I seriously doubt that the science base the administration is in the process of destroying is significantly more LGBTQ than the rest of the country. Even if that were the case, is homophobia really a justification ?
Leavitt: "Electricians, plumbers -- we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University. And that's what this administration's position is." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1927534822701826111
Ignoring the less/fewer SNAFU, does she mean graduates who are gay, or does she mean degrees in subjects that are 'gay' ?
N.B. She herself is a graduate in communications...
She means the humanities. It is a curious anomaly that in America, the liberal arts are regarded as left-wing but in Britain as right-wing.
No, she means LGBTQ studies, I don't think humanities are regarded as rightwing in either. Indeed virtually every department in most universities leans left of centre apart from maybe engineering and economics
It has been a very long time since I was at University but then all of the sciences were pretty well non-political. I don't think I discussed politics with anyone at University. We just got on with studying and having fun. I don't think I mixed with anyone from the Arts or Humanities.
So you can probably add Maths, Physics, Chemistry, etc
Note that there is screaming rage at Thames Water this morning.
Just wait for the rage if anyone living outside the Thames Water area (the most affluent part of the UK) has to cough up to pay to fix its problems.
Although funnily enough the same people who would be outraged are happy enough to live on gigantic subsidies on virtually everything else, from those same parts of the UK, year in, year out.
Decades of socialism and soft-socialism have made freeloading a way of life for at least two thirds of this country, and they get absolutely outraged when those who pay for this country ask for a tiny bit of their own money back.
People often take a very 'me centric' view of 'tax payers money' Pay in taxes to a safety net and use the NHS - what i pay me taxes for innit? Pay in taxes to a safety net and later get sick and claim benefits- scroungers innit? Get child benefit despite having a well paid job - i deserve it, it's the only thing I get from the government WFA - bloody wealthy pensioners, I'm 35 (hope I'm not cold when I'm old)
After the general there's the specifics on things like disability - 'proper' disabled people are apparently deserving. You know, the ones that fall out of their light blue invalid carriage and claw their way into the supermarket on bloodied stumps to the satisfaction of the self appointed disabled parking inspectors 'put the bat away Gav, he's a proper cripple, bless him'.
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
I was astonished how little argument from there was from the public to the government’s response to covid. It felt to me like a real life Milgram experiment, with similar results. Personally I pretty much stuck to the rules, and even had two of the jabs, but I always felt like I was being had over a bit. Lots of my mates, probably 40%, didn’t have any jabs, and to be fair to them, they’re all none the worse for it
Five years on and hindsight's a wonderful thing.
At the time, my experience was most people were happy to go into lockdown - they were scared and the stories coming out of hospitals about the impact of the virus did nothing to alleviate that fear. No one wanted to die gasping for breath hooked up to a ventilator.
Mrs Stodge had to go into work for ten days before she was told to work at home and she was terrified of going on the tube and getting infected.
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
The letter sent by Boris Johnson to every household during the first lockdown was very well written.
And that talk to camera, voice weak with the virus. We saw him at his best and worst during the pandemic.
Ref 30, Lab just over 20, Con just under 20, LD mid teens, Green about 9/10 with all the polls orbiting that with the odd outlier is the post May 1 landscape
Note that there is screaming rage at Thames Water this morning.
Just wait for the rage if anyone living outside the Thames Water area (the most affluent part of the UK) has to cough up to pay to fix its problems.
Although funnily enough the same people who would be outraged are happy enough to live on gigantic subsidies on virtually everything else, from those same parts of the UK, year in, year out.
Decades of socialism and soft-socialism have made freeloading a way of life for at least two thirds of this country, and they get absolutely outraged when those who pay for this country ask for a tiny bit of their own money back.
People often take a very 'me centric' view of 'tax payers money' Pay in taxes to a safety net and use the NHS - what i pay me taxes for innit? Pay in taxes to a safety net and later get sick and claim benefits- scroungers innit? Get child benefit despite having a well paid job - i deserve it, it's the only thing I get from the government WFA - bloody wealthy pensioners, I'm 35 (hope I'm not cold when I'm old)
After the general there's the specifics on things like disability - 'proper' disabled people are apparently deserving. You know, the ones that fall out of their light blue invalid carriage and claw their way into the supermarket on bloodied stumps to the satisfaction of the self appointed disabled parking inspectors 'put the bat away Gav, he's a proper cripple, bless him'.
