Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging an activity which boosted both the economy generally, low paid workers particularly and the mental well being of those who used EOTHO to get back into societal activity.
Given what we now know of the damaging effects the covid restrictions had on mental well being we can be sure they would have been worse without the encouragement EOTHO gave people.
Indeed. It is telling that I remember my first EOTHO lunch clearly. A lovely sunny August day in a beautiful beer garden by the Thames in Oxfordshire. A relief from months of depression and misery.
And beer gardens in August- great. But as people have described here, quite a bit of EO2HO was happening inside, and that was a lot more problematic.
As for the vaccines... Not my specialism, and it's a significant time since I've even taught them at GCSE, but I think it was pretty clear from very early on that it was a question of when rather than if. And that the when could be sped up massively by throwing enough money at the problem.
And if we couldn't get immunity by vaccination, then immunity by infection was going to be a problem too.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
Basically: "let's all focus on that one nice guard at Auschwitz who used to hand out cakes"
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
Ah yes, one positive anecdote about soldiers 'entering' a home and 'asking' for food - which they obviously did under no threat, and paid for (/sarcasm) - means that all the murders and other crimes they committed by others, and possibly them, were perfectly fine.
You appear to care more for Palestinians than Israelis.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging an activity which boosted both the economy generally, low paid workers particularly and the mental well being of those who used EOTHO to get back into societal activity.
Given what we now know of the damaging effects the covid restrictions had on mental well being we can be sure they would have been worse without the encouragement EOTHO gave people.
I quoted above a report on the economic benefit to the hospitality sector of EOTHO, and of the impact on jobs. I'm not saying EOTHO was without benefits. The question is whether the benefits outweigh the costs, both £849 million and increased cases of COVID-19.
The pandemic itself had damaging effects on mental wellbeing. COVID-19 restrictions also had damaging effects on mental wellbeing. Given £849 million, one could have tackled these effects on mental wellbeing in a wide variety of different ways. One could have reduced the spread of COVID-19 (by investing in air filtration or better contact tracing), meaning you'd need no or fewer restrictions in the future. You could have encouraged social activities that were safer.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
Ah yes, one positive anecdote about soldiers 'entering' a home and 'asking' for food - which they obviously did under no threat, and paid for (/sarcasm) - means that all the murders and other crimes they committed by others, and possibly them, were perfectly fine.
You appear to care more for Palestinians than Israelis.
Why?
We have suifficient evidence, now, that @148grss is an anti-Semite
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
“ The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? ”
Absolutely fucking laughable and naive.
There is no reason for fatalism anyway, those claiming there is are being revisionist again.
Israel is a modern democracy and like almost all modern democracies it wants peace, it has negotiated peace time and again. The only reason it occupied Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank etc was for self-defence and they handed back Sinai (including settlements such as what is now Sharm el Sheikh) as soon as peace could be negotiated.
The Palestinian Authorities have had multiple opportunities for negotiations, and Israel had already withdrawn from Gaza by 2005 and was helping support the development of the Port of Gaza until Hamas took over. The blockade of Gaza quite rightly came after Hamas, not before it.
Israel has negotiated peace with former enemies such as Egypt, Jordan and the UAE and was close to negotiating it with Saudi Arabia too before Hamas blew it up. If the Palestinian Authorities would set aside murder and start putting their own citizens first, they could have peace too.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cepcovid-19-018.pdf "The results indicate that EOTHO induced higher footfall (by 5%-6%) associated with recreational activities, concentrated on specific days when the discount was available (Mondays to Wednesdays in August). However, the programme failed to encourage people to go out for other purposes and to eat out after the discount ended.
"EOTHO also increased recruitment in the food preparation & service sector. We observe an increase in the number of jobs posts (by 7%-14%) on the Indeed website. We do not find evidence of an increase in the number of job posts in other industries, suggesting the effect on recruitment was concentrated on food establishments. As this indicator measures the flow of job adverts, a transitory effect on job posts could still imply a permanent increase in the number of employees.
"Over 160 million meals were claimed by the end of September 2020, with government spending £849 million on the policy. Data limitations as well as the interaction between different policies complicate any cost-benefit calculation of the programme. On top of that, there is evidence indicating the increase in footfall due to EOTHO had an adverse effect on new COVID-19 cases. Thus, any economic gains from the scheme may have come at the cost of more infections. Further research – using administrative data– is needed to assess the overall cost-effectiveness of EOTHO."
All that 'may have' and 'up to' pales in comparison compared to how much covid was imported from France, Spain etc in the summer and autumn of 2020.
It seems that those still frothing about EOTHO have no problems with British people going to a restaurant at that time as long as that restaurant was in another country with far more prevalent covid.
Fallacy. Covid didn't care where it was seeded or how. They all added up.
But if it was kept out of the country then it couldn't have spread.
What we had in the summer of 2020 was an almost covid free UK after the restrictions.
But covid was still prevalent in other countries.
So people going to, for example, Spain in summer 2020 would have a wild time and catch covid, then spread it around to everyone on the plane back and then likely infect their friends and work colleagues once home.
This was my argument, before we had the vaccines. Take advantage of Britain's island status.
If you'd not had people bringing Covid back from their foreign holidays then you could have had more social mixing inside Britain and still keep Covid under control.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
More revisionism.
We ‘knew’ nothing of the sort. Several were in development but no one had any idea whether they would work - indeed there was much scepticism that they would work.
I've given you a paper in Nature. There were plenty more. Sure, there was some uncertainty, but to suggest "no one had an idea whether they would work" is simply untrue. You don't being a Phase 1 trial without some idea that what you are doing will work.
If you have evidence to back up your position, papers in the academic literature at the time, feel free to share them.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I have to agree with you on the vaccine availability. In mid-2020, we knew many brilliant people were working on vaccines. But we had no guarantee that any of them would work well enough to be useful.
In the end we got three within a year. That was due to some brilliant work by scientists (and politicians...), but also luck. It could easily have gone the other way - look at how many diseases and infections still do not have vaccines, even after many years of work. ANd of the 78 confirmed vaccines, three initially succeeded. Just three.
Spot on. Excellent post. There have been some outrageous examples of revisionism on this thread this morning, people seemed to have conveniently forgotten that UK infection rates in August 2020 were among the LOWEST during the whole pandemic. Absolutely bizarre hyperbolic stuff from some PBers this morning.
There’s lots to criticize this government over but I tend to think any government would struggle in its response to the pandemic .
I doubt Labour would have done much better .
They wouldn't. But they want you to forget they were demanding we purchase PPE from vendors who didn't actually have any PPE. And then criticised the governemnt for, er, buying from vendors who didn't actually have any PPE.
Everyone on the planet was trying to source PPE at the same time. That we never actually ran out of it should - nothwithstanding some scammers who got in the mix - be a credit to the procurement powers of this government.
There was panic and no time to do the normal checks . Everyone knows my thoughts on the Tory government but I’ve always been very reluctant to criticize them on Covid .
I don’t doubt there was some fraud but that tends to happen more frequently when you’re rushing out schemes .
When a government minister resigned because the government was not checking for Covid fraud, probably something could have been done.
On topic. I don't care how absurd replacing Sunak would be - they ARE absurd and will do it if they thought it would help. I don't think it will happen because who do you replace him with? Can the parliamentary party coalesce around a true winner? And either get that person through the members vote or get away without one?
Sunak will be PM until January of 2025.
The biggest problem is that there is no one obvious to take over in a coronation. Not that coronations tend to work anyway (Sunak, May, Brown...), and a contest would be a ridiculous indulgence.
Sunak should call a GE in the spring. The longer this drags on the worse it gets.
It makes sense to go to the country in the Spring.
November: Autumn Statement (or is it a Budget?) in which the Chancellor confirms the Triple Lock and an 8% increase in state pension for the core vote.
November: Flights resume to Rwanda.
December: Inflation falls to between 5% - 6% (roughly half of where it was).
Autumn/Winter: Number of boat crossings falls (though not stopped).
January: Close 50 hotels housing migrants appealing to the Right.
March: Close a further 50 hotels housing migrants (100 in total) appealing to the Right.
April: 8% increase kicks in.
April: Dissolve Parliament and call an Election as the Prime Minister who has halved inflation, stopped the boats, got rid of migrants and protected the Triple Lock.
Of course, the fly in the ointment is the Supreme Court. If they rule against the Government on the Rwanda plan then the Government may be tempted to say "We can't close the hotels because we can't send them to Rwanda. We're being held back by an activist judiciary".
It is a plausible timeline, although the one thing that could muddy the waters is the impending war in the middle east and what happens there.
Alot of labours support is pro Palestine, not just the Muslim vote. They could easily be turned off labour due to its avid pro Israel stance.
They could but most of the strongest pro Palestinian Labour vote is in safe Labour seats in Bradford, Birmingham, Luton, Bethnal Green etc.
Whereas the highest Jewish vote is in Tory marginals like Finchley and Golders Green and Chipping Barnet
I am pretty sure the entire Jewish vote will now shift. en masse, to the Tories. Labour cannot be trusted, will be the thought, no matter what Starmer says
It is far too small to sway an election but, as you imply, could shunt a couple of seats to Sunal that might otherwise have been lost
I wonder what the same process will do in the USA? Florida?
Isn't equating British Jews to supporters of Israel a form of anti-semitism?
Given the fact that it seems incredibly easy to be accused of being anti-semitic I just assume that I must be anti-semitic and save people the bother of accusing me - even though I almost never comment on anything in the Middle East
"Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids."
This is outright crazy. No sane person could take this perspective. More than anything it reminds me of @RodCrosby informnng us all that there were swimming pools at Treblinka
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not.
(Snipped a load of an interesting post as I wanted to focus on this bit)
I disagree on this. Prevaricating and refusing to condemn Hamas shifts the conversation on to the October 7 attacks and undermines the person being asked as it makes them look like they condone the violence.
