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Low expectations – politicalbetting.com
Low expectations – politicalbetting.com
How much, if anything, do you think the UK COVID?19 Inquiry will achieve?A great deal/fair amount: 16%Not very much/nothing: 74%https://t.co/GHdSyKCUZh pic.twitter.com/YAyPbomHC3
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It is also overshadowing the Post Office enquiry which is showing alot of people and the Post Office in an incredibly bad light.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=364239
Hancock, bless him, seemed to think he was there for a purpose and had clearly thought as deeply as he is capable about what went wrong and right but the level of interest was minimal. What they wanted to play was the blame game. It's frankly annoying.
Some of pointed out that WhatsApp ran fine with 50 people serving 100s of millions before they were bought, and that much of the traffic management etc is provided by other tech companies.
Now the business side, I think most thought it was crazy business to be getting into in the first place. It never makes money (the two years it did, on closer inspection were largely down to accounting tricks which meant some of the other others didn't lose quite as much). And it had doubled head count during the pandemic, with seemingly no new features or improvements.
Musk clearly tried to play chicken and lost, and now saddled with this thing and doing himself no favours being all Trumpy.
Boris was shit as a leader, we know that. Now what can we actually do better.
I blame lawyers ;-)
The only members of my family to die in war were my Great Grandfather and a Great Great Uncle, who were ANZACS in the Gallipolli campaign, so it really hits home.
Another wasted opportunity.
I've been loving you a long time
Down all the years, down all the days
And I've cried for all your troubles
Smiled at your funny little ways
We watched our friends grow up together
And we saw them as they fell
Some of them fell into Heaven
Some of them fell into Hell
I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms
I sang you all my sorrows
You told me all your joys
Whatever happened to that old song?
To all those little girls and boys
Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning
The ginger lady by my bed
Covered in a cloak of silence
I'd hear you talking in my head
I'm not singing for the future
I'm not dreaming of the past
I'm not talking of the first times
I never think about the last
Now the song is nearly over
We may never find out what it means
Still there's a light I hold before me
You're the measure of my dreams
The measure of my dreams
Seriously !!!!
I Am sure he wrote a few good tracks but that is a real stretch
isam said:
Apparently your Christmas song is
No 1 at Christmas when you were 10 sang by the last artist you listened to in your phone
Do They Know it’s Christmas by The Smiths was mine
DAY TRIPPER/WE CAN WORK IT OUT by Luciano pavarotti for me
If anyone wants to have a go at me for listening to Miley Cyrus I will just say 'Flowers' is one of the best break up songs ever.
I am also slightly obsessed by her cover of Heart of Glass.
A few years ago I had a random station playing on Apple Music and it started playing a cover of Heart of Glass and I thought this is good/different, I was shocked into silence when I looked to see it was actually Miley Cyrus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbdRLyixJpc
Bohemian Rhapsody by The Eagles for me.
Miley Cyrus has a really talented Dad too, with his Achy Breaky Heart.
DON'T YOU WANT ME - by the Sundays..
Quite significant part of the revival of interest in folk music in the eighties, particularly folk music with a social edge.
We all know Boris was a shit leader; indeed most of us saw that coming. Anyone who had paid London politics any attention knew the truth, and of course I had already seen it, on occasions from the inside.
You're right that the line of questioning from that KC doesn't appear chiefly concerned with learning lessons for next time, although the (rare) interventions from the Chair suggests that she does have this very much in mind.
Wrong though, as Anzac Day is still marked by parades and dawn attendance over a century later. I was in Sydney for it about 20 years ago.
Though if they hadn't migrated to England my parents wouldn't have met, and I wouldn't exist, so perhaps Winston Churchill and the Turks did me a favour.
There's a Henry Kissinger story that has passed into legend about how he once attended a Grimsby Town FC match as the guest of (then-)foreign secretary Anthony Crosland and became a life-long fan of the team.
According to Crosland's wife, the story isn't true – but the truth is arguably funnier.
Kissinger did travel up Grimsby way at the request of Crosland in April '76, but he did not go gladly. In fact, Kissinger was supposedly pretty miffed to be called to a breakfast meeting at RAF Waddingham, 100+ miles outside of London.
But he did so as a favour to Crosland who insisted he had to stay close to Grimsby for a very important "constituency appointment".
It wasn't until later that Kissinger discovered Crosland's crucial "appointment" was Grimsby Town v Gillingham. And was even more pissed off as a result.
I just don't get this. Everyone knows Brown..or his cohorts briefed against colleagues. I think even less of him now if that's actually possible.
My mother lived opposite a woman in Dublin, who had two sons killed in WWI, and two more in WWII. I don’t know how she could cope with that.
Whilst they had exactly the right idea of stopping and getting on with the rest of their lives, I miss the songs that didn't happen.
Oh, and similarly plausibly, Only You by the Divine Comedy.
For six and a half hours at the Covid inquiry, his many ineptitudes were tipped on top of him like buckets of cockroaches. He was lowered into his own untruths as if they were a sewer of rats. There, in front of three long banks of rather bored-looking lawyers, he was forced to poke his head into a transparent dome of his own slithering inadequacies. And this time there were no stars to reach for.
It is barely weeks since he was punched in the face on TV by a bankrupt former footballer, an experience he would clearly rather go through again, than come back here, as he will do several more times in the coming months.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/matt-hancocks-ring-of-self-protection-fails-in-another-tv-humiliation-ts0zbjsr6
People have short memories
ISTR Alistair Darlings wife having a few choice words about the briefing against him and where it was coming from.
