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Bad news for the we want Boris back crew – politicalbetting.com
Bad news for the we want Boris back crew – politicalbetting.com
In his personal notes, Sir Patrick Vallance said former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was "clearly bamboozled" during a meeting over schools during the pandemic.He adds Johnson "struggled" with some of the scientific concepts presented to him.https://t.co/AOGNyTKhTo?Sky 501 pic.twitter.com/W7AZuenxer
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Boris Johnson reminds me of Crassus at Carrhae but without the wealth.
Vallance's diary confirms my deep suspicion that Johnson is completely innumerate. I've always believed that this is why Johnson lies - he genuinely has no concept of quantitative differences and so all answers to a question are equally true to him.
It is still genuinely shocking to me what posh white men can get away with in this country.
Israel Defense Forces
@IDF
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1h
"As the world celebrates #WorldChildrensDay , 40 children are being held hostage by terrorists in Gaza.
Children who had their innocence ripped away from them."
Rest of the World
As the world celebrates #InternationalChildrensDay, 500-700 children are being held hostage yearly in illegal detention by Israel.
Children who had their innocence ripped away from them.
And
As the world celebrates #InternationalChildrensDay over 4,000 children have been killed by Israel in the last month.
Not only have they had their innocence ripped away from them they are f*****g dead slaughtered by the @IDF
#ceasefirenow
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1h
Tomorrow @ScottishLabour will vote for an immediate ceasefire.
This is where Phillips was foolish last week. She sacrificed some excellent work on UK women's rights for something of no realistic benefit to the people of Gaza, because Bibi couldn't give two hoots about what some gobby Brummie thinks.
The “good innings” and “lack of leadership” extract from Vallance’s diary shown to the Covid inquiry (see 3.05pm) also quotes Vallance quoting Dominic Cummings (DC), the PM’s chief adviser at the time, saying, “Rishi [Sunak] thinks just let people die and that’s okay.”
This was 25 October 2020. Sunak was chancellor at the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/nov/20/pensioners-winter-fuel-payments-autumn-statement-rishi-sunak-patrick-vallance-covid-inquiry-david-cameron-keir-starmer-michael-gove-david-lammy-uk-politics-latest
He deserves zero respect
Caesar didn't actually get to see the number and whether it beat Pompey till the battle fo Pharsalus, so to speak.
As there is n o separate Scottish Labour Party in reality (vide EC), this means that a large province of the Labour Party is declaring rebellion under its uneasy satrap. Yet the money is still controlled from London.
Doublethink.
In maths or science, that doesn't work- not indefinitely, anyway. You can raise your voice, play the man not the ball as much as you like... And still, it moves. Or not, as the case may be. But there's a reality we can't fully control, only describe.
The realisation of that sends some people potty. They either hate the boffins, or elevate them into wizards. Sometimes both.
Today we celebrate all of Leon's greatest hits. A bit like Leon's version of the Beatles Red and Blue albums.
Yet I can’t name any of yours. Not one. And I bet no one else can, either
You are like formless shades in an ether, you come and go and no one cares, and when you are gone no one will notice
(This will distress some, but it is consistent with my own observations: In the 2004, George W. Bush (Harvard MBA) did better with those who made their living with numbers, John Kerry (Yale BA) did better with those who made their living with words.)
Or possibly because we remember the really mad stuff.
We could do worse than having all the party leaders sit some sort of Maths test when there's a general election with the results to be made public before polling day. If we'd done that in Dec 2019 it would have weeded out Boris Johnson and our pandemic response could have been led by somebody who could do add, takeaway, multiply and divide.
When we get the views of someone who actually called some of it right, it'll be worth listening to.
Even now we aren't sure how it started but the animal market looks most likely.
"The lab leak theory stands as an unfalsifiable allegation. If an investigation of the lab found no evidence of a leak, the scientists involved would simply be accused of hiding the relevant material. If not a conspiracy theory, it’s a theory requiring a conspiracy."
https://theconversation.com/the-covid-lab-leak-theory-is-dead-heres-how-we-know-the-virus-came-from-a-wuhan-market-188163
10,000 comments, all pointless
If I am a series of well known songs on a much heard album, you are the hiss of white noise between the tracks
or
I have taken the action - thrown the dice - and the settled result is that there will be conflict.
BTW there is always someone worse off than yourself. Boris is not yet Valerian, though a quick trip to Iran or Gaza might get him there.
At one time the US was "buying" large numbers of baby girls from China, though of course few were so crass as to describe that as baby selling.
https://www.internationaladoptionhelp.com/international_adoption/international_adoption_china_costs_fees.htm#:~:text=This fee fluctuates because it,$17,000 to $27,000 including travel.
There are many other examples, but those should be enough to show the practice, whatever you think of it -- and I am not a fan -- is not just a weird idea dreamed up by an Argentine politiican.
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out of the same door as in I went.
Being clever is no guarantee of being able to take the right decisions - or being able to take them at the right time.
Mate, it’s over. The wisdom of crowds is right
“In an Economist/YouGov poll, 66% of Americans believe SARS-CoV-2 originated from a virology lab in China.”