A simple "I condemn Hamas and the attacks on 7 October" enables moving the conversation on to what should happen next and what Israel is doing to Gaza and whether that should also be condemned.
That seems an unfairly short time for @Alanbrooke's provocative header. He deserved longer.
Yes, a very good and pertinent piece. Kay Burley on Sky News just mentioned that Save the Children won’t be happy with the uk government not calling for a ceasefire. Why should their opinion count any more than anyone else’s?
The opinion of a charity specialising in easing children's suffering that current Israeli policy is causing massive suffering to children does seem relevant.
Personally as one of the few MPs who was in both Labour Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Palestine (I was on the executive of the former), I must say I'm losing sympathy with Israel despite the horrific Hamas atrocities. Frankly they should get on with the invasion if they're going to do it and then run the area they occupy until further notice, not just starve the population. And the refusal of a visa to a UN official "to teach them a lesson" sounds petulant and tin-eared.
I disagree - although the fault is the media not Save the Children.
The right policy for Israel/Gaza is hugely complicated and involves balancing many factors.
Emoting “won’t someone think of the children” is not constructive in any way.
It is a complicated matter. But a children's charity saying "won't someone think of the children" hardly seems the most outrageous of inputs.
They should change their name to Save the Children Except Those We Deem to be Somehow Responsible for the Actions of Adults and therefore Acceptable Military Targets. Or maybe just Save the Children Except Palestinian Ones.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
Basically: "let's all focus on that one nice guard at Auschwitz who used to hand out cakes"
Cretin
Question (because I don't know and I'm sure people here do), rather than debating point:
How far down the chain of command did the Nuremberg trials go? In post-Franco Spain, quite a few old thugs either wandered off into the sunset or reinvented themselves as life-long democrats.
It's not a pretty process for evil acts to go unpunished. But unless those involved can draw a line between leaders and led, wolves and sheep, the grim reality is this will continue unto the seventh generation and beyond.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I have to agree with you on the vaccine availability. In mid-2020, we knew many brilliant people were working on vaccines. But we had no guarantee that any of them would work well enough to be useful.
In the end we got three within a year. That was due to some brilliant work by scientists (and politicians...), but also luck. It could easily have gone the other way - look at how many diseases and infections still do not have vaccines, even after many years of work. ANd of the 78 confirmed vaccines, three initially succeeded. Just three.
Spot on. Excellent post. There have been some outrageous examples of revisionism on this thread this morning, people seemed to have conveniently forgotten that UK infection rates in August 2020 were among the LOWEST during the whole pandemic. Absolutely bizarre hyperbolic stuff from some PBers this morning.
Revisionism??? The pandemic did not stop in August 2020, it was just at its least bad. It soon ramped back up again and EOTHO was identified some years ago as a driver in that.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
More revisionism.
We ‘knew’ nothing of the sort. Several were in development but no one had any idea whether they would work - indeed there was much scepticism that they would work.
I've given you a paper in Nature. There were plenty more. Sure, there was some uncertainty, but to suggest "no one had an idea whether they would work" is simply untrue. You don't being a Phase 1 trial without some idea that what you are doing will work.
If you have evidence to back up your position, papers in the academic literature at the time, feel free to share them.
Well a cursory google suggests that 90% of drugs that reach Phase 1 fail.
It is also worth noting that the 90% failure rate is for the drug candidates that are already advanced to phase I clinical trial
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I've only responded to you criticising the increase in activity of people going out and enjoying their lives, in August, while case numbers were exceptionally low.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging an activity which boosted both the economy generally, low paid workers particularly and the mental well being of those who used EOTHO to get back into societal activity.
Given what we now know of the damaging effects the covid restrictions had on mental well being we can be sure they would have been worse without the encouragement EOTHO gave people.
Indeed. It is telling that I remember my first EOTHO lunch clearly. A lovely sunny August day in a beautiful beer garden by the Thames in Oxfordshire. A relief from months of depression and misery.
You could have had that lunch without EOTHO, it just wouldn't have been subsidised by the taxpayer.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
Basically: "let's all focus on that one nice guard at Auschwitz who used to hand out cakes"
Cretin
Don’t worry, at least when there is a “Free Palestine” that incorporates Israel 148grss will be able to report back to us on his trip there to celebrate “Independence day” he can regale us with stories about how wonderful it is in the new Palestine where there is no oppression.
We will get anecdotes from all the Jews freely walking around without any fear or oppression, how the ordinary Palestinian is economically thriving now the nasty Jews aren’t oppressing them anymore, how excited they are about the upcoming free and fair democratic elections where everyone gets a choice between Hamas and Hamas.
Hopefully they can time the “Independence Day” celebrations with Palestine Gay Pride festival so 148grss can mix with all the unoppressed LGBTQ residents of free Palestine and wave the rainbow flag, sponsored by Cows for Macdonalds.
We will get a nice little vignette about a wonderful Palestinian girl he meets by the old border who is walking along holding hands and kissing with the new guy she’s left her husband for.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I've only responded to you criticising the increase in activity of people going out and enjoying their lives, in August, while case numbers were exceptionally low.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
Some people are sadly far too content at restricting the rights of others.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
Eh? People caught it eventually anyway surely? Unless you have evidence that it caused excess deaths?
Timing is everything. Infecting people before there was a vaccine is rather different to a vaccinated person catching it.
So hang on, there was no lockdown at that time, but you didn’t go out nor meet anyone? If so, you were vanishingly rare.
I kept my interactions to a minimum and certainly did not go to places where other people were sitting down in near proximity for prolonged periods.
You were a rare case. Most people were absolutely desperate to escape incarceration by that stage and holidayed and pubbed in the fresh air during summer when infections were low. That period probably relieved much mental illness and depression caused by prolonged isolation.
If they were so desperate, presumably they would have gone without the EOTHO subsidy. So you're saying we spent £849 million of taxpayers' money for nothing?
On topic. I don't care how absurd replacing Sunak would be - they ARE absurd and will do it if they thought it would help. I don't think it will happen because who do you replace him with? Can the parliamentary party coalesce around a true winner? And either get that person through the members vote or get away without one?
Sunak will be PM until January of 2025.
Members *want* to vote for a winner. MPs have a habit of sending them Shit and Shitter.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I said nothing of the sort, don't put words in my mouth. I said Eoto was one of the few good things Sunak did, because it helped an industry that had been scythed by government mandate. People were able to mingle anyway, at that time, infections were extremely low, and Eoto diverted expenditure towards hospitality and away from the supermarkets that had – almost uniquely – been allowed to open during the pandemic and had been making an absolute mint on selling booze etc when pubs and restaurants were forcibly shuttered.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
Eh? People caught it eventually anyway surely? Unless you have evidence that it caused excess deaths?
Timing is everything. Infecting people before there was a vaccine is rather different to a vaccinated person catching it.
So hang on, there was no lockdown at that time, but you didn’t go out nor meet anyone? If so, you were vanishingly rare.
I kept my interactions to a minimum and certainly did not go to places where other people were sitting down in near proximity for prolonged periods.
You were a rare case. Most people were absolutely desperate to escape incarceration by that stage and holidayed and pubbed in the fresh air during summer when infections were low. That period probably relieved much mental illness and depression caused by prolonged isolation.
If they were so desperate, presumably they would have gone without the EOTHO subsidy. So you're saying we spent £849 million of taxpayers' money for nothing?
Not nothing, nor did it cost that net.
Net you need to look at the extra duties the Treasury received, the extra VAT, the extra NICs, Income Tax and more as well as the reduction in furlough costs. Overall I expect it was revenue positive for the Treasury.
Plus incidentally it encouraged healthier actions by encouraging people to go out on weekdays when there's less crowding and more distancing opportunities and not just on the weekend.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging economic activities and ensuring the economy stays afloat is what the Treasury should be doing.
The biggest harm to the economy was caused by high rates of COVID-19. Avoiding high rates of COVID-19 infection was good for the economy.
There were plenty of things the Treasury could have done with £849 million that would have encouraged economic activity without causing as much virus spread. What about building some shiny new roads, for example? Some people say that's a good way of promoting economic activity.
That's revisionism and factually incorrect, the rates of Covid19 were exceptionally low in August not high.
Schools and Universities reopening utterly dwarfed EOTHO and made it inconsequential anyway. Freshers Flu is not a Covid phenomenon.
Whataboutery: the Government got other things wrong. That doesn't mean we shouldn't consider whether EOTHO was good or bad.
The studies showing how EOTHO increased cases are out there. I posted one earlier. Argue with them if you want.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging economic activities and ensuring the economy stays afloat is what the Treasury should be doing.
Does assisting citizens to an early grave count as an economic benefit?
What a ridiculous hyperbolic post. People could meet and gather anyway, at that time. Do you have single shred of evidence that Eoho caused excess deaths?
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging economic activities and ensuring the economy stays afloat is what the Treasury should be doing.
The biggest harm to the economy was caused by high rates of COVID-19. Avoiding high rates of COVID-19 infection was good for the economy.
There were plenty of things the Treasury could have done with £849 million that would have encouraged economic activity without causing as much virus spread. What about building some shiny new roads, for example? Some people say that's a good way of promoting economic activity.
That's revisionism and factually incorrect, the rates of Covid19 were exceptionally low in August not high.
Schools and Universities reopening utterly dwarfed EOTHO and made it inconsequential anyway. Freshers Flu is not a Covid phenomenon.
Whataboutery: the Government got other things wrong. That doesn't mean we shouldn't consider whether EOTHO was good or bad.
The studies showing how EOTHO increased cases are out there. I posted one earlier. Argue with them if you want.
I'm not arguing with it, I'm saying its irrelevant.