Hopefully, some of the more technical bits of the inquiry will be more useful.
Though perhaps the infantile level that this was often conducted at by the Johnson government is perhaps not usual.
It's why I'm paying it very little attention.
Most British troops out there focused on deterrence of the Japanese and internal security duties, and only a very modest number were even in Slim's 14th Army.
There was also at least two times that the Inquiry was asking questions around how Independent SAGE operated and whether they should have used that name.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/whats-wrong-with-eating-dog/
Given the inquiry has been rumbling on for a while now you can see the line of questioning and how it is going then it is hardly a case of starting with a conclusion more forming one based on the line of questioning.
Lest we forget, their agenda in early 2020 was bringing disruptive eugenicists into Downing Street and throwing the Saj under the bus.
“Fairytale” is much cleverer - probably the best Pogues song, lyrically
I suspect the Inquiry will conclude that the first lockdown should have started sooner (which is what Hancock has said), but that there were understandable reasons why that didn’t happen (which is what Hancock has said). Had the first lockdown started sooner, it probably would have been shorter.
There have also been several times where witnesses have said that we could have avoided lockdown completely if we had had the same resourcing of pandemic preparedness as in countries like South Korea and Japan, that had learnt the lessons of SARS and MERS.
More seriously, it does seem that both the Inquiries now taking place are being reported as inquisitorial, whereas, while clearly the Post Office is going to end very badly for some at the top, the Covid one ought to end with recommendations to avoid getting in the same mess again.
Absolutely outrageous. Gove mentioned it once and was instantly silenced
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
That whole album is touched with an inexplicable, alchemical and cruelly fleeting genius. But at least we got that album
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.
It seems that Patrick Vallance left a recommendation that the civil service should aim for 50% of senior people to be Stem graduates instead of the current 10%. Both the interrogaters and judge should be the same, instead of piling in to demand that the scientists should give their best guesses.
Science doesn't need people giving their best guesses. Reasonable worst cases are specific and don't include mitigation. Graphs may be too difficult for Bojo but science relies on objectivity. Politics is the opposite, and so it seems is the law.
As for explaing science to politicians. it's akin to explaining relativity to a slug, A waste of time for both. Do the politicians ever suspect their ignorance is down to their unwillingness to understand.
I thought Hancock was the consummate polician. When asked a difficult question, answer a different one and control the narrative by spending time espousing something like how good motherhood and apple pie are. He came over as using retrospective knowledge to claim he was always correct - yet at times, he contradicted himself. He seemed exactly as he's been described - a man who makes things up as he goes along. But to be fair, he lies well.
Is there much to be gained in seeing the inner workings of those in charge in times of desperate trouble or should we suffer a few rules being broken if it’s for the greater good?
Seven Ages of Man
Seven Ages: first puking and mewling
Then very pissed off with your schooling
Then fucks and then fights
Next judging chaps’ rights
Then sitting in slippers, then drooling.
The covid enquiry is a world class attempt at ' gotchas' swallowed by Sky and BBC saturation coverage and giving Burley, Rigby and others such delight as 'gotcha' seems to be their main aim in life
Frankly, it is not reporting until 2028 and who really cares when there are far more important issues for most people than millions being spent on something that is being judged with the benefit of hindsight anyeay
Lord Denning on the Birmingham Six springs to mind.
There are few supportive voters backing disasters that didn't happen. Given that banking in UK was and is a heavily regulated activity the 2008 crisis should, under no circumstances, have occurred in the first place as banking as 'personal household and business safekeeping' and banking as risk taking casino are two different industries.
Labour lead up four to 23 points in latest YouGov poll for The Times
CON 22 (-3)
LAB 45 (+1)
LIB DEM 9 (-1)
REF UK 10 (+1)
GREEN 7 (=)
What are they going to do?? They are on the edge of total oblivion
You can call him The Comeback Kid.
Generally speaking, everybody is reactionary on subjects he knows about.
Every organisation appears to be headed by secret agents of its opponents.
One day closer to death, something we all are every day another great line.
Government set the remit;
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-covid-19-inquiry-terms-of-reference/uk-covid-19-inquiry-terms-of-reference
Nothing there I can see discussing where it came from. And a smart chap like Gove would have known that.
Game over?
So is the main complaint from the remaining PB Tories that the Covid enquiry is bad because it is exposing just how bad a job a bunch of very bad ministers did?
Sorrynotsorry. They were the government. We expect them to at least try to be competent. And they weren’t. If exposing that in fine detail is a problem politically, thems the breaks.
Note to galley - Jagerbombs should not be drunk under any circumstances. Neat Jager should *definitely* not be drunk under any circumstances. Especially if you are already drunk…
But then; twas ever thus, at least for the last few decades
Happy Christmas your arse I pray god it’s our last”
Is one of the greatest couplets in the history of pop music. It expresses true love and deep sentiment - as drunk loving ruined people really speak, with a clever rhyme scheme
I believe it has now been cancelled by the Woke
No one is worried about the Tories getting scorched, we just think the whole thing should dive much much deeper and harder
Two ways of being a winning political movement.
One is to sing the old songs better. Run a government doing normal things, but with a better mix of competence, verve and humanity.
The other is to come up with a brilliant new song. Do something brand new, like Thatcher or Attlee did.
The Conservatives can't run on the first. Not after all this. And Starmer will be a more than adequate cover singer.
And they will have problems running on the second, because there aren't any good new ideas on the right either. Hence the Thatcher cosplay. The nearest they have to a new idea- national populism- may be new(ish) but it's also terrible.