Some facts about Kamala Harris: 1. Harris is -- at most - 1/4 black. Her father is a mixed race man from Jamaica; her mother is from India. 2. She grew up more in Canada than the US. 3. She is a member of a historically black Baptist church in San Francisco. 4. She is married to a Jewish lawyer in the entertainment industry. (As far as I can tell, neither regularly attends worship services.) 5. Her choice by Biden reflects the old-fashioned ethnic/religious balancing used by many Democratic machines, approximately forever. (In recent years, aspiring women politicians in the US have often chosen either to serve in the military, or as prosecutors to show they were tough enough.)
I reckon Daszak will now go to jail and many others must be crapping themselves. Fauci, Farrar, Richard Horton, Krisitian Anderson, Holmes - dozens of people who conspired to cover this up
Science itself was corrupted; 20 million are dead
Limited bet (only because I am poor) but I would bet 50 pounds to a charity of your choice that Daszak does not go to jail.
"The election is going to be the third or fourth Thursday in November, the autumn fiscal event will be in the first or second week of October for a five week campaign. Expect another 2p off NI and maybe a surprise elsewhere as well as a manifesto commitment to abolish employee NI entirely over the next parliament."
Me, from yesterday evening.
Today Hunt is hinting at another 2p cut in NI in the autumn. This is going to be the election strategy. I have no doubt about it.
Me. From yesterday evening. “You’re talking Rubbish Max.”
Another 2p off NI ain’t a rabbit from a hat. It wasn’t at the last two.
I think another fiscal event is difficult.
For one thing expectations will be very high for a rabbit from the hat. Where are you saying the money is coming from for the somewhat less than a rabbit from the hat 2p off NI in your post? The two previous cuts have come not from growth nor reduced borrowing, but from fictitious headroom found 5 years down the line, that if that headroom proves a fiction in growth and borrowing movements needed, will actually require tax or NI rises to avoid swingeing cuts to government budgets, Home Office in particular.
Defence increase Sunak boasts is at least £70B and Labour won’t match the pledge - wasn’t in last budget maybe because it had to pass through an OBR. Do you think there can be another fiscal event without that defence promise getting through an OBR? If it’s not put through the OBR, it’s not a serious pledge. Ditto any pledge to eliminate NI, not put through OBR then worthless pledge as not backed up by the money.
Both another fiscal event and another conference promises more risks than rewards to the Sunak’s government.
And yet it's the Chancellor hinting at another fiscal event in the autumn and another NI cut. You may think it's difficult but the the calculation has been made that they are going to lose and they want cutting working people's tax as the legacy of the Tory government. Halving NI is something they can point to and when Labour try and raise it in government the Tories can accuse them of hurting working age people.
I can already see the election after this one is going to be a battle of working people vs non working people and the Tories are trying to make sure they have a legacy of helping working people before they get kicked out. That's the strategy, the Tories are putting together a winning coalition for 2029, not 2024 which is already lost. Having something very concrete to campaign on like halving the NI rate vs Labour pushing it up and having a 4 week campaign where the myth that NI funds pensions or the NHS can be broken helps the Tories in 2029.
There is clearly an acceptance that 2024 is lost and at best a damage limitation exercise. Any probable actions should be interpreted as moving the party in the direction of putting together a winning coalition for 2029 because the next 5 years are going to be absolute shit for Labour. They've got £40-50bn in welfare cuts to make or £40-50bn in tax raises. Labour will never cut welfare so the Tories are banking on Labour reversing the NI cuts.
Why would Labour reverse the NI cuts - were it me the increase would be to 3 or 5p on Income Tax very early on with the blame pinned on Hunt and the unspecified spending cuts that were not identified and cannot be found.
Yes it would upset Pensioners but it’s the best of a very bad set of options
If they put income tax up by anywhere near that much they've lost the 2029 election on day one. NI and extending fiscal drag to 2029 is the obvious target.