A low increase in cases, from a low base, to a low number, is not a problem.
Some things matter more than case numbers. If socialisation couldn't be encouraged in August when case numbers were low and the risk is lower mingling in beer gardens on weekdays when there's more distancing opportunities - then when exactly do you think it should have been?
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I have to agree with you on the vaccine availability. In mid-2020, we knew many brilliant people were working on vaccines. But we had no guarantee that any of them would work well enough to be useful.
In the end we got three within a year. That was due to some brilliant work by scientists (and politicians...), but also luck. It could easily have gone the other way - look at how many diseases and infections still do not have vaccines, even after many years of work. ANd of the 78 confirmed vaccines, three initially succeeded. Just three.
Spot on. Excellent post. There have been some outrageous examples of revisionism on this thread this morning, people seemed to have conveniently forgotten that UK infection rates in August 2020 were among the LOWEST during the whole pandemic. Absolutely bizarre hyperbolic stuff from some PBers this morning.
Revisionism??? The pandemic did not stop in August 2020, it was just at its least bad. It soon ramped back up again and EOTHO was identified some years ago as a driver in that.
Lest we forget... in mid August 2020, cases were running at approx 600 per day UK-wide, in a population of 70 million.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I said the other day that Hamas and Nethanyahu are as bad as each other for the region and I stand by it.
The cycle will never stop.
It will not change and it is going to end badly for all of us.
But, for Nethanyahu, the big plus is he avoids any judicial retribution and it kicks that can further down the road.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging economic activities and ensuring the economy stays afloat is what the Treasury should be doing.
Does assisting citizens to an early grave count as an economic benefit?
What a ridiculous hyperbolic post. People could meet and gather anyway, at that time. Do you have single shred of evidence that Eoho caused excess deaths?
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging economic activities and ensuring the economy stays afloat is what the Treasury should be doing.
The biggest harm to the economy was caused by high rates of COVID-19. Avoiding high rates of COVID-19 infection was good for the economy.
There were plenty of things the Treasury could have done with £849 million that would have encouraged economic activity without causing as much virus spread. What about building some shiny new roads, for example? Some people say that's a good way of promoting economic activity.
That's revisionism and factually incorrect, the rates of Covid19 were exceptionally low in August not high.
Schools and Universities reopening utterly dwarfed EOTHO and made it inconsequential anyway. Freshers Flu is not a Covid phenomenon.
Whataboutery: the Government got other things wrong. That doesn't mean we shouldn't consider whether EOTHO was good or bad.
The studies showing how EOTHO increased cases are out there. I posted one earlier. Argue with them if you want.
I'm not arguing with it, I'm saying its irrelevant.
A low increase in cases, from a low base, to a low number, is not a problem.
Some things matter more than case numbers. If socialisation couldn't be encouraged in August when case numbers were low and the risk is lower mingling in beer gardens on weekdays when there's more distancing opportunities - then when exactly do you think it should have been?
Oh FFS - this basic misunderstanding of exponential growth.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging an activity which boosted both the economy generally, low paid workers particularly and the mental well being of those who used EOTHO to get back into societal activity.
Given what we now know of the damaging effects the covid restrictions had on mental well being we can be sure they would have been worse without the encouragement EOTHO gave people.
Indeed. It is telling that I remember my first EOTHO lunch clearly. A lovely sunny August day in a beautiful beer garden by the Thames in Oxfordshire. A relief from months of depression and misery.
You could have had that lunch without EOTHO, it just wouldn't have been subsidised by the taxpayer.
Indeed, I could also have spent less money on getting a shed load of wine and beer in from Sainsbury's and having a boozy picnic with my mates, which I may well have done had it not been so cheap to eat out. Eoto diverted the expenditure where it was needed – and away from the supermarkets who had been coining it in for months on end.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging economic activities and ensuring the economy stays afloat is what the Treasury should be doing.
Does assisting citizens to an early grave count as an economic benefit?
What a ridiculous hyperbolic post. People could meet and gather anyway, at that time. Do you have single shred of evidence that Eoho caused excess deaths?
What do you expect from someone who believe the "Track and Trace" app cost £37 Billion and regularly regurgitated it here.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I've only responded to you criticising the increase in activity of people going out and enjoying their lives, in August, while case numbers were exceptionally low.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
Some people are sadly far too content at restricting the rights of others.
Was it 20% of people polled thought nightclubs should be shut forever?
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I said the other day that Hamas and Nethanyahu are as bad as each other for the region and I stand by it.
Has Netanyahu tortured and murdered 1,400 civilians, deliberately, in cold blood?
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Its amazing that this country which 'completely disregards international law' is home to the most affluent and free segment of the Palestinian peoples.
But good of you to reveal that you think Israel has always been the problem.
There's a certain logic to rushing stuff past so it looks like activity, but people don't get time to think about each one and conclude: that was shit, that was shit too, that was shitter, that was shit-stirring, that was shit-brained
Wowsers - that is truly awful. Lets assume for a minute that the Tories have some specific achievements they wish to crow about. How does blatting them at the screen so rapidly that you can't read them help?
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
More revisionism.
We ‘knew’ nothing of the sort. Several were in development but no one had any idea whether they would work - indeed there was much scepticism that they would work.
I've given you a paper in Nature. There were plenty more. Sure, there was some uncertainty, but to suggest "no one had an idea whether they would work" is simply untrue. You don't being a Phase 1 trial without some idea that what you are doing will work.
If you have evidence to back up your position, papers in the academic literature at the time, feel free to share them.
Well a cursory google suggests that 90% of drugs that reach Phase 1 fail.
It is also worth noting that the 90% failure rate is for the drug candidates that are already advanced to phase I clinical trial
If we take that figure, that means you have a 10% idea that what you are doing will work. 10% of an idea is more than "no idea", which was your claim!
Of course, that figure is not a particularly good one to take. Vaccines aren't like most drugs.
I've given you an April 2020 paper being optimistic about when a vaccine will be available. There are more like that. You've not provided any counter-examples.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I'm perfectly happy to criticise Israel when they deserve it - and they deserve it far too often - but to claim Hamas is 'democratically elected' on the basis of an election that took place before about half the current population of Gaza was born is sheer nonsense. By that logic Hitler, Maduro and Putin were 'democratically elected.'
During the pandemic, and especially early on, the government were faced with a serious of hideous no-win choices. It was a case of choosing the least-worst option with *very* little data - for instance, we were unsure how C19 spread. Remember people talking about wiping down mail?
Whatever they did, the government would get criticism, especially as we cannot run the experiment again with different choices. When things were in their hands - e.g. the vaccines - they often acted quite well.
EOTHO was an interesting case. The 'safe' option would have been to not do it, and keep more restrictions on people. But that would have added increased pressure on many businesses, large and small, and on the exchequer, and also possibly mental health - people *wanted* to go out and see others as they used to.
But it was, with hindsight, possibly the wrong decision. But if it was, then I find it hard to castigate the government too much for it. They would be getting criticism not whatever they had done - or not done.
That seems an unfairly short time for @Alanbrooke's provocative header. He deserved longer.
Yes, a very good and pertinent piece. Kay Burley on Sky News just mentioned that Save the Children won’t be happy with the uk government not calling for a ceasefire. Why should their opinion count any more than anyone else’s?
The opinion of a charity specialising in easing children's suffering that current Israeli policy is causing massive suffering to children does seem relevant.
Personally as one of the few MPs who was in both Labour Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Palestine (I was on the executive of the former), I must say I'm losing sympathy with Israel despite the horrific Hamas atrocities. Frankly they should get on with the invasion if they're going to do it and then run the area they occupy until further notice, not just starve the population. And the refusal of a visa to a UN official "to teach them a lesson" sounds petulant and tin-eared.
I disagree - although the fault is the media not Save the Children.
The right policy for Israel/Gaza is hugely complicated and involves balancing many factors.
Emoting “won’t someone think of the children” is not constructive in any way.
It is a complicated matter. But a children's charity saying "won't someone think of the children" hardly seems the most outrageous of inputs.
They should change their name to Save the Children Except Those We Deem to be Somehow Responsible for the Actions of Adults and therefore Acceptable Military Targets. Or maybe just Save the Children Except Palestinian Ones.
And maybe some new BBC guidance for the coverage of the conflict. Before introducing something on the carnage in Gaza, the presenter says, "what you are about to see is nothing more than the consequence of Israel defending itself". Then when it's finished, to cover any viewers who may have come to the report late, "that was all on Hamas. 100%".
TLDR: they absolutely hate Jews, they want all Jews gone, they want to kill as many Jews as possible so they can cleanse the entire region of Jews and make it Muslim
This is their CHARTER, not some crank anti-Semite in a shed with a printing press. The Charter in action is what we saw on October 7
Israel can never compromise with this. They need to invade Gaza now and get the fuck on with the whole ghastly process. Delay makes it all worse
I suspect we'd find that Jeremy Corbyn agreed with every word.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
There was raging anti-Semitism in the Middle East before Israel was even founded. See here, a pogrom in Baghdad in 1941
Of course at the time there was FAR FAR worse anti-Semitism in Europe, which shames Europe to this day. But anti-Semitism is not some European virus introduced into the Levant by the creation of Israel in 1948, it predates that - and European involvement - by many centuries
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
Eh? People caught it eventually anyway surely? Unless you have evidence that it caused excess deaths?
Timing is everything. Infecting people before there was a vaccine is rather different to a vaccinated person catching it.
So hang on, there was no lockdown at that time, but you didn’t go out nor meet anyone? If so, you were vanishingly rare.
I kept my interactions to a minimum and certainly did not go to places where other people were sitting down in near proximity for prolonged periods.
You were a rare case. Most people were absolutely desperate to escape incarceration by that stage and holidayed and pubbed in the fresh air during summer when infections were low. That period probably relieved much mental illness and depression caused by prolonged isolation.