I was once told tax was the price you paid to live in a civilised society - well, perhaps but a society with no tax (and no supporting wealth such as oil) would be dystopic. You would have to have contracts with every service provider including the Police who would be on Contract - paid protection if you like.
We don't have hypothecated taxation - might be nice if we did.
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
I was astonished how little argument from there was from the public to the government’s response to covid. It felt to me like a real life Milgram experiment, with similar results. Personally I pretty much stuck to the rules, and even had two of the jabs, but I always felt like I was being had over a bit. Lots of my mates, probably 40%, didn’t have any jabs, and to be fair to them, they’re all none the worse for it
I think most people kind of complied with the big stuff but used their own judgement on some of the detailed do's and don't's. And we muddled through.
Full socialism and radical social policy alongside a very anti Israel stance at a guess Greens as a metaphor for what left wing voters and young voters think Labour should be
Meanwhile, in "campaign strategies that wouldn't work these days" news, here's William Deedes in the 1950s;
Discussing MP's casework (again) and reminded of this 1950s Tory broadcast which begins with Bill Deedes basically telling a constituent to fuck off, and then tells the voters more widely to stop moaning.
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
The letter sent by Boris Johnson to every household during the first lockdown was very well written.
And that talk to camera, voice weak with the virus. We saw him at his best and worst during the pandemic.
"It was the best of Boris, it was the worst of Boris..."
Note that there is screaming rage at Thames Water this morning.
Just wait for the rage if anyone living outside the Thames Water area (the most affluent part of the UK) has to cough up to pay to fix its problems.
Although funnily enough the same people who would be outraged are happy enough to live on gigantic subsidies on virtually everything else, from those same parts of the UK, year in, year out.
Decades of socialism and soft-socialism have made freeloading a way of life for at least two thirds of this country, and they get absolutely outraged when those who pay for this country ask for a tiny bit of their own money back.
That's all a load of whataboutery.
The reality is that bill payers will end up paying to fix the problems of pretty well all water companies. To whose ultimate benefit is the real question.
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
The letter sent by Boris Johnson to every household during the first lockdown was very well written.
And that talk to camera, voice weak with the virus. We saw him at his best and worst during the pandemic.
If Boris had managed to followed his own rules I expect he'd still be in power now.
Isn’t it a bit contradictory to say that best PM polling indicates a change of government when the example in 1979 did not?
Or is the point simply that it’s not a reliable metric and we should ignore it completely?
I still think my gut is right to say that until Labour shows delivery on things, their position won’t improve. I note health has dropped down the importance list again, is that because it’s being sorted out or just reported on less?
The economy seems to be holding up fairly well, immigration is falling, if Labour can do something on the boats there is still hope for them yet. Time is still on their side.
Most actual voting we have seen via by election, local by elections, mayoralties and the locals this month plus the polling generally currently suggest the following 1) Reform largest Party 2) massive lab losses everywhere 3) Tories struggling to hold 100 seats and potentially struggling to be third largest Party in the HoC 4) LD advance holding 5) SNP recovery in seats due to total unionist split
The unknown is how well the Lab/Con shares recover or rather with Con their voters on strike return as we approach a GE and how much of the Reform vote share is 'protest/disatisfaction'
Reform 250 Labour 180 Con 90 LD 60 SNP 40
The rest/NI 30 doesn't seem a mile off what's likely as we stand
That’s pretty much where I am.
But the question remains, what can Labour do that actually moves the dial? As right now they are treading water at around 20%.
They can make peoples lives better. Make them feel better off. Reduce NHS waiting lists. Improve the roads. Look after granny better. All within their remit if they stop pleading poverty. Yes, and borrow to invest if necessary.
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
The letter sent by Boris Johnson to every household during the first lockdown was very well written.