Fiscal drag has already been extended until 2028, so quite possibly pretty much all the next government's term. I suppose Labour could let inflation rip to make it more potent.
Sunak and Hunt have already sewn a load of prawns into the curtains of Whitehall and Westminster. Nobody seriously believes the spending envelope that the fiscal rule depends on. Cutting NI by another tuppence would be so blatant a gimmick that I suspect it would give Reeves permission to increase taxes higher than she might otherwise have intended.
And solar will be looking pretty grim by midnight.
Why the sarcastic reply?
Coz I think solar is a waste of time in the UK.
I was not intending anything against you, so apologies if it came across that way.
5% of our total generation last year, so it's some way from irrelevant.
It must have the worst return on energy generated per billion spent.
Remember when you and I were virtually the only people on PB willing to say “er, it quite likely came from the lab? The bat virus lab just down the road from the bat virus outbreak?”
Now read this:
“EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the U.S. taxpayer. Only two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released an extensive report detailing EcoHealth’s wrongdoing and recommending the formal debarment of EcoHealth and its president, HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action. EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide" - Chairman Wenstrup, Committee on Oversight and Accountability - COVID-19.
None of which says that it came from the lab, or that Covid-19 is a result of gain of function research. It may be. It might not be.
You’re an imbecile. Why do you think Ecohealth was so desperately lying to the US government before and after Covid broke out if 1 they weren’t doing desperately risky gain of function bat coronavirus research and 2 they then got intensely worried they were responsible for Covid?
At some point you cease being a neutral scientific observer of this and you become a pathetic craven apologist who cannot face up to the extreme likelihood that science did a terrible thing to the world
I reckon Daszak will now go to jail and many others must be crapping themselves. Fauci, Farrar, Richard Horton, Krisitian Anderson, Holmes - dozens of people who conspired to cover this up
Science itself was corrupted; 20 million are dead
Limited bet (only because I am poor) but I would bet 50 pounds to a charity of your choice that Daszak does not go to jail.
Ugh. YOU
Not up for it?
I genuinely despise you on this subject. So, no
I won’t engage with you further on this point. You are intellectually redundant in this matter and utterly dishonest at best. And I don’t want to lose my temper and get banned
And solar will be looking pretty grim by midnight.
Why the sarcastic reply?
Coz I think solar is a waste of time in the UK.
I was not intending anything against you, so apologies if it came across that way.
5% of our total generation last year, so it's some way from irrelevant.
It must have the worst return on energy generated per billion spent.
Remember when you and I were virtually the only people on PB willing to say “er, it quite likely came from the lab? The bat virus lab just down the road from the bat virus outbreak?”
Now read this:
“EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the U.S. taxpayer. Only two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released an extensive report detailing EcoHealth’s wrongdoing and recommending the formal debarment of EcoHealth and its president, HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action. EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide" - Chairman Wenstrup, Committee on Oversight and Accountability - COVID-19.
None of which says that it came from the lab, or that Covid-19 is a result of gain of function research. It may be. It might not be.
You’re an imbecile. Why do you think Ecohealth was so desperately lying to the US government before and after Covid broke out if 1 they weren’t doing desperately risky gain of function bat coronavirus research and 2 they then got intensely worried they were responsible for Covid?
At some point you cease being a neutral scientific observer of this and you become a pathetic craven apologist who cannot face up to the extreme likelihood that science did a terrible thing to the world
They might have thought that they were responsible without it actually being the case. Its possible. I have no illusions about the malfeasance of some scientists - they are just people after all. I fully believe that Ecohealth were doing things that they shouldn't, and I accept as entirely plausible that covid resulted. But that doesn't mean the case is closed. You fail to recognise that diseases emerge all the time and from time to time they become an extreme risk to humanity. There is significant concern about bird flu right now. Should it become a serious pandemic would you accept that this one wasn't a lab leak?
