if any news outlet asked them rather than the simpering guff offered to any Tory on GB News (which will presumably set itself up as the main voice of opposition once Labour are in power).
The government has done lots to make its core voters lives better - triple lock pensions, higher house values, extra NHS spending.
But boasting about such things when other groups have suffered is difficult.
I know the Telegraph is a joke but this reads like a parody.
The mortgage bomb about to explode under middle-class Britain
The mercury is rising and so are interest rates: the scene appears to be set for a midsummer nightmare in the mortgage market. With nearly half a million home loan borrowers rolling their fixed-term loans every three months over the course of this year, the ratchet is tightening. As someone wryly pointed out on Twitter recently, “When does your fixed rate end?” has become the new “Have you watched any good box sets recently?” go-to dinner party conversation starter.
Don’t ask Adam Fraser*, 42, and his wife, who bought their £7 million house in Berkshire in July last year having secured a mortgage in the January. “It was at the tail end of when there were still good deals to be had,” says Fraser. “We passed our affordability test with flying colours and so I had no problem buying at the top of the market.”
If that's the Telegraph's idea of middle class then I must be working class.
Journalists routintely talk about a middle-class that by any normal definition is usually the upper quintile. This has been the case for as long as I can recall. The very people who journalists think need help are the group that basically needs no help at all and ought to be paying more tax.
I did laugh at the idea the Telegraph goes to interview these multi-millionaires who we are apparently supposed to feel sympathy for. It does rather explain their current position if this is what they think the country wants to hear.
Won't no one think of the mega-rich, in desperate need of tax cuts in order to pay £45 000 per year school fees?
I recall a US commentator arguing in a debate that 250k per year in New York was close to poverty. Those poor people.
There was this hilarious bit on BBC QT with Richard Burgon and an audience member too:
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
I studied Philosophy for two years.
If they didn’t tell you who Plato was I’d ask for my money back. Presumably you were filled to the brim with “woke”, Plato being too dead white male. Wouldn’t have happened in my day!
I'm sure Australia will declare upon reaching 400.
That after all is the way to play the game these days
The way England accelerated they could easily have been bowled out for 450 on the first night. The declaration was funny, but in full light and flat batting track there was no advantage to putting Australia in.
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. What are they teaching people these days?
I studied Philosophy for two years.
If they didn’t tell you who Plato was I’d ask for my money back. Presumably you were filled to the brim with “woke”, Plato being too dead white male. Wouldn’t have happened in my day!
Comments
To believe it, you only need to believe that ANY intervention is lockdown. Including a mask mandate on its own. Or requiring people to quarantine if found to have the virus. Meaning, for example, that Sweden had a longer "lockdown" than we did. Which means those citing this report can't possibly try to cite "Sweden," of course.
You need to believe that mask mandates, despite being "lockdowns" and therefore unhelpful, did actually reduce deaths considerably (when you look at their tables). So, those arguing this are arguing in favour of mask mandates (curiously, they don't seem to do so).
You need to believe that the correlation between restrictions being brought in and deaths is only one way. That is - there can't POSSIBLY be a correlation between deaths spiralling upwards and countries desperately increasing restrictions, can there?
You need to believe that Australia and New Zealand avoided massive deaths during the worst of the pandemic by sheer luck, because all of their efforts were now PROVEN to be completely ineffective.
And, of course, to do all of what they did, they had to discount studies by epidemiologists (because what do THEY know about epidemiology?) or any studies comparing trajectories of before and after (because you can't look at trajectories before restrictions because that's just hypothetical).
Naturally, the Telegraph, GB News, and the usual suspects trumpeted this as a triumph...
So he can say no matter what they’ve done democratically elected party leaders should not be expelled from party or house by their successors…
Wouldn't changing pension increases back to inflation only be a way of taking future demand out of the system ?
As well as making the country a little fairer.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/question-time-video-man-top-earners-tax-percent-80000-explained-a9213351.html
https://www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/?q=reviews/2023-review-uk-parliament-constituencies
It was allowing covid to be imported again in summer 2020 which was the mistake.