And that talk to camera, voice weak with the virus. We saw him at his best and worst during the pandemic.
If Boris had managed to followed his own rules I expect he'd still be in power now.
Could be. He had a lot going for him. Pissed it away.
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Note that there is screaming rage at Thames Water this morning.
Just wait for the rage if anyone living outside the Thames Water area (the most affluent part of the UK) has to cough up to pay to fix its problems.
Although funnily enough the same people who would be outraged are happy enough to live on gigantic subsidies on virtually everything else, from those same parts of the UK, year in, year out.
Decades of socialism and soft-socialism have made freeloading a way of life for at least two thirds of this country, and they get absolutely outraged when those who pay for this country ask for a tiny bit of their own money back.
People often take a very 'me centric' view of 'tax payers money' Pay in taxes to a safety net and use the NHS - what i pay me taxes for innit? Pay in taxes to a safety net and later get sick and claim benefits- scroungers innit? Get child benefit despite having a well paid job - i deserve it, it's the only thing I get from the government WFA - bloody wealthy pensioners, I'm 35 (hope I'm not cold when I'm old)
After the general there's the specifics on things like disability - 'proper' disabled people are apparently deserving. You know, the ones that fall out of their light blue invalid carriage and claw their way into the supermarket on bloodied stumps to the satisfaction of the self appointed disabled parking inspectors 'put the bat away Gav, he's a proper cripple, bless him'.
I was once told tax was the price you paid to live in a civilised society - well, perhaps but a society with no tax (and no supporting wealth such as oil) would be dystopic. You would have to have contracts with every service provider including the Police who would be on Contract - paid protection if you like.
We don't have hypothecated taxation - might be nice if we did.
I think hypothecation in the future could take some of the (intense) heat out of the deserving/non deserving and retirement arguments. Some of the arguments for restricting benefits to the disabled you hear (often framed around the arseholish 'working people are all that count' Labour approach) are not far from suggesting we should only allow ultra expensive NHS treatment on people if its getting them back to being fit to go down the pit. Otherwise, nah, they aren't going to be productive. My entitlements are the good entitlements. It's all quite depressing.
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
The letter sent by Boris Johnson to every household during the first lockdown was very well written.
And that talk to camera, voice weak with the virus. We saw him at his best and worst during the pandemic.
If Boris had managed to followed his own rules I expect he'd still be in power now.
Could be. He had a lot going for him. Pissed it away.
In the words of Pete Doherty "You pissed it all up the wall"
Full socialism and radical social policy alongside a very anti Israel stance at a guess Greens as a metaphor for what left wing voters and young voters think Labour should be
Starmer’s gamble (correctly IMHO), is that a lot of that 11% would vote Labour, if Reform looked like winning.
Full fat left wing policies would bring many such voters on board, mid-term, but lose votes from more moderate Labour voters.
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
The letter sent by Boris Johnson to every household during the first lockdown was very well written.
And that talk to camera, voice weak with the virus. We saw him at his best and worst during the pandemic.
If Boris had managed to followed his own rules I expect he'd still be in power now.
The more interesting what if... If he'd made a clean breast of the whole thing at the beginning, properly fessed up and apologised?
It would have killed the story while it was still small, and not led to the boring technical point that unrepentant flat-out lying at the Despatch Box is a sacking offence.
But Boris was and is incapable of doing that.
(My answer is that he'd have survived Partygate but that something else would have come along at some point- character, destiny and all that.)
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Farages approach has allowed them to chart a different course and try and frame a 'sound money' argument. Post Truss etc good luck with that but it might allow them a specific niche to try and rebuild into the GE from
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Perhaps and I certainly agree winter fuel payments to higher rate tax payers are hard to defend. I could support winter fuel payments to basic rate taxpayers though I'm not sure what would mean in terms of money and there's an assumption the Government's own software can differentiate between pensioners on different tax rates and codes.
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Perhaps and I certainly agree winter fuel payments to higher rate tax payers are hard to defend. I could support winter fuel payments to basic rate taxpayers though I'm not sure what would mean in terms of money and there's an assumption the Government's own software can differentiate between pensioners on different tax rates and codes.