I don't KNOW the truth, and neither do you. You believe it was a leak from the lab of an artificially changed virus. I accept that that is possible. I keep an open mind.
If evidence emerged tomorrow that confirmed it, I would not be stunned. But neither am I yet convinced from what we have.
Hm. Perhaps. I agree there is sub-optimality in this.
But I am frequently out and about on roads. I make about 8 trips a day of various sort - on foot, in a car, by bike. With my kids and alone. And I can't remember the last time I had to worry at all about what a cyclist was doing. Whereas you have to look out for cars all the time. Cyclists have a combined bike-and-rider weight of typically around 100kg and travel at about, let's say, 15mph. Cars weigh at least a tonne and travel at about 30mph. Granted, some cyclists might in extremis go twice as fast as that, but so might some cars. Cars have at least 20 times the momentum of cyclists, and are far, far more common. And they take up more space. Citing cyclists as the ones turning cars into death traps seems a little disingenuous.
The roads around here were getting better, in terms of the whole car thing.
The problem with the furious cyclists (and their brethren the furious ebikers) is that they are using infrastructure for pedestrians (pavements) and for more traditional cyclists (the increasing number of segregated cycle lanes).
If you are in a moderately narrow, segregated cycle lane, say, cruising along at 10mph, and someone is coming towards you at 25mph that is really not an enjoyable experience. When you add in the weight of the ebikes, and the very large boxes the delivery guys add on... You are being approached by an aggressive moped rider, in reality.
A lot of the electric bikes the delivery riders are using should really be classified as mopeds, meaning that the riders need insurance, wear a helmet, and stick to the roads.
A lot of the Chinese stuff comes with an easy way to modify them to remove all restrictions, usually by a method as simple as cutting a wire loop.
A lot of the feeling against cyclists is against delivery drivers, often on electrical bikes dodging around pedestrians at speed. Electric bikes should be treated as mopeds in law.
I think it will end up like that. Ultimately they will replace mopeds (and some cars) in cities and towns over the next 10 years. The growth, particularly in Asia, is insane.
And (reluctant hat tip to Leon, who noticed this first) things like electric tuktuks are filling the taxi gap - they were bizarrely popular in New Zealand, buzzing around little mountain towns.
That's the exact opposite of what our Transport Minister is trying to do. Brain-dead from a policy viewpoint, but I think he is of the Susan Hall - Daily Mail mindset of searching for wedge issues to save his backside.
Remember that he has just done a consultation declaring throttle only (ie not pedal assist) 500W mopeds, which typically can do 28mph, to be pedal cycles and allowed on every shared surface in the country with no regulation of supply chain or mechanical condition, no limitations and the current almost complete lack of suitable enforcement.
It is opposed by every safety organisation in the country, and reputable e-cycle delivery companies.
If you want this in the context of the current "Causing Death by Dangerous Cycling" campaign - driven by inflammatory claims about a Regents Park ACCIDENT (that - not Open Verdict - was the Coroner's finding). The cyclist was not charged with anything because the cause of death was the pedestrian stepping into traffic so close no one could do anything.
In 2022 3 deaths were caused by fires relating to "E-Bike" (covering I think EAPCs, mopeds and motorcycles like Surrons, and EAPCs hacked to be the latter) battery charging. In 2023 it was 11 deaths. *
The Govt have failed to regulate the supply or use of such batteries, especially cheap and dangerous Chinese imports sold via eg Ebay.
That's how much Mark Harper and his colleagues give a damn for safety.
Ultimately it doesn't matter, because they are about to be flushed down the toilet of history. It's a question about how much effort they waste on second best or damaging interventions, when they could have done things of benefit.
The cyclist concerned in Regents Park was certainly over the 20mph limit and could certainly have been charged with at least the new death by careless cycling law the government is bringing in if not death by dangerous cycling.
If motorists and motorcyclists and lorry drivers can get charged with careless driving or dangerous driving causing death or serious injury then no reason cyclists cannot be too.