If they were so desperate, presumably they would have gone without the EOTHO subsidy. So you're saying we spent £849 million of taxpayers' money for nothing?
Again – AGAIN!! – yes, they would have done but many would have partied at home or had picnics, lining the supermarkets' pockets yet again had it not been SO CHEAP TO EAT OUT.
Why is this such a difficult concept for you to grasp??
On topic. I don't care how absurd replacing Sunak would be - they ARE absurd and will do it if they thought it would help. I don't think it will happen because who do you replace him with? Can the parliamentary party coalesce around a true winner? And either get that person through the members vote or get away without one?
Sunak will be PM until January of 2025.
The biggest problem is that there is no one obvious to take over in a coronation. Not that coronations tend to work anyway (Sunak, May, Brown...), and a contest would be a ridiculous indulgence.
Sunak should call a GE in the spring. The longer this drags on the worse it gets.
It makes sense to go to the country in the Spring.
November: Autumn Statement (or is it a Budget?) in which the Chancellor confirms the Triple Lock and an 8% increase in state pension for the core vote.
November: Flights resume to Rwanda.
December: Inflation falls to between 5% - 6% (roughly half of where it was).
Autumn/Winter: Number of boat crossings falls (though not stopped).
January: Close 50 hotels housing migrants appealing to the Right.
March: Close a further 50 hotels housing migrants (100 in total) appealing to the Right.
April: 8% increase kicks in.
April: Dissolve Parliament and call an Election as the Prime Minister who has halved inflation, stopped the boats, got rid of migrants and protected the Triple Lock.
Of course, the fly in the ointment is the Supreme Court. If they rule against the Government on the Rwanda plan then the Government may be tempted to say "We can't close the hotels because we can't send them to Rwanda. We're being held back by an activist judiciary".
It is a plausible timeline, although the one thing that could muddy the waters is the impending war in the middle east and what happens there.
Alot of labours support is pro Palestine, not just the Muslim vote. They could easily be turned off labour due to its avid pro Israel stance.
They could but most of the strongest pro Palestinian Labour vote is in safe Labour seats in Bradford, Birmingham, Luton, Bethnal Green etc.
Whereas the highest Jewish vote is in Tory marginals like Finchley and Golders Green and Chipping Barnet
I am pretty sure the entire Jewish vote will now shift. en masse, to the Tories. Labour cannot be trusted, will be the thought, no matter what Starmer says
It is far too small to sway an election but, as you imply, could shunt a couple of seats to Sunal that might otherwise have been lost
I wonder what the same process will do in the USA? Florida?
In 2019 the Jewish vote did vote Tory en masse, indeed more Jews voted Tory than even Anglicans percentage wise.
Starmer however is probably doing enough to expel anti Semites and support Israel to convert enough Jews to win back marginals like Hendon and Chipping Barnet (plus his wife is Jewish).
In the US however the Jewish vote is overwhelmingly Democrat, it is the strongly Republican evangelical vote that pushes the GOP to back Israel the most
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I've only responded to you criticising the increase in activity of people going out and enjoying their lives, in August, while case numbers were exceptionally low.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
Again, you misrepresent me. I'm not saying the relaxation of lockdown rules in the summer was wrong. I'm saying EOTHO was wrong.
I have been talking about EOTHO. If you want to talk about EOTHO too, great. If you don't, fine, but maybe you could stop putting words in my mouth?
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Translator:
"Remember that Hitler, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected leader"
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cepcovid-19-018.pdf "The results indicate that EOTHO induced higher footfall (by 5%-6%) associated with recreational activities, concentrated on specific days when the discount was available (Mondays to Wednesdays in August). However, the programme failed to encourage people to go out for other purposes and to eat out after the discount ended.
"EOTHO also increased recruitment in the food preparation & service sector. We observe an increase in the number of jobs posts (by 7%-14%) on the Indeed website. We do not find evidence of an increase in the number of job posts in other industries, suggesting the effect on recruitment was concentrated on food establishments. As this indicator measures the flow of job adverts, a transitory effect on job posts could still imply a permanent increase in the number of employees.
"Over 160 million meals were claimed by the end of September 2020, with government spending £849 million on the policy. Data limitations as well as the interaction between different policies complicate any cost-benefit calculation of the programme. On top of that, there is evidence indicating the increase in footfall due to EOTHO had an adverse effect on new COVID-19 cases. Thus, any economic gains from the scheme may have come at the cost of more infections. Further research – using administrative data– is needed to assess the overall cost-effectiveness of EOTHO."
All that 'may have' and 'up to' pales in comparison compared to how much covid was imported from France, Spain etc in the summer and autumn of 2020.
It seems that those still frothing about EOTHO have no problems with British people going to a restaurant at that time as long as that restaurant was in another country with far more prevalent covid.
Fallacy. Covid didn't care where it was seeded or how. They all added up.
But if it was kept out of the country then it couldn't have spread.
What we had in the summer of 2020 was an almost covid free UK after the restrictions.
But covid was still prevalent in other countries.
So people going to, for example, Spain in summer 2020 would have a wild time and catch covid, then spread it around to everyone on the plane back and then likely infect their friends and work colleagues once home.
This was my argument, before we had the vaccines. Take advantage of Britain's island status.
If you'd not had people bringing Covid back from their foreign holidays then you could have had more social mixing inside Britain and still keep Covid under control.
Tight border control and minimum internal economic and social restrictions worked well for New Zealand.
Many people in this country, including seemingly some in government, wanted the opposite applied here.
I think at times it was easier to travel from London to New York than it was from London to York.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I've only responded to you criticising the increase in activity of people going out and enjoying their lives, in August, while case numbers were exceptionally low.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
Again, you misrepresent me. I'm not saying the relaxation of lockdown rules in the summer was wrong. I'm saying EOTHO was wrong.
I have been talking about EOTHO. If you want to talk about EOTHO too, great. If you don't, fine, but maybe you could stop putting words in my mouth?
Yes but you've not given an explanation as to why EOTHO was wrong, other than it was successful in its intentions of getting people to go out, while cases were low.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I said the other day that Hamas and Nethanyahu are as bad as each other for the region and I stand by it.
The cycle will never stop.
It will not change and it is going to end badly for all of us.
But, for Nethanyahu, the big plus is he avoids any judicial retribution and it kicks that can further down the road.
"I said the other day that Hamas and Nethanyahu are as bad as each other for the region and I stand by it."
I am not a fan of Nethanyahu, but I'd just point out that you're comparing a *person* with an *organisation*.
That cannot really work. If you said: "Hamas and Likud are as bad as each other", or "Nethanyahu and Ismail Haniyeh are as bad as each other", then we can make better comparisons. And in both cases, I'd say the Palestinian sides are worse.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I've only responded to you criticising the increase in activity of people going out and enjoying their lives, in August, while case numbers were exceptionally low.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
Some people are sadly far too content at restricting the rights of others.
Again, I am talking about EOTHO. I am not talking about restricting the rights of others. I am talking about taking the money you pay in tax and using that to promote a particular activity.
If you want to advance a libertarian argument, go for it. EOTHO is not libertarian. It cost lots of taxpayers' money.
During the pandemic, and especially early on, the government were faced with a serious of hideous no-win choices. It was a case of choosing the least-worst option with *very* little data - for instance, we were unsure how C19 spread. Remember people talking about wiping down mail?
Whatever they did, the government would get criticism, especially as we cannot run the experiment again with different choices. When things were in their hands - e.g. the vaccines - they often acted quite well.
EOTHO was an interesting case. The 'safe' option would have been to not do it, and keep more restrictions on people. But that would have added increased pressure on many businesses, large and small, and on the exchequer, and also possibly mental health - people *wanted* to go out and see others as they used to.
But it was, with hindsight, possibly the wrong decision. But if it was, then I find it hard to castigate the government too much for it. They would be getting criticism not whatever they had done - or not done.
I think the more pertinent question is, not was EOTHO designed to help - which it clearly was - and not even whether it was responsible for the uptick in cases - which it's hard to say it was, on the stats (although there's plenty of noise there to confuse matters including the air bridge the key factor seems to have been the return of schools and unis).
The much more important question is, was it better to spend £849 million on propping up hospitality in the short term or would it have been more sensible to spend that money on measures to make any return to restrictions less likely - e.g. better masks for the NHS, heat curtains for all public buildings so doors could be left open, and air filters for schools and hospitals?
I would have said, based on what I've seen, the answer is 'yes' and therefore it was however well-intentioned, the wrong choice.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel bears much blame, but it is only "the problem" if you think there is some kind of natural law that makes the very idea of Jew having a State of their own unbearable.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
The Sudeten Germans pretty much did have exactly that, but they've more or less died out/given up. Generally speaking, the hatreds caused by WW2 have faded unless reinforced by fresh events or populist politicians - it was commonplace to refuse to buy German or Japanese in my parents' generation, but I don't think anyone still feels that way.
The problem in the Middle East is that populist leaders keep creating fresh reasons for hatred. And we should be prepared to criticise either side for doing that, without getting into the game of justifying it with the last atrocity by the other side.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I said the other day that Hamas and Nethanyahu are as bad as each other for the region and I stand by it.
Has Netanyahu tortured and murdered 1,400 civilians, deliberately, in cold blood?
No, he's a warm cuddly Grandfatherly figure who has only radiated goodness on the citizens of the occupied west bank and Gaza strip.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
Tim Martin is a Europhobic Right-winger, so that was probably just a party-political ruse on his part - endorsing a politician whom he saw as one of his own. Would he have thrown petals over, say, John McDonnell if Labour had introduced something similar? I find that difficult to believe.
Hang on, I thought it had been established by now that Rishi is a Europhile big state lefty remainer?