It costs a lot of money to means test of course, and if you're just excluding a small number it would probably cost more to administer than the savings you're making my not giving it to those people.
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Perhaps and I certainly agree winter fuel payments to higher rate tax payers are hard to defend. I could support winter fuel payments to basic rate taxpayers though I'm not sure what would mean in terms of money and there's an assumption the Government's own software can differentiate between pensioners on different tax rates and codes.
I would add it to pension income and require it to be declared at self assessment and taxed accordingly
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
The letter sent by Boris Johnson to every household during the first lockdown was very well written.
And that talk to camera, voice weak with the virus. We saw him at his best and worst during the pandemic.
If Boris had managed to followed his own rules I expect he'd still be in power now.
Could be. He had a lot going for him. Pissed it away.
In the words of Pete Doherty "You pissed it all up the wall"
Full socialism and radical social policy alongside a very anti Israel stance at a guess Greens as a metaphor for what left wing voters and young voters think Labour should be
Starmer’s gamble (correctly IMHO), is that a lot of that 11% would vote Labour, if Reform looked like winning.
Full fat left wing policies would bring many such voters on board, mid-term, but lose votes from more moderate Labour voters.
Con Gain Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire. Partially joking! But i think the Greens are actually a hard 5 to 7% now with upside to double figures. They got 7% when there was a more popular Labour and a Tory government to remove and many no longer see Labour as on the side of the angels anyway
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
What do you do about furlough without an official lockdown? Do you provide people with financial support to not go into work? If you don’t, then basically the rich or those who work in jobs that can be done remotely are fine, but the rest are forced into situations that risk their health and the health of people around them (and we’ve seen with long COVID how those risks are not just around the initial infection).
We could have approached things differently. Japan never had a national lockdown, for example. But they did much better at keeping infection rates low and intervening very early on with outbreaks. A national lockdown is a measure of failure, that you haven’t controlled the infection rate better, but once you get to a certain point, it’s one of the few tools left.
Proposals by some here to literally let people die in the streets are unconscionable.
It's one of those little annoying things about life that the one position on winter fuel which nearly everyone could agree with, that just the most wealthy shouldn't get it, is the one that probably wouldn't make any financial sense because, as I said, that would be the option that would end up costing more money to administer than any savings it made.
Ref 30, Lab just over 20, Con just under 20, LD mid teens, Green about 9/10 with all the polls orbiting that with the odd outlier is the post May 1 landscape
Not sure that is true - we've seen a couple of other polls with the Tories only a point above the LDs.
We saw the same thing when Reform passed Labour. Initially woah, then a bit of correction, then the trend continues and becomes clearer. We will see how this one plays out...
I think the Green switchers dislike the vibe of the government. It doesn't seem that progressive sometimes.
Starmer chasing Farage will result in leaking votes to Lib Dem and Green
He can never outdo Farage
Yes. Although chasing the Greens is probably riskier. Ideally he won't chase anybody. It's not what PMs should be doing.
Absolutely they shouldn't, but Starmer is not suited to the politics of PM.
Attorney General should have been his role
Yes, well, Attorney Generals shouldn't be chasing things either. Not with an election four years away. Just block out the noise and do the job to the best of your ability. Make a diary note for mid 2027 to start thinking about how to get reelected.
Note that there is screaming rage at Thames Water this morning.
Just wait for the rage if anyone living outside the Thames Water area (the most affluent part of the UK) has to cough up to pay to fix its problems.
Although funnily enough the same people who would be outraged are happy enough to live on gigantic subsidies on virtually everything else, from those same parts of the UK, year in, year out.
Decades of socialism and soft-socialism have made freeloading a way of life for at least two thirds of this country, and they get absolutely outraged when those who pay for this country ask for a tiny bit of their own money back.