The Sale of Goods Act already enables manufacturers to be held liable for faulty products
That is, they have been in law since 1992, and a lot of people are charged with these per annum. I have a number of 100+ in my head, but I'm not sure which offence it relates to.
They use the below and far below "the standard of a careful and competent cyclist" as the definition, the same as the driving offences.
The Coroner determined that the cause of death was "Accident". The police determined that no criminal offences could be charged, despite those offences already being available for use. One has to assume the cyclist was charged not with the offences available, because he was not cycling carelessly or dangerously to a chargeable standard.
The IDS amendments do not change the definition of Careless or Dangerous, except for the 'maintenance' bit (whatever that means).
So the claim that "they could certainly be charged ..." is just false. The police have determined that there is no possibility of such a charge, I take it because of the low likelihood of a conviction.
Motorists or lorry drivers do not get charged with careless or dangerous driving for going 9mph over the speed limit.
Mr Harper and his colleagues do not seem to be doing very much to prevent the sale of dangerous batteries under the Sale of Goods Act. There are 14 people dead in the last 2 years.
Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for.
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
Hm. Perhaps. I agree there is sub-optimality in this.
But I am frequently out and about on roads. I make about 8 trips a day of various sort - on foot, in a car, by bike. With my kids and alone. And I can't remember the last time I had to worry at all about what a cyclist was doing. Whereas you have to look out for cars all the time. Cyclists have a combined bike-and-rider weight of typically around 100kg and travel at about, let's say, 15mph. Cars weigh at least a tonne and travel at about 30mph. Granted, some cyclists might in extremis go twice as fast as that, but so might some cars. Cars have at least 20 times the momentum of cyclists, and are far, far more common. And they take up more space. Citing cyclists as the ones turning cars into death traps seems a little disingenuous.
The roads around here were getting better, in terms of the whole car thing.
The problem with the furious cyclists (and their brethren the furious ebikers) is that they are using infrastructure for pedestrians (pavements) and for more traditional cyclists (the increasing number of segregated cycle lanes).
If you are in a moderately narrow, segregated cycle lane, say, cruising along at 10mph, and someone is coming towards you at 25mph that is really not an enjoyable experience. When you add in the weight of the ebikes, and the very large boxes the delivery guys add on... You are being approached by an aggressive moped rider, in reality.
A lot of the electric bikes the delivery riders are using should really be classified as mopeds, meaning that the riders need insurance, wear a helmet, and stick to the roads.
A lot of the Chinese stuff comes with an easy way to modify them to remove all restrictions, usually by a method as simple as cutting a wire loop.
A lot of the feeling against cyclists is against delivery drivers, often on electrical bikes dodging around pedestrians at speed. Electric bikes should be treated as mopeds in law.
I think it will end up like that. Ultimately they will replace mopeds (and some cars) in cities and towns over the next 10 years. The growth, particularly in Asia, is insane.
And (reluctant hat tip to Leon, who noticed this first) things like electric tuktuks are filling the taxi gap - they were bizarrely popular in New Zealand, buzzing around little mountain towns.
That's the exact opposite of what our Transport Minister is trying to do. Brain-dead from a policy viewpoint, but I think he is of the Susan Hall - Daily Mail mindset of searching for wedge issues to save his backside.
Remember that he has just done a consultation declaring throttle only (ie not pedal assist) 500W mopeds, which typically can do 28mph, to be pedal cycles and allowed on every shared surface in the country with no regulation of supply chain or mechanical condition, no limitations and the current almost complete lack of suitable enforcement.
It is opposed by every safety organisation in the country, and reputable e-cycle delivery companies.
If you want this in the context of the current "Causing Death by Dangerous Cycling" campaign - driven by inflammatory claims about a Regents Park ACCIDENT (that - not Open Verdict - was the Coroner's finding). The cyclist was not charged with anything because the cause of death was the pedestrian stepping into traffic so close no one could do anything.