While the media were obsessing about the dangers of covid free Bournemouth beach it was being brought back on ever flight from Spain.
Out of 220,000 death certificates which mention COVID as a contributory factor you are dismissing 219,000 as COVID irrelevant. That's absurd
(IIRC thewre is a minimum 2 percentahge point increase, to raise state pensions towards the average wage. But this is moot at present, obviously.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannock_(Indigenous_American)
For example, someone who died from:
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome
caused by
Viral pneumonia
caused by
Covid-19
... is NOT someone who "died directly from Covid-19", in those criteria. Because it had ARDS and pneumonia on their death certificate.
And I'm not taking the piss. That's literally what they had to do to get this number. Seriously.
They've switched to monitoring covid-19 deaths against death certificates, of which more than 80% had covid-19 as the CAUSE of death. That's over 130,000 deaths due to covid-19 (not with "incidental" covid-19, or just happened to push dying people over the edge sort of things) by April 2021*, as the winter wave finally receded.
I think you've been listening to the Toby Youngs, Ivor Cummins, and the like a bit too much.
*There are over 220,000 with covid on death certificates as of now, but the proportion dying "of covid" rather than "with covid" did decrease noticeably since the vaccine roll-out, thank God.
PlatoSaid last posted in March 2017 after her previous personas had been banned or malfunctioned. In real life she was a woman in her fifties called Philippa. Some people treat politics as a witty entertainment, but to their credit others give it their full measure and of those some are sadly lost in the giving. She started off with only tangential interest in politics but in her later years became more devoted to the wilder alt-right shores and left by mutual agreement. Nevertheless she was missed and several months later people started to comment on her absence, initially jokingly, then with more concern. Eventually her brother contacted OGH after finding a link and told him that she had died. Her friends and lived ones are not known to us, but even those who disagreed with her on PB will remember her fondly.
- @Plato / @PlatoSays / @PlatoSaid
- Last active on PB March 2017.
- https://vf.politicalbetting.com/profile/comments/Plato
- https://vf.politicalbetting.com/profile/comments/PlatoSays
- https://vf.politicalbetting.com/profile/comments/PlatoSaid
- http://plato-says.blogspot.com/
- https://twitter.com/PlatoSays
[I used to do obituaries for PB members but Mike refused to publish it. It's about a year out of date now - somebody died in 2022 and I missed it - but it contains obits of five PBers]Good quality HEPA filters and far-UV treatment of air in all schools and hospitals. That way we could look to avoiding closing schools.
Middle class home owners without big mortgages will be having their spending power increased as they get interest on their savings.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65942440
Reading this really made me angry. I think it's so unfair that difficult people are being discriminated against in the theatre, I have never read any hint that there was any bias at all against difficult actors in the good old days. The law really should be changed so that discrimination against difficult people is outlawed.
Now for all those lockdown deniers with whom I normally defend the policy, I suspect they have a point when they reference domestic abuse and violence during lockdowns as a much under reported crime. For those locked up with a violent partner or parent, lockdowns must have been hell on earth.
Essentially, they both made the same thing, more or less. With regional variations of both. It's got the Scottish name, cos early settlers knew damn well what it was.
Bannock is of course Scottish, most famously from Selkirk, but also giving its name to the field where that famous battle took place.
The closest it got to special pleading was a call for being more tolerant of thise who do not always ascribe to mainstream views.
The whole of public life is about avoiding responsibility for those at the top. Blaming someone else would mean, eventually, blame would come to you.
Hence Lessons Will Be Learned.
Worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of a true lockdown, cases often go up as family members are confined together, before dropping.
There was a lot of absurdity about wearing masks moving about in restaurants and pubs, but not while seated, one way systems, whether a Scotch Egg constitutes a meal etc.
Keeping schools and universities open would have presented its own problems, not least in transmission but also in the inevitable difficulties with teachers being off sick etc.