People often take a very 'me centric' view of 'tax payers money' Pay in taxes to a safety net and use the NHS - what i pay me taxes for innit? Pay in taxes to a safety net and later get sick and claim benefits- scroungers innit? Get child benefit despite having a well paid job - i deserve it, it's the only thing I get from the government WFA - bloody wealthy pensioners, I'm 35 (hope I'm not cold when I'm old)
After the general there's the specifics on things like disability - 'proper' disabled people are apparently deserving. You know, the ones that fall out of their light blue invalid carriage and claw their way into the supermarket on bloodied stumps to the satisfaction of the self appointed disabled parking inspectors 'put the bat away Gav, he's a proper cripple, bless him'.
I was once told tax was the price you paid to live in a civilised society - well, perhaps but a society with no tax (and no supporting wealth such as oil) would be dystopic. You would have to have contracts with every service provider including the Police who would be on Contract - paid protection if you like.
We don't have hypothecated taxation - might be nice if we did.
I think hypothecation in the future could take some of the (intense) heat out of the deserving/non deserving and retirement arguments. Some of the arguments for restricting benefits to the disabled you hear (often framed around the arseholish 'working people are all that count' Labour approach) are not far from suggesting we should only allow ultra expensive NHS treatment on people if its getting them back to being fit to go down the pit. Otherwise, nah, they aren't going to be productive. My entitlements are the good entitlements. It's all quite depressing.
We know the public are poorly informed as to what their taxes go on, underestimating how much goes on pensions and education, overestimating how much goes on asylum seekers, foreign aid and MPs’ expenses.
Ref 30, Lab just over 20, Con just under 20, LD mid teens, Green about 9/10 with all the polls orbiting that with the odd outlier is the post May 1 landscape
Not sure that is true - we've seen a couple of other polls with the Tories only a point above the LDs.
We saw the same thing when Reform passed Labour. Initially woah, then a bit of correction, then the trend continues and becomes clearer. We will see how this one plays out...
If the general picture is just under 20 and mid teens then a couple of one point margins in about a dozen polls is about right for MoE noise. The general picture may change, yes, I didn't say it was eternal
It's one of those little annoying things about life that the one position on winter fuel which nearly everyone could agree with, that just the most wealthy shouldn't get it, is the one that probably wouldn't make any financial sense because, as I said, that would be the option that would end up costing more money to administer than any savings it made.
Labour are considering restoring WFP for all but reclaiming it via tax for those over a certain income to avoid that
The Kemi charge begins, Tories up 3% to 19% as she reaches base camp on her way to the peak of a Tory landslide in 2029 as she squeezes Labour and the LDs. Reform advance halted before Farage can reach 30% too
Full socialism and radical social policy alongside a very anti Israel stance at a guess Greens as a metaphor for what left wing voters and young voters think Labour should be
Starmer’s gamble (correctly IMHO), is that a lot of that 11% would vote Labour, if Reform looked like winning.
Full fat left wing policies would bring many such voters on board, mid-term, but lose votes from more moderate Labour voters.
Con Gain Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire. Partially joking! But i think the Greens are actually a hard 5 to 7% now with upside to double figures. They got 7% when there was a more popular Labour and a Tory government to remove and many no longer see Labour as on the side of the angels anyway
If Labour had raised income tax rates, championed immigration, amended the Equality Act, so that anyone who I/D’s as a woman is one for all legal purposes, told Trump to do one, and imposed sanctions on Israel, their support would be higher than it is today, but so would Reform’s be.
It's one of those little annoying things about life that the one position on winter fuel which nearly everyone could agree with, that just the most wealthy shouldn't get it, is the one that probably wouldn't make any financial sense because, as I said, that would be the option that would end up costing more money to administer than any savings it made.
There's a strong argument that there's no reason for it to be a separate payment. People should have pensions that are sufficient to pay for fuel in winter.
I'm in the mood for a controversial musing (twirls moustache) With the historic propensity for a bit of Labour overstatement and a bit of Tory understatement in polling and looking at today's MiC and YG and the Merlin red wall poll, is it in fact Labour that are closer to an existential result?
The Kemi charge begins, Tories up 3% to 19% as she reaches base camp on her way to the peak of a Tory landslide in 2029 as she squeezes Labour and the LDs. Reform advance halted before Farage can reach 30% too
I seriously doubt that the science base the administration is in the process of destroying is significantly more LGBTQ than the rest of the country. Even if that were the case, is homophobia really a justification ?