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
Eh? People caught it eventually anyway surely? Unless you have evidence that it caused excess deaths?
Timing is everything. Infecting people before there was a vaccine is rather different to a vaccinated person catching it.
So hang on, there was no lockdown at that time, but you didn’t go out nor meet anyone? If so, you were vanishingly rare.
I kept my interactions to a minimum and certainly did not go to places where other people were sitting down in near proximity for prolonged periods.
You were a rare case. Most people were absolutely desperate to escape incarceration by that stage and holidayed and pubbed in the fresh air during summer when infections were low. That period probably relieved much mental illness and depression caused by prolonged isolation.
If they were so desperate, presumably they would have gone without the EOTHO subsidy. So you're saying we spent £849 million of taxpayers' money for nothing?
Not nothing, nor did it cost that net.
Net you need to look at the extra duties the Treasury received, the extra VAT, the extra NICs, Income Tax and more as well as the reduction in furlough costs. Overall I expect it was revenue positive for the Treasury.
Plus incidentally it encouraged healthier actions by encouraging people to go out on weekdays when there's less crowding and more distancing opportunities and not just on the weekend.
Show me your evidence that it was "revenue positive for the Treasury".
There's a certain logic to rushing stuff past so it looks like activity, but people don't get time to think about each one and conclude: that was shit, that was shit too, that was shitter, that was shit-stirring, that was shit-brained
What about the seven bins? Didn't see that mentioned.
3/5 weeks in August 2020 on that chart were +ve excess deaths. I don't see an overall figure, but given the last (most -ve) week had only 3 days in August, I see -ve overall as unlikely. Are the any actual monthly rather than weekly figures for Britain? Maybe I missed those...
ETA: There's also the point, of course, that deaths directly related to EOTHO would be unlikely to show up in August, given infection -> death timescales. More vulnerable people may not have used EOTHO anyway. The bigger effect is on increasing the base of infections, which were then passed on to more vulnerable people. Plus, possibly, some economic benefits.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I'm perfectly happy to criticise Israel when they deserve it - and they deserve it far too often - but to claim Hamas is 'democratically elected' on the basis of an election that took place before about half the current population of Gaza was born is sheer nonsense. By that logic Hitler, Maduro and Putin were 'democratically elected.'
And worth remembering that, immediately after being elected, they rounded up all their political opponents and threw them off rooftops.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I have to agree with you on the vaccine availability. In mid-2020, we knew many brilliant people were working on vaccines. But we had no guarantee that any of them would work well enough to be useful.
In the end we got three within a year. That was due to some brilliant work by scientists (and politicians...), but also luck. It could easily have gone the other way - look at how many diseases and infections still do not have vaccines, even after many years of work. ANd of the 78 confirmed vaccines, three initially succeeded. Just three.
Spot on. Excellent post. There have been some outrageous examples of revisionism on this thread this morning, people seemed to have conveniently forgotten that UK infection rates in August 2020 were among the LOWEST during the whole pandemic. Absolutely bizarre hyperbolic stuff from some PBers this morning.
Revisionism??? The pandemic did not stop in August 2020, it was just at its least bad. It soon ramped back up again and EOTHO was identified some years ago as a driver in that.
Lest we forget... in mid August 2020, cases were running at approx 600 per day UK-wide, in a population of 70 million.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
There was raging anti-Semitism in the Middle East before Israel was even founded. See here, a pogrom in Baghdad in 1941
Of course at the time there was FAR FAR worse anti-Semitism in Europe, which shames Europe to this day. But anti-Semitism is not some European virus introduced into the Levant by the creation of Israel in 1948, it predates that - and European involvement - by many centuries
@148grss can refer you to some historians who tell a different story:
Indeed, some historians even claim that some instances of violence that was attributed to local anti-Semitism were perhaps instead carried out by Zionists in an attempt to convince Jewish people their positions were more unsafe than they really were and hasten Jewish migration to Israel (the Baghdad Bombings of the early 1950s are believed to be an example of this).
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
The Sudeten Germans pretty much did have exactly that, but they've more or less died out/given up. Generally speaking, the hatreds caused by WW2 have faded unless reinforced by fresh events or populist politicians - it was commonplace to refuse to buy German or Japanese in my parents' generation, but I don't think anyone still feels that way.
The problem in the Middle East is that populist leaders keep creating fresh reasons for hatred. And we should be prepared to criticise either side for doing that, without getting into the game of justifying it with the last atrocity by the other side.
I'm assuming you replied to the wrong comment?
Because otherwise I can't see the relevance of the Sudeten Germans. They were undoubtedly ethnically cleansed by the Czechs (by the democratically elected government of Benes and not the Communists, at that) but they don't have the right of return that Palestinians have kept.
TLDR: they absolutely hate Jews, they want all Jews gone, they want to kill as many Jews as possible so they can cleanse the entire region of Jews and make it Muslim
This is their CHARTER, not some crank anti-Semite in a shed with a printing press. The Charter in action is what we saw on October 7
Israel can never compromise with this. They need to invade Gaza now and get the fuck on with the whole ghastly process. Delay makes it all worse
I suspect we'd find that Jeremy Corbyn agreed with every word.
i guess you're joking - but he probably would. Scary to think how close he came to being PM
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I've only responded to you criticising the increase in activity of people going out and enjoying their lives, in August, while case numbers were exceptionally low.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
Some people are sadly far too content at restricting the rights of others.
Again, I am talking about EOTHO. I am not talking about restricting the rights of others. I am talking about taking the money you pay in tax and using that to promote a particular activity.
If you want to advance a libertarian argument, go for it. EOTHO is not libertarian. It cost lots of taxpayers' money.
It cost about £13 each, less the discounts on whatever we ate. It brought forward the curve of infections by about 3 days. There is some truth in what both sides are saying, but it is massively over emotional from both sides. Is it really worth getting worked up over something so marginal? Or is it just a proxy for an argument on lockdowns generally?
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging economic activities and ensuring the economy stays afloat is what the Treasury should be doing.
Does assisting citizens to an early grave count as an economic benefit?
What a ridiculous hyperbolic post. People could meet and gather anyway, at that time. Do you have single shred of evidence that Eoho caused excess deaths?
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
There was raging anti-Semitism in the Middle East before Israel was even founded. See here, a pogrom in Baghdad in 1941
Of course at the time there was FAR FAR worse anti-Semitism in Europe, which shames Europe to this day. But anti-Semitism is not some European virus introduced into the Levant by the creation of Israel in 1948, it predates that - and European involvement - by many centuries
@148grss can refer you to some historians who tell a different story:
Indeed, some historians even claim that some instances of violence that was attributed to local anti-Semitism were perhaps instead carried out by Zionists in an attempt to convince Jewish people their positions were more unsafe than they really were and hasten Jewish migration to Israel (the Baghdad Bombings of the early 1950s are believed to be an example of this).
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Translator:
"Remember that Hitler, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected leader"
Please! I like Israel! Fancy Schmancy! Gal Gadot, what a dish! Dana International, nice gams!
On topic. I don't care how absurd replacing Sunak would be - they ARE absurd and will do it if they thought it would help. I don't think it will happen because who do you replace him with? Can the parliamentary party coalesce around a true winner? And either get that person through the members vote or get away without one?
Sunak will be PM until January of 2025.
The biggest problem is that there is no one obvious to take over in a coronation. Not that coronations tend to work anyway (Sunak, May, Brown...), and a contest would be a ridiculous indulgence.
Sunak should call a GE in the spring. The longer this drags on the worse it gets.
It makes sense to go to the country in the Spring.
November: Autumn Statement (or is it a Budget?) in which the Chancellor confirms the Triple Lock and an 8% increase in state pension for the core vote.
November: Flights resume to Rwanda.
December: Inflation falls to between 5% - 6% (roughly half of where it was).
Autumn/Winter: Number of boat crossings falls (though not stopped).
January: Close 50 hotels housing migrants appealing to the Right.
March: Close a further 50 hotels housing migrants (100 in total) appealing to the Right.
April: 8% increase kicks in.
April: Dissolve Parliament and call an Election as the Prime Minister who has halved inflation, stopped the boats, got rid of migrants and protected the Triple Lock.
Of course, the fly in the ointment is the Supreme Court. If they rule against the Government on the Rwanda plan then the Government may be tempted to say "We can't close the hotels because we can't send them to Rwanda. We're being held back by an activist judiciary".
It is a plausible timeline, although the one thing that could muddy the waters is the impending war in the middle east and what happens there.
Alot of labours support is pro Palestine, not just the Muslim vote. They could easily be turned off labour due to its avid pro Israel stance.
They could but most of the strongest pro Palestinian Labour vote is in safe Labour seats in Bradford, Birmingham, Luton, Bethnal Green etc.
Whereas the highest Jewish vote is in Tory marginals like Finchley and Golders Green and Chipping Barnet
I am pretty sure the entire Jewish vote will now shift. en masse, to the Tories. Labour cannot be trusted, will be the thought, no matter what Starmer says
It is far too small to sway an election but, as you imply, could shunt a couple of seats to Sunal that might otherwise have been lost
I wonder what the same process will do in the USA? Florida?
In 2019 the Jewish vote did vote Tory en masse, indeed more Jews voted Tory than even Anglicans percentage wise.
Starmer however is probably doing enough to expel anti Semites and support Israel to convert enough Jews to win back marginals like Hendon and Chipping Barnet (plus his wife is Jewish).
In the US however the Jewish vote is overwhelmingly Democrat, it is the strongly Republican evangelical vote that pushes the GOP to back Israel the most
Leon's current pet theory is that European Jewry now regards itself as under existential threat because of the Woke, and has wholeheartedly abandoned liberalism in favour of the right-wing culture wars he espouses. He's the spokesman for an entire culture, creed and race.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
We didn't know there would be vaccines, we hoped there might be, and certainly they came sooner than expected. Indeed most of Europe didn't have vaccines when we did quite famously, it could have gone the other way around.
Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines is not a reasonable attitude.
There are things more important than case numbers. That you refuse to accept that is why we'll never see eye to eye on this.
I'm not "Simply saying lockdown and have no activities until vaccines". We won't see eye to eye while you continue to misrepresent what I've said. I'm saying EOTHO was a mistake.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
I've only responded to you criticising the increase in activity of people going out and enjoying their lives, in August, while case numbers were exceptionally low.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
Some people are sadly far too content at restricting the rights of others.
Again, I am talking about EOTHO. I am not talking about restricting the rights of others. I am talking about taking the money you pay in tax and using that to promote a particular activity.
If you want to advance a libertarian argument, go for it. EOTHO is not libertarian. It cost lots of taxpayers' money.
Its not libertarian, but we weren't in a libertarian world. Nor did it cost a tiny fraction of what you're claiming.
You are only looking at one side of the ledger. The figure you keep claiming is the amount the scheme so-called "cost" looking at the food side alone.
You're completely ignoring the extra duties, VAT, NICs, Income Tax, reduced furlough bills and much, much more.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I'm perfectly happy to criticise Israel when they deserve it - and they deserve it far too often - but to claim Hamas is 'democratically elected' on the basis of an election that took place before about half the current population of Gaza was born is sheer nonsense. By that logic Hitler, Maduro and Putin were 'democratically elected.'
And worth remembering that, immediately after being elected, they rounded up all their political opponents and threw them off rooftops.
It was a Palestinian Civil war in effect. The Fatah movement won in the West Bank, Hamas in Gaza, but the votes were much the same in each territory.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1200/6382847 "The above conservative assumptions would indicate that the EOHO scheme may have caused up to 69,008 infections directly and indirectly between calendar weeks 32 and 40."
So what?
If flattening the curve was the idea, then having some infections during August when infection rates were very low helps keep them flat, especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not.
Especially when its fit and healthy people willing to go out who were getting infected. No big deal at all.
"especially when it wasn't known if there'd be a vaccine or not"? Yesterday, you were an expert on international law. Today, an expert on vaccine development.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00073-5 describes the vaccine development landscape in early April 2020, well before EOTHO. We knew vaccines were in development (78 confirmed vaccines in development by 7 April, with 5 in Phase 1 trials). That article was predicting vaccines in use by early 2021; in fact, it was a bit sooner (Dec 2020).
We knew a vaccine was on the way. Having cases before a vaccine rather than after a vaccine is a bad idea.
More revisionism.
We ‘knew’ nothing of the sort. Several were in development but no one had any idea whether they would work - indeed there was much scepticism that they would work.
I've given you a paper in Nature. There were plenty more. Sure, there was some uncertainty, but to suggest "no one had an idea whether they would work" is simply untrue. You don't being a Phase 1 trial without some idea that what you are doing will work.
If you have evidence to back up your position, papers in the academic literature at the time, feel free to share them.
Well a cursory google suggests that 90% of drugs that reach Phase 1 fail.
It is also worth noting that the 90% failure rate is for the drug candidates that are already advanced to phase I clinical trial
If we take that figure, that means you have a 10% idea that what you are doing will work. 10% of an idea is more than "no idea", which was your claim!
Of course, that figure is not a particularly good one to take. Vaccines aren't like most drugs.
I've given you an April 2020 paper being optimistic about when a vaccine will be available. There are more like that. You've not provided any counter-examples.
FFS, it was a turn of phrase. Yes, we all hoped that they would work but we certainly didn't 'know' they would, as you originally claimed, and indeed most Phase 1 trials fail, as I have just shown you. We also didn't know when the vaccines would arrive, even if a successful jab could be developed.
I am no fan of Sunak – far from it – I think he's a shit prime minister and was a crap chancellor, too.
Yet Eoto was a countermeasure devised to divert discretionary household expenditure away from the state-cartelised supermarkets and towards an industry that had been brought to its knees by government fiat, deployed at a time when infections were at record lows (for the pandemic) and (apparently) excess deaths were negative.
If not then, then when? If all the manifold things you could criticise him for you choose the one policy that was genuinely thoughtful.
There’s lots to criticize this government over but I tend to think any government would struggle in its response to the pandemic .
I doubt Labour would have done much better .
They wouldn't. But they want you to forget they were demanding we purchase PPE from vendors who didn't actually have any PPE. And then criticised the governemnt for, er, buying from vendors who didn't actually have any PPE.
Everyone on the planet was trying to source PPE at the same time. That we never actually ran out of it should - nothwithstanding some scammers who got in the mix - be a credit to the procurement powers of this government.
Coincidentally, the government had ignored earlier warnings to stockpile PPE.
That is a fair criticism of Hunt, that he left us scrabbling around for PPE.
Remember when Wetherspoons used to have big posters thanking “Dishy Rishi”?
I do not know if Wetherspoons has a company motto, but "We'll do/say anything for money" might be a suitable choice for them...
Given Eat out to Help out really helped the hospitality industry why shouldn't they say thanks.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
EOTHO might have helped the hospitality industry but it did not help the rest of us much. It was a great spreader for covid. At the time I was astounded that they did it and I certainly did not avail myself of it either.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
I find this attitude bizarre. EOTHO was done in the summer, when you could eat outside, and helped an industry that was/is on its knees thanks to covid lockdowns. People were allowed to meet by then anyway, if it encouraged them to spend in pubs and restaurants rather than have dos at home, so much the better.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
There's an unpleasant authoritarianism being displayed which feels that everything should have been restricted and nobody allowed to enjoy themselves at all.
At the time it manifested itself with demands for a 'zero covid' strategy which would have required North Korean levels of state oppression.
What tosh. We're talking about EOTHO. EOTHO was not a restriction. Not doing EOTHO wouldn't have been a restriction either. It was about an unprecedented subsidy costing nearly a billion pounds to encourage an activity.
Encouraging economic activities and ensuring the economy stays afloat is what the Treasury should be doing.
Does assisting citizens to an early grave count as an economic benefit?
What a ridiculous hyperbolic post. People could meet and gather anyway, at that time. Do you have single shred of evidence that Eoho caused excess deaths?
Ctrl+F finds zero uses of the term excess deaths in that link.
More cases means more excess deaths. Or are you going to start claiming that no-one ever died from COVID-19?
Right, so you're just going off an absurd claim any case numbers at all equals excess deaths, despite the fact that excess deaths were negative in August 2020.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not.
(Snipped a load of an interesting post as I wanted to focus on this bit)
I disagree on this. Prevaricating and refusing to condemn Hamas shifts the conversation on to the October 7 attacks and undermines the person being asked as it makes them look like they condone the violence.
A simple "I condemn Hamas and the attacks on 7 October" enables moving the conversation on to what should happen next and what Israel is doing to Gaza and whether that should also be condemned.
Although it doesn't always work out that way. Eg an exchange on here yesterday. A poster condemned the Hamas atrocity and went on to make a couple of pro Palestinian observations (nothing radical just the usual type stuff about their plight).
He got accused of 'buttery'. ie where you are seen to devalue what you've said about something (and cast doubt on your sincerity about it) by going straight into a 'but'. Bit harsh, I thought.
Still, we all post what we like, don't we. All equal in that regard.
Question (because I don't know and I'm sure people here do), rather than debating point:
How far down the chain of command did the Nuremberg trials go? In post-Franco Spain, quite a few old thugs either wandered off into the sunset or reinvented themselves as life-long democrats.
It's not a pretty process for evil acts to go unpunished. But unless those involved can draw a line between leaders and led, wolves and sheep, the grim reality is this will continue unto the seventh generation and beyond.
Not very far down - there was a deliberate decision to stop at the top layer. Stalin would I think have cheerfully agreed to shoot everyone who was in the SS for a start (since they'd just got through killing something like 10% of the Soviet population, he probably reflected popular opinion), but he allowed himself to be persuaded to stick to the top layer. Both sides in the Cold War (especially but not exclusively the West, I think) then took some middle-ranking Nazis and used their admin or scientific skills.
Britain and the US "learned the lesson" of the bad precedent of doing that, when we decided NOT to give admin jobs to any Baathists in Iraq. Because almost everyone with admin skills had been a Baathist, that created a power vacuum which has been widely criticised as a major cause for subsequent chaos. It's hard to get it right!
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I said the other day that Hamas and Nethanyahu are as bad as each other for the region and I stand by it.
Has Netanyahu tortured and murdered 1,400 civilians, deliberately, in cold blood?
No, he's a warm cuddly Grandfatherly figure who has only radiated goodness on the citizens of the occupied west bank and Gaza strip.
So he hasn't, then?
You said they were as bad each other. Netanyahu might be bad, but Hamas are worse.
They can both feed off each other and not build us towards an enduring and peaceful solution without us needing to draw a false (and unhelpful) equivalence.
TLDR: they absolutely hate Jews, they want all Jews gone, they want to kill as many Jews as possible so they can cleanse the entire region of Jews and make it Muslim
This is their CHARTER, not some crank anti-Semite in a shed with a printing press. The Charter in action is what we saw on October 7
Israel can never compromise with this. They need to invade Gaza now and get the fuck on with the whole ghastly process. Delay makes it all worse
I suspect we'd find that Jeremy Corbyn agreed with every word.
i guess you're joking - but he probably would. Scary to think how close he came to being PM
During the pandemic, and especially early on, the government were faced with a serious of hideous no-win choices. It was a case of choosing the least-worst option with *very* little data - for instance, we were unsure how C19 spread. Remember people talking about wiping down mail?
Whatever they did, the government would get criticism, especially as we cannot run the experiment again with different choices. When things were in their hands - e.g. the vaccines - they often acted quite well.