I think furlough etc went on far too long, and was the expensive bit, and prone to sharp practice like business support.
I don't think it will be needed again as Covid was a fairly unique pandemic in an immune naive population with a virus most infective while pre-symptomatic. We now have endemic covid but also herd immunity.
Novel viruses will happen, but it be different.
Maybe it only affects demand of such things as Werthers Originals and Sunday carveries in chain pubs.
You'd need actual deflation for real anomalies.
The above applies, of course, also to workers and pay rises, which deal with inflation which is now baked in, not what will happen next year - often carefully ignored by right-wing commentators.
While this looks like a "lean organisation" to management theorists, it does mean that surge activity can only be achieved by stopping elective work (such as orthopaedics) in order to meet emergency demand.
That high "bed occupancy rate" is also why we are struggling much more with post covid backlogs than other countries. We simply don't have the physical and workforce infrastructure to catch up with that work as fast as Germany or Sweden.
Are you confusing Andys here?
I am not Andy_JS, and he is not me.
My stance is that to get that ridiculously small number, you have to only take death certificates that were filled out incorrectly and only state the words Covid-19 on them, rather than the sequence that led to the death of which Covid-19 was the underlying cause.
Just back from the local Tesco's which has turned into Sunday Morning Fight Club - not over eggs or toilet rolls but people with trolleys trying to dodge the queues (families shop on a Sunday morning) at the tills and heading for the self checkout area (the preserve of we sad basket shoppers). One man started arguing, he then pushed the Tesco employee which provoked a Las Vegas-casino type response in terms of security.
Back to less prescient matters - Lockdown 2 was inevitable once Lockdown 1 ended. We had this Johnsonian "freedom day" when everything re-opened in July 2020 and of course all that did was get people "cheek by jowl" (B.Johnson) on top of which some numbskull decided to get everyone even closer by encouraging them to eat out. Fine - I got we were trying to help the hospitality industry but the hospitality industry helped itself by cramming as many covers in as possible thereby guaranteeing space for the virus to spread.
I wrote on here in August 2020 "if we have another lockdown, the public will only have themselves to blame". This was before any vaccine and in the midst of the disastrous "track and test" where we were supposed to record every place we visited (no one did of course).
We now know the virus was still active and prevalent and needed no encouragement to get into the population once the autumn began and we were forced indoors.
I recognise the personal philosophical dilemma Johnson was facing - he offered levitas when we needed gravitas - but the way we unlocked in the summer of 2020 was part of the problem.
Where credit must always be given is the speed of a developed vaccine and its initial rollout which didn't save Christmas 2020 but ensured we wouldn't have the same issues in the future.
Having at great social and economic cost reduced covid to minimal levels by July 2020 the government then casually allowed foreign holidays to restart to countries with higher levels of covid.
Unsurprisingly people who went on such holidays were those most likely to both catch it and then subsequently spread it upon their return to the UK.
The simple questions are "you've led the Government for more than 13 years, what have you actually done in that time to make people's lives better?" and the follow on "why should we give you five more years to prolong your inertia and failure?". I accept these may be slightly leading questions - it would be nice if any news outlet asked them rather than the simpering guff offered to any Tory on GB News (which will presumably set itself up as the main voice of opposition once Labour are in power).
That after all is the way to play the game these days
*grabs tinfoil hat and ducks*
Mm, hadn't realised that the new Baroness Owen got the [edit] peerage for being maternity cover.
Telling people "you continue to enjoy highish living standards in a society where energy is more rationed while fewer and fewer work", strangely, is not a saleable message!
But boasting about such things when other groups have suffered is difficult.
She was in the shadows but was a serious player but never wanted to be in the limelight like so many inferior people.
Giving the game away...
Although I wonder how many people thought she was being elevated for reasons linked to maternity?
Words not often spoken.
Apols, that's dreadful.
Anyone heard from HurstLlama ?
His twitter account stopped last December:
https://twitter.com/HurstLlama