Leavitt: "Electricians, plumbers -- we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University. And that's what this administration's position is." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1927534822701826111
Ignoring the less/fewer SNAFU, does she mean graduates who are gay, or does she mean degrees in subjects that are 'gay' ?
N.B. She herself is a graduate in communications...
She means the humanities. It is a curious anomaly that in America, the liberal arts are regarded as left-wing but in Britain as right-wing.
No, she means LGBTQ studies, I don't think humanities are regarded as rightwing in either. Indeed virtually every department in most universities leans left of centre apart from maybe engineering and economics
It has been a very long time since I was at University but then all of the sciences were pretty well non-political. I don't think I discussed politics with anyone at University. We just got on with studying and having fun. I don't think I mixed with anyone from the Arts or Humanities.
So you can probably add Maths, Physics, Chemistry, etc
They may not be very political but most Maths and Science students in my experience still vote Labour on general election day if they bother to vote. It tends to be business and economics students who are the most likely to be rightwing even as students, though often also socially liberal still
The Kemi charge begins, Tories up 3% to 19% as she reaches base camp on her way to the peak of a Tory landslide in 2029 as she squeezes Labour and the LDs. Reform advance halted before Farage can reach 30% too
Dreaming is healthy. Tell you what, though, I really am happy with my lay of her going this year at 2.7. Great value. I only wish I'd done more.
An unusual set of local by-elections tomorrow. We have an Ind elected as Lab defence in Carmarthenshire, a Canvey Island Ind in Castle Point, and Ind elected as Lib Dem in Lewes, and an Ind in Maldon.
I seriously doubt that the science base the administration is in the process of destroying is significantly more LGBTQ than the rest of the country. Even if that were the case, is homophobia really a justification ?
Leavitt: "Electricians, plumbers -- we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University. And that's what this administration's position is." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1927534822701826111
Ignoring the less/fewer SNAFU, does she mean graduates who are gay, or does she mean degrees in subjects that are 'gay' ?
N.B. She herself is a graduate in communications...
She means the humanities. It is a curious anomaly that in America, the liberal arts are regarded as left-wing but in Britain as right-wing.
No, she means LGBTQ studies, I don't think humanities are regarded as rightwing in either. Indeed virtually every department in most universities leans left of centre apart from maybe engineering and economics
Write a list of well-known politicians who have championed a liberal arts education. I'll start you off – Michael Gove.
To repeat, in Britain, this is reckoned a right-wing indulgence. In America, left.
Yes, Gove supports English and History taught in a traditional way, I don't remember him promoting LGBT or gender studies?
Even in the US George W Bush studied History and Mitt Romney English as their college majors (Trump unsurprisingly studied economics)
The Kemi charge begins, Tories up 3% to 19% as she reaches base camp on her way to the peak of a Tory landslide in 2029 as she squeezes Labour and the LDs. Reform advance halted before Farage can reach 30% too
I'll have a trawl of the subsets and see what joys it brings you HYUFD!
Every opposition leader who led their party into government though, Starmer, Cameron and Blair led on the best PM rating since Thatcher.
Some encouragement for Badenoch that 60% of current Conservative voters prefer her to Farage and Labour, LD and Green voters also prefer her to Farage
Farage does lead as best PM in some polls though. This YouGov has got a lot of attention, but it’s just one pollster
Does suggest the potential for anti Reform tactical voting at least, even for Tories in Tory v Reform seats
The tories best hope in tactical voting is for Reform to back them in LD fights in the Home Counties but there is no sign at all of that being remotely likely. Tories are generally dreadful at attracting tactical votes, so it would be interesting to see if it starts happening at all where they face Reform - locally i shall therefore keep an eye on NW Norfolk and Broadland/Fakenham both of which will be straight Ref vs Con fights (Con held) with a healthy LD vote to try and squeeze (I figure LD is the most likely source of these potential tacticals if they are to appear)
The Tories want Reform tactical votes in LD held southern seats which are still too posh for Reform to breakthrough to win and Labour and LD tactical votes in seats like mine, Brentwood and Ongar, where Reform were second to the Tories at the GE
The Kemi charge begins, Tories up 3% to 19% as she reaches base camp on her way to the peak of a Tory landslide in 2029 as she squeezes Labour and the LDs. Reform advance halted before Farage can reach 30% too
I'll have a trawl of the subsets and see what joys it brings you HYUFD!