And it’s not just America. In every country polled a plurality - and normally a big plurality or a big majority, believe it came from the lab. Britons believe this 2 to 1. Why? Because it came from the lab. Everyone knows this. The argument is futile
circumstant animae dextra laevaque frequentes,
nec vidisse semel satis est; iuvat usque morari
et conferre gradum et veniendi discere causas.
Around him left and right the crowding shades
Not only once would see, but clutch and cling
Obstructive, asking on what quest he goes.
Independent, rigorous evidence is - unsurprisingly - difficult to collate in China on a subject as sensitive as this. Indeed, short of a rapid regime change where they don't have chance to destroy the evidence, we'll probably never know.
But both lab-leak and species-mutation are plausible and should be entertained as possible causes, particularly given the proximity of the first outbreak to places where either cause could have occurred.
Lack of science expertise in gov - Valance says 10% of the civil service fast stream have a STEM degree (90% arts/humanities) so:
"routine consideration of science in policy formulation is not where it needs to be"
That's 90% of the civil service aren't from a STEM background explains a lot really. The figure will be even higher in the media too I'm sure.
Or Noam Chomsky. 'Nuff said, really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alea_Jacta_Est
It isn't a requirement for the job, what is needed is top science advisers in the civil service who can break down complex scientific analysis and data in a way the PM can make a decision from it and a PM who is able to analyse complex problems and come to an effective decision from it
And 90% of the civil service aren't from a mathematical/science etc background either.
And the media are even worse.
Its the blind leading the blind, scrutinised by the blind.
[Sean Connery voice] But in the Latin alphabet, "jacta" begins with an "i".
It's why I could not be an MP, as I simply find economic matters very hard to grasp even when explained to me, and despite all the other roles an MP has I think they should, with a bit of effort, understand that sort of thing.
Of course, they often make believe they don't understand things like the deficit or debt, so it is hard to judge.
Most civil servants beyond say the Treasury or parts of Health and aspects of DWP don't actually need to be brilliant at science and maths, what is important though is that high quality civil servants trained in STEM subjects are recruited to those departments
Mate.
She normally votes Conservative (I think) but won't vote for Labour now either.
There's always been that tension, and there's little point complaining, since every other system is probably worse.
What I do think is different is that we used to have the politics and the government going on in the same brain, and politicians had to be tolerable at both. Johnson was possibly the first politician to have no interest in government at all- he just seemed to want the glory and the big chair. Hence the mutually convenient plan to outsource all that to Dom. Who must have known that he personally couldn't come fourth in a three way popularity contest.
Though I'm sorry to say getting a degree does not guarantee people really have any basic comprehension, even of the topic they've studied remarkably.
"Keir can I have a word?"
"Sure Jess."
"Well you know my constituency is ..."
"You need to rebel on Gaza?"
"I think I do. I'm getting hammered."
"Ok. So go for it. It's fine."
"Really?"
"Yes. Just pop me a resignation, get yourself reelected next year and then we'll have a chat."
"Cheers boss."
He was great with words, he had charisma and a gift for leadership. He was bold, and a fine judge of character, he was emotionally intelligent, and he was self confident (to a fault, some would say)
I’m ignoring his flaws for this argument.
He was perfect for wartime. Sometimes you need chemists, sometimes you need warriors
Jess Phillips has been until the past week long been one of my favourite Labour MPs, one of the few of that party I could respect in Corbyn's years, its a real shame to see her do what she's done this past week. Its a shame she didn't feel she could stand up to those bigots rather than kowtow to them.
He'd only be a little older than Keir is now, so could do it.
ICM did a wisdom of the crowds polls as did other pollsters.
“The classic wisdom-of-the-crowds finding involves point estimation of a continuous quantity. At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox. Statistician Francis Galton observed that the median guess, 1207 pounds, was accurate within 1% of the true weight of 1198 pounds.[6] This has contributed to the insight in cognitive science that a crowd's individual judgments can be modeled as a probability distribution of responses with the median centered near the true value of the quantity to be estimated.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd
People all over the world have decided it came from the lab. The people are right
Tied lowest Conservative % since Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI (19 Nov.):
Labour 43% (–)
Conservative 24% (-3)
Liberal Democrat 14% (+2)
Reform UK 7% (-1)
Green 5% (-1)
SNP 4% (+1)
Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 12 Nov.
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1726646589245321644
(The second for Pedantry.)
Labour 43% (–)
Conservative 24% (-3)
Liberal Democrat 14% (+2)
Reform UK 7% (-1)
Green 5% (-1)
Scottish National Party 4% (+1)
Other 1% (–)
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-19-november-2023/
R&W are usually higher than average for the Lib Dems.
But it depends what you mean by “rated”. He got the referendum won. He avoided a second referendum that would have been lost. He ensured a hard-ish Brexit. He turns out to have kept our lockdown as short as was ever going to be possible, albeit more by luck than judgement.
He was very useful.
SUNAK IS BACK
My idea is looking better and better, isn't it?
"You have a lot of help, you listen to everybody and then you call the play"
That presumably is the essence of leadership - being able to give equal weight both to the opinions you like and the opinions you don't. Perhaps the problem is leaders surround themselves with advisers who act more in an affirmatory than controversial fashion.
At this moment, which of the following do Britons think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK? (19 November)
Keir Starmer 43% (+2)
Rishi Sunak 28% (-3)
Changes +/- 12 Nov
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1726649182604177413