In 2022 3 deaths were caused by fires relating to "E-Bike" (covering I think EAPCs, mopeds and motorcycles like Surrons, and EAPCs hacked to be the latter) battery charging. In 2023 it was 11 deaths. *
The Govt have failed to regulate the supply or use of such batteries, especially cheap and dangerous Chinese imports sold via eg Ebay.
That's how much Mark Harper and his colleagues give a damn for safety.
Ultimately it doesn't matter, because they are about to be flushed down the toilet of history. It's a question about how much effort they waste on second best or damaging interventions, when they could have done things of benefit.
The cyclist concerned in Regents Park was certainly over the 20mph limit and could certainly have been charged with at least the new death by careless cycling law the government is bringing in if not death by dangerous cycling.
If motorists and motorcyclists and lorry drivers can get charged with careless driving or dangerous driving causing death or serious injury then no reason cyclists cannot be too.
The Sale of Goods Act already enables manufacturers to be held liable for faulty products
That is, they have been in law since 1992, and a lot of people are charged with these per annum. I have a number of 100+ in my head, but I'm not sure which offence it relates to.
They use the below and far below "the standard of a careful and competent cyclist" as the definition, the same as the driving offences.
The Coroner determined that the cause of death was "Accident". The police determined that no criminal offences could be charged, despite those offences already being available for use. One has to assume the cyclist was charged not with the offences available, because he was not cycling carelessly or dangerously to a chargeable standard.
The IDS amendments do not change the definition of Careless or Dangerous, except for the 'maintenance' bit (whatever that means).
So the claim that "they could certainly be charged ..." is just false. The police have determined that there is no possibility of such a charge, I take it because of the low likelihood of a conviction.
Motorists or lorry drivers do not get charged with careless or dangerous driving for going 9mph over the speed limit.
Mr Harper and his colleagues do not seem to be doing very much to prevent the sale of dangerous batteries under the Sale of Goods Act. There are 14 people dead in the last 2 years.
It's worth bearing in mind that if cyclists grow overly concerned that they could fall foul of a badly drafted law that leaves a wide scope for subjective judgement then they're likely to drive instead - where they are far more likely to hurt or kill a pedestrian. So the net effect could be to lead to more pedestrian deaths. Hopefully this new offence will be carefully worded and well understood.
Drivers already get charged and convicted for death by dangerous driving or death by careless driving or causing serious injury by either. So they would not be better off, just given equal terms.
Comments
1. Harris is -- at most - 1/4 black. Her father is a mixed race man from Jamaica; her mother is from India.
2. She grew up more in Canada than the US.
3. She is a member of a historically black Baptist church in San Francisco.
4. She is married to a Jewish lawyer in the entertainment industry. (As far as I can tell, neither regularly attends worship services.)
5. Her choice by Biden reflects the old-fashioned ethnic/religious balancing used by many Democratic machines, approximately forever.
(In recent years, aspiring women politicians in the US have often chosen either to serve in the military, or as prosecutors to show they were tough enough.)
Sunak and Hunt have already sewn a load of prawns into the curtains of Whitehall and Westminster. Nobody seriously believes the spending envelope that the fiscal rule depends on. Cutting NI by another tuppence would be so blatant a gimmick that I suspect it would give Reeves permission to increase taxes higher than she might otherwise have intended.
At some point you cease being a neutral scientific observer of this and you become a pathetic craven apologist who cannot face up to the extreme likelihood that science did a terrible thing to the world
I won’t engage with you further on this point. You are intellectually redundant in this matter and utterly dishonest at best. And I don’t want to lose my temper and get banned
I don't KNOW the truth, and neither do you. You believe it was a leak from the lab of an artificially changed virus. I accept that that is possible. I keep an open mind.
If evidence emerged tomorrow that confirmed it, I would not be stunned. But neither am I yet convinced from what we have.
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
https://www.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/rs/road-safety/driving-offences/
https://imgur.com/RZ9G4vk