They'd gain a fair few London seats and possibly in Wales with the vote splitting all ways and hold on in Scotland. Pish in the South though!
My mum fell and broke her hip in Marlow last week.
Waited 4 hours for an ambulance BAD
Had a private room in hospital GOOD
Had hip replacement two days later GOOD
Been asked to buy for her own equipment off Amazon to help her up the stairs and to the toilet because she lives in Havering and the accident and operation took place in Buckinghamshire BAD
You or she needs to talk to these people about help. They should send out someone to assess, Then there will be a discussion about how much the Council or NHS will pay.
Every opposition leader who led their party into government though, Starmer, Cameron and Blair led on the best PM rating since Thatcher.
Some encouragement for Badenoch that 60% of current Conservative voters prefer her to Farage and Labour, LD and Green voters also prefer her to Farage
Farage does lead as best PM in some polls though. This YouGov has got a lot of attention, but it’s just one pollster
Does suggest the potential for anti Reform tactical voting at least, even for Tories in Tory v Reform seats
The tories best hope in tactical voting is for Reform to back them in LD fights in the Home Counties but there is no sign at all of that being remotely likely. Tories are generally dreadful at attracting tactical votes, so it would be interesting to see if it starts happening at all where they face Reform - locally i shall therefore keep an eye on NW Norfolk and Broadland/Fakenham both of which will be straight Ref vs Con fights (Con held) with a healthy LD vote to try and squeeze (I figure LD is the most likely source of these potential tacticals if they are to appear)
The Tories want Reform tactical votes in LD held southern seats which are still too posh for Reform to breakthrough to win and Labour and LD tactical votes in seats like mine, Brentwood and Ongar, where Reform were second to the Tories at the GE
Want versus get though. They've always had problems attracting tacticals, a few LD types aside
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
Chaos is better than authoritarianism. Chaos is a good thing. Chaos is how we evolve.
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
My mum fell and broke her hip in Marlow last week.
Waited 4 hours for an ambulance BAD
Had a private room in hospital GOOD
Had hip replacement two days later GOOD
Been asked to buy for her own equipment off Amazon to help her up the stairs and to the toilet because she lives in Havering and the accident and operation took place in Buckinghamshire BAD
You or she needs to talk to these people about help. They should send out someone to assess, Then there will be a discussion about how much the Council or NHS will pay.
I seriously doubt that the science base the administration is in the process of destroying is significantly more LGBTQ than the rest of the country. Even if that were the case, is homophobia really a justification ?
Leavitt: "Electricians, plumbers -- we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University. And that's what this administration's position is." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1927534822701826111
Ignoring the less/fewer SNAFU, does she mean graduates who are gay, or does she mean degrees in subjects that are 'gay' ?
N.B. She herself is a graduate in communications...
She means the humanities. It is a curious anomaly that in America, the liberal arts are regarded as left-wing but in Britain as right-wing.
No, she means LGBTQ studies, I don't think humanities are regarded as rightwing in either. Indeed virtually every department in most universities leans left of centre apart from maybe engineering and economics
Write a list of well-known politicians who have championed a liberal arts education. I'll start you off – Michael Gove.
To repeat, in Britain, this is reckoned a right-wing indulgence. In America, left.
Yes, Gove supports English and History taught in a traditional way, I don't remember him promoting LGBT or gender studies?
Even in the US George W Bush studied History and Mitt Romney English as their college majors (Trump unsurprisingly studied economics)
That is a surprise to me. He obviously didn't learn anything.
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
Chaos is better than authoritarianism. Chaos is a good thing. Chaos is how we evolve.
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
"Chaos is a good thing" say the citizens of Haiti and Somalia.