EOTHO was an interesting case. The 'safe' option would have been to not do it, and keep more restrictions on people. But that would have added increased pressure on many businesses, large and small, and on the exchequer, and also possibly mental health - people *wanted* to go out and see others as they used to.
But it was, with hindsight, possibly the wrong decision. But if it was, then I find it hard to castigate the government too much for it. They would be getting criticism not whatever they had done - or not done.
I think the more pertinent question is, not was EOTHO designed to help - which it clearly was - and not even whether it was responsible for the uptick in cases - which it's hard to say it was, on the stats (although there's plenty of noise there to confuse matters including the air bridge the key factor seems to have been the return of schools and unis).
The much more important question is, was it better to spend £849 million on propping up hospitality in the short term or would it have been more sensible to spend that money on measures to make any return to restrictions less likely - e.g. better masks for the NHS, heat curtains for all public buildings so doors could be left open, and air filters for schools and hospitals?
I would have said, based on what I've seen, the answer is 'yes' and therefore it was however well-intentioned, the wrong choice.
I agree with that, but I might suggest that "better masks for the NHS, heat curtains for all public buildings so doors could be left open, and air filters for schools and hospitals?" would have cost far, far more.
And do not forget the mental health aspects of continued lockdown, especially during warm weather.
As I said above, I reckon if the government had done as you had suggested (and it was a reasonable option), then they'd be getting it in the neck anyway. There were only bad choices, even *with* hindsight.
Two memorable bits from R4 Today this morning. The comment by Nick R after an interview with a lovely and distressed woman in Gaza who worked for Oxfam that 'she was not willing to discuss Hamas'; secondly the Palestinian woman interviewed, not in Gaza, and asked about her thoughts on the 7th October killings: "I will not answer that question".
Elephants in rooms.
It’s exactly like Northern Ireland - when asked about the latest atrocity by X, it was telling when the talking head from X would start talking about anything else.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
When people who are deeply invested in Palestinian freedom are asked about condemning Hamas or October 7th directly, and they don't answer, it is not because they condone Hamas - it is because it immediately shifts the conversation to the premise that the lives of Israelis matter and the lives of Palestinians do not. Because for most people it is a given that what Hamas did was unacceptable, but we still have to debate whether the acts of the IDF and state of Israel over decades are unacceptable because most of the power structure supports them.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
I’ve written it before but will write it again. Absolutely none of what Israel has been doing over the last few weeks is on them, every single death of Palestinian civilians is a direct result of what Hamas did. There are no “buts”, there is no space for “whataboutery”. Every single Palestinian death since Hamas decided to make their terrorist attack on Israelis civilians is on Hamas.
If Hamas had not acted then the moral position was swinging well away from the Israelis because of Netanyahu and the fact that a lot of supporters of Israel were deeply uncomfortable with his government.
If Hamas had not done their murderous deed then moves towards peace between Israel and Arab States would keep rolling.
If peace between Israel and Arab states reached their end goal then its would be possible for them to work a solution to the Palestinian issue because Israel could reduce their hardline position when the Arab States could show that they do not believe in a violent solution and pull the rug out from under those who think a violent solution is the answer.
So Hamas murdered Israeli civilians that day. Do you think they thought “what we will do is murder a load of Israeli civilians at a peace rave and kids in a Kibutz and the Israelis will say it’s a fair cop and we need to just give Hamas and the Palestinians what they want”?
Do you think that Hamas believed that it would force the hand of the Israelis in peace talks with Arab States?
Or do you think that Hamas wanted to cause bloodshed and fear, sacrifice the lives of Palestinian civilians - and don’t tell me they didn’t expect a fierce violent Israeli response - for their own murderous aims?
Hamas got what they wanted, fear in Israel, discord with Israel in the Arab/Muslim world, Jeremy Bowen on the news showing the plight of Palestinian civilians, misinformation on global media about the hospital attack. And what they got was bought with the lives of Palestinian civilians.
So when you write your next post with a “but Israel” remember that things were moving in a better direction with Israel losing a lot of moral high ground, moves towards regional peace and understanding and a potential for change until that first Israeli youth dancing at a party got shot, the first Israeli kid was shot in front of their parents, the first Israeli civilian got dragged off to a terrifying captivity. This is on Hamas.
In what world were things getting better for Palestinians in Gaza, or even the West Bank? Do you think Hamas sprung out of nowhere like Athena from Zeus - no rhyme nor reason? Do you think everyone who talks about this is just a raging anti-Semite or anti-Zionist and has is projecting nuance and context where there is none, like shadows on a wall? Just like the example of NI given at the start of this conversation - they came from a history, a conflict, an occupation. They aren't just evil people with evil thoughts in their heads doing evil deeds for evil ends.
I can consider the motivations and feelings of many Israelis and Zionists - both the sympathetic and the unsympathetic. The colonial mindset, the right to land, the desire for homogeneity and a strong homeland. The desire for a haven, a safe place after the horrors of the Holocaust and European anti-Semitism, the fear after the wars with their neighbours, the paranoia that the threat is still ever strong despite Israel being by far one of the best equipped nations militarily in the region. Why can't you do the same for Palestinians? Yes, the unsympathetic - the anti-Semitism, the dehumanisation of their perceived enemy, the hatred and violence. But the fear, the death, the lack of security, the lack of change, the constant loss of land and rights and the desire to go home. The death of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. The experience for most Palestinians in Gaza who are under the age of 18 of only knowing life in an open air cage.
The specific reason for the attack by Hamas I cannot claim knowledge of. But the general feeling, I expect, is a fatalism - what else can they do? Palestinians peacefully march to the border fence in protest in 18-19 and they get shot, sniped. The UN repeatedly calls Israeli settlement schemes illegal, they keep happening. Israel controls their borders, their food, their energy, their water. They look to the West Bank, where apparently peaceful coexistence is "working" - which is where Palestinian labour is allowed to move (for the benefit of Israeli companies), where settlers will still steal land and houses and the IDF will still back them up. Is that what is to be aspired to? And the other Arab Middle Eastern countries increasingly let them die because business with Israel and the US is dependent on them doing so, so the only other friends are equally desperate or extreme.
Almost every conversation here devolves into a statement that the violence of Hamas, their killing of children and women, of Kibutz and raves is a sign of their inherent evil, inhumanity, how they need to be dealt with. And every example of Israeli forces killing children and women, the historical wrongs, the management of Gaza is met with a "well, that's war" and a shrug. Hamas could take the same position, no? "Why did you kill civilians, kidnap them, kill children?" ... "Well, that's war". It doesn't get us anywhere to paint one side as inhuman monsters with inhuman motives.
I think the conference given by one of the released hostages yesterday was enlightening. She is a long time activist, from what I understand a founding member of Women Wage Peace. She had driven Gazan children and adults to and from hospitals in Israel to get them better healthcare. She said she went through hell, was beaten with a crowbar - and you can argue that her statements about being treated well and her shaking her captor’s hand was all in aid of making sure her husband stays safe. But she, as well as many of those who lost family, either who were killed or kidnapped, still advocate peace and note the humanity of their captors, their enemy. Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids.
Total war on Gaza, on Palestinians, will do one thing - create the next generation of people who, wrongly, feel that the only route to justice is wiping Israel off the map. The only long term peaceful solution requires the stronger party, which is undoubtedly Israel, to show mercy first and go to the negotiation table.
So why don't the Sudeten Germans have a revanchist movement who want to wipe Czechia off the map ?
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
No, Israel is the problem and has always been. A country that completely disregards international law. Remember Hamas, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected entity. Why did Hamas get elected? The sheer miserableness of life in Gaza which Israel and the US (and various vasal states like the UK) have facilitated.
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
There was raging anti-Semitism in the Middle East before Israel was even founded. See here, a pogrom in Baghdad in 1941
Of course at the time there was FAR FAR worse anti-Semitism in Europe, which shames Europe to this day. But anti-Semitism is not some European virus introduced into the Levant by the creation of Israel in 1948, it predates that - and European involvement - by many centuries
@148grss can refer you to some historians who tell a different story:
Indeed, some historians even claim that some instances of violence that was attributed to local anti-Semitism were perhaps instead carried out by Zionists in an attempt to convince Jewish people their positions were more unsafe than they really were and hasten Jewish migration to Israel (the Baghdad Bombings of the early 1950s are believed to be an example of this).
Presumably, historians of the school of David Irving.
"Muslims make up a majority in more than 30 constituencies" - that seemed off to me so I checked. Census 2021 data is easily available. This is incorrect. Muslims were a majority of the 2021 resident population in 3 constituencies, not 30.
On topic - could we see the '22 install some sort of elder statesman to staunch the bleeding?
OGH suggests that the role has no attraction to aspiring Tories. But survival certainly will, and given Brady's comments about excluding the membership and Hunt floating that he might not stand at the next GE...
Comments
As for the vaccines... Not my specialism, and it's a significant time since I've even taught them at GCSE, but I think it was pretty clear from very early on that it was a question of when rather than if. And that the when could be sped up massively by throwing enough money at the problem.
And if we couldn't get immunity by vaccination, then immunity by infection was going to be a problem too.
Cretin
You appear to care more for Palestinians than Israelis.
Why?
The pandemic itself had damaging effects on mental wellbeing. COVID-19 restrictions also had damaging effects on mental wellbeing. Given £849 million, one could have tackled these effects on mental wellbeing in a wide variety of different ways. One could have reduced the spread of COVID-19 (by investing in air filtration or better contact tracing), meaning you'd need no or fewer restrictions in the future. You could have encouraged social activities that were safer.
Israel is a modern democracy and like almost all modern democracies it wants peace, it has negotiated peace time and again. The only reason it occupied Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank etc was for self-defence and they handed back Sinai (including settlements such as what is now Sharm el Sheikh) as soon as peace could be negotiated.
The Palestinian Authorities have had multiple opportunities for negotiations, and Israel had already withdrawn from Gaza by 2005 and was helping support the development of the Port of Gaza until Hamas took over. The blockade of Gaza quite rightly came after Hamas, not before it.
Israel has negotiated peace with former enemies such as Egypt, Jordan and the UAE and was close to negotiating it with Saudi Arabia too before Hamas blew it up. If the Palestinian Authorities would set aside murder and start putting their own citizens first, they could have peace too.
The fundamental problem is not Israel or the West Bank but Gaza.
And Gaza is a terrorist controlled statelet whose existence is non-viable beyond a population about 15% of what it is.
If you'd not had people bringing Covid back from their foreign holidays then you could have had more social mixing inside Britain and still keep Covid under control.
If you have evidence to back up your position, papers in the academic literature at the time, feel free to share them.
eg @148grss just now:
"Whilst people here go out of their way to note how killing a cowering 7 year old, an atrocious thing to do, shows how Hamas are all Nazis I saw no one talk about the woman who had soldiers enter her home, ask to eat some of her food, and then left - who seemed just surprised as she was that they had made it across the border and said "do not worry, we are Muslim" when asked if they were going to kill her or her kids."
This is outright crazy. No sane person could take this perspective. More than anything it reminds me of @RodCrosby informnng us all that there were swimming pools at Treblinka
I disagree on this. Prevaricating and refusing to condemn Hamas shifts the conversation on to the October 7 attacks and undermines the person being asked as it makes them look like they condone the violence.
A simple "I condemn Hamas and the attacks on 7 October" enables moving the conversation on to what should happen next and what Israel is doing to Gaza and whether that should also be condemned.
How far down the chain of command did the Nuremberg trials go? In post-Franco Spain, quite a few old thugs either wandered off into the sunset or reinvented themselves as life-long democrats.
It's not a pretty process for evil acts to go unpunished. But unless those involved can draw a line between leaders and led, wolves and sheep, the grim reality is this will continue unto the seventh generation and beyond.
There are lots of things that are important. Case numbers, government spend, jobs in the hospitality sector, mental wellbeing. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of different actions. I started with 2 posts sharing evidence on the pros and cons of EOTHO, but you and Anabobazina seem stuck in some all-or-nothing thinking, so you take criticising EOTHO to be the same as saying everyone should have been locked down all summer. It's not.
It is also worth noting that the 90% failure rate is for the drug candidates that are already advanced to phase I clinical trial
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9293739/
The cycle needs to stop or else this will will end badly for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I consider people going out to be an exceptionally good thing, that is good for mental health and the economy and more important than case numbers which were exceptionally low.
You don't seem to.
When do you think people should have been able or encouraged to live their lives, if not in the summer while case numbers were exceptionally low?
We will get anecdotes from all the Jews freely walking around without any fear or oppression, how the ordinary Palestinian is economically thriving now the nasty Jews aren’t oppressing them anymore, how excited they are about the upcoming free and fair democratic elections where everyone gets a choice between Hamas and Hamas.
Hopefully they can time the “Independence Day” celebrations with Palestine Gay Pride festival so 148grss can mix with all the unoppressed LGBTQ residents of free Palestine and wave the rainbow flag, sponsored by Cows for Macdonalds.
We will get a nice little vignette about a wonderful Palestinian girl he meets by the old border who is walking along holding hands and kissing with the new guy she’s left her husband for.
Net you need to look at the extra duties the Treasury received, the extra VAT, the extra NICs, Income Tax and more as well as the reduction in furlough costs. Overall I expect it was revenue positive for the Treasury.
Plus incidentally it encouraged healthier actions by encouraging people to go out on weekdays when there's less crowding and more distancing opportunities and not just on the weekend.
The studies showing how EOTHO increased cases are out there. I posted one earlier. Argue with them if you want.
A low increase in cases, from a low base, to a low number, is not a problem.
Some things matter more than case numbers. If socialisation couldn't be encouraged in August when case numbers were low and the risk is lower mingling in beer gardens on weekdays when there's more distancing opportunities - then when exactly do you think it should have been?
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England
The cycle will never stop.
It will not change and it is going to end badly for all of us.
But, for Nethanyahu, the big plus is he avoids any judicial retribution and it kicks that can further down the road.
And how much of EOTHO was in beer gardens?
https://x.com/rishisunak/status/1717100621457711185
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
But good of you to reveal that you think Israel has always been the problem.
Of course, that figure is not a particularly good one to take. Vaccines aren't like most drugs.
I've given you an April 2020 paper being optimistic about when a vaccine will be available. There are more like that. You've not provided any counter-examples.
Whatever they did, the government would get criticism, especially as we cannot run the experiment again with different choices. When things were in their hands - e.g. the vaccines - they often acted quite well.
EOTHO was an interesting case. The 'safe' option would have been to not do it, and keep more restrictions on people. But that would have added increased pressure on many businesses, large and small, and on the exchequer, and also possibly mental health - people *wanted* to go out and see others as they used to.
But it was, with hindsight, possibly the wrong decision. But if it was, then I find it hard to castigate the government too much for it. They would be getting criticism not whatever they had done - or not done.
It seems anything less is risking impartiality.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-farhud
Of course at the time there was FAR FAR worse anti-Semitism in Europe, which shames Europe to this day. But anti-Semitism is not some European virus introduced into the Levant by the creation of Israel in 1948, it predates that - and European involvement - by many centuries
Why is this such a difficult concept for you to grasp??
Starmer however is probably doing enough to expel anti Semites and support Israel to convert enough Jews to win back marginals like Hendon and Chipping Barnet (plus his wife is Jewish).
In the US however the Jewish vote is overwhelmingly Democrat, it is the strongly Republican evangelical vote that pushes the GOP to back Israel the most
I have been talking about EOTHO. If you want to talk about EOTHO too, great. If you don't, fine, but maybe you could stop putting words in my mouth?
Still you thought an App cost £37Billion
"Remember that Hitler, whatever our own personal feelings, is a democratically elected leader"
Many people in this country, including seemingly some in government, wanted the opposite applied here.
I think at times it was easier to travel from London to New York than it was from London to York.
That's a success, not a failure.
I am not a fan of Nethanyahu, but I'd just point out that you're comparing a *person* with an *organisation*.
That cannot really work. If you said: "Hamas and Likud are as bad as each other", or "Nethanyahu and Ismail Haniyeh are as bad as each other", then we can make better comparisons. And in both cases, I'd say the Palestinian sides are worse.
If you want to advance a libertarian argument, go for it. EOTHO is not libertarian. It cost lots of taxpayers' money.
The much more important question is, was it better to spend £849 million on propping up hospitality in the short term or would it have been more sensible to spend that money on measures to make any return to restrictions less likely - e.g. better masks for the NHS, heat curtains for all public buildings so doors could be left open, and air filters for schools and hospitals?
I would have said, based on what I've seen, the answer is 'yes' and therefore it was however well-intentioned, the wrong choice.
The problem in the Middle East is that populist leaders keep creating fresh reasons for hatred. And we should be prepared to criticise either side for doing that, without getting into the game of justifying it with the last atrocity by the other side.
Especially if people have made up their minds.
ETA: There's also the point, of course, that deaths directly related to EOTHO would be unlikely to show up in August, given infection -> death timescales. More vulnerable people may not have used EOTHO anyway. The bigger effect is on increasing the base of infections, which were then passed on to more vulnerable people. Plus, possibly, some economic benefits.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4581319/#Comment_4581319
Because otherwise I can't see the relevance of the Sudeten Germans. They were undoubtedly ethnically cleansed by the Czechs (by the democratically elected government of Benes and not the Communists, at that) but they don't have the right of return that Palestinians have kept.
The mask falls. A pure anti Semite, as suggested
Yuk
You are only looking at one side of the ledger. The figure you keep claiming is the amount the scheme so-called "cost" looking at the food side alone.
You're completely ignoring the extra duties, VAT, NICs, Income Tax, reduced furlough bills and much, much more.
I am no fan of Sunak – far from it – I think he's a shit prime minister and was a crap chancellor, too.
Yet Eoto was a countermeasure devised to divert discretionary household expenditure away from the state-cartelised supermarkets and towards an industry that had been brought to its knees by government fiat, deployed at a time when infections were at record lows (for the pandemic) and (apparently) excess deaths were negative.
If not then, then when? If all the manifold things you could criticise him for you choose the one policy that was genuinely thoughtful.
So no, there were not excess deaths.
Any evidence for excess deaths, not cases?
He got accused of 'buttery'. ie where you are seen to devalue what you've said about something (and cast doubt on your sincerity about it) by going straight into a 'but'. Bit harsh, I thought.
Still, we all post what we like, don't we. All equal in that regard.
Britain and the US "learned the lesson" of the bad precedent of doing that, when we decided NOT to give admin jobs to any Baathists in Iraq. Because almost everyone with admin skills had been a Baathist, that created a power vacuum which has been widely criticised as a major cause for subsequent chaos. It's hard to get it right!
You said they were as bad each other. Netanyahu might be bad, but Hamas are worse.
They can both feed off each other and not build us towards an enduring and peaceful solution without us needing to draw a false (and unhelpful) equivalence.
They know they're heading for ignominious defeat. The time for a new leader is afterwards.
@MikeSmithson
And do not forget the mental health aspects of continued lockdown, especially during warm weather.
As I said above, I reckon if the government had done as you had suggested (and it was a reasonable option), then they'd be getting it in the neck anyway. There were only bad choices, even *with* hindsight.
https://x.com/robfordmancs/status/1717098415106957445
OGH suggests that the role has no attraction to aspiring Tories. But survival certainly will, and given Brady's comments about excluding the membership and Hunt floating that he might not stand at the next GE...