Every opposition leader who led their party into government though, Starmer, Cameron and Blair led on the best PM rating since Thatcher.
Some encouragement for Badenoch that 60% of current Conservative voters prefer her to Farage and Labour, LD and Green voters also prefer her to Farage
Farage does lead as best PM in some polls though. This YouGov has got a lot of attention, but it’s just one pollster
Does suggest the potential for anti Reform tactical voting at least, even for Tories in Tory v Reform seats
The tories best hope in tactical voting is for Reform to back them in LD fights in the Home Counties but there is no sign at all of that being remotely likely. Tories are generally dreadful at attracting tactical votes, so it would be interesting to see if it starts happening at all where they face Reform - locally i shall therefore keep an eye on NW Norfolk and Broadland/Fakenham both of which will be straight Ref vs Con fights (Con held) with a healthy LD vote to try and squeeze (I figure LD is the most likely source of these potential tacticals if they are to appear)
The Tories want Reform tactical votes in LD held southern seats which are still too posh for Reform to breakthrough to win and Labour and LD tactical votes in seats like mine, Brentwood and Ongar, where Reform were second to the Tories at the GE
That's just not going to happen, particularly given Reform's pivot on the two child benefit cap and the WFA. We need to stop thinking of Reform as a right wing party when they are first and foremost a populist party. The only way the Tories will pick up Reform votes in the Home Counties is if they can convince them that they should be voting for a sensible establishment party rather than a populist one.
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
Chaos is better than authoritarianism. Chaos is a good thing. Chaos is how we evolve.
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
Its a take...
Happily you aren't in charge of anything.
"Boss, this machine is broken and its going to ruin the production run if we leave it running" "Leave it on. Chaos is a good thing" "But when it lets go properly it will damage itself so completely that we'll need to replace it at great cost with no production in that time" "Chaos is far superior"
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
What do you do about furlough without an official lockdown? Do you provide people with financial support to not go into work? If you don’t, then basically the rich or those who work in jobs that can be done remotely are fine, but the rest are forced into situations that risk their health and the health of people around them (and we’ve seen with long COVID how those risks are not just around the initial infection).
We could have approached things differently. Japan never had a national lockdown, for example. But they did much better at keeping infection rates low and intervening very early on with outbreaks. A national lockdown is a measure of failure, that you haven’t controlled the infection rate better, but once you get to a certain point, it’s one of the few tools left.
Proposals by some here to literally let people die in the streets are unconscionable.
Yes, like we did post the lifting of lockdown at one stage where the furlough scheme was continued despite lockdown no longer being the law, so that those who wanted to continue to furlough were able to do so for a period of time.
Or like Sweden did.
They had it being optional to shutdown not mandatory. For those who took the option, the furlough scheme was available. For those who did not, it was not. But it was done based on free will, not authoritarianism, which is far superior.
That way those who are vulnerable or have reasons to desire to isolate (or whose firms have lost their customers) can furlough while those who wish to be open can choose not to, and its done based on free choice, not the lowest common denominator.
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Perhaps and I certainly agree winter fuel payments to higher rate tax payers are hard to defend. I could support winter fuel payments to basic rate taxpayers though I'm not sure what would mean in terms of money and there's an assumption the Government's own software can differentiate between pensioners on different tax rates and codes.
It costs a lot of money to means test of course, and if you're just excluding a small number it would probably cost more to administer than the savings you're making my not giving it to those people.
Depends what you mean by means test
I think it is safe to assume hmrc have a database I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database contains date of birth I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database has information on how much tax you paid last year
Means testing could there for as simple as an sql script to produce a list of everyone that is a pensioner and paid less than a certain amount of tax. Would take less than a day of one persons time to means test the entire pensioner cohort
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
Chaos is better than authoritarianism. Chaos is a good thing. Chaos is how we evolve.
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
Its a take...
Happily you aren't in charge of anything.
"Boss, this machine is broken and its going to ruin the production run if we leave it running" "Leave it on. Chaos is a good thing" "But when it lets go properly it will damage itself so completely that we'll need to replace it at great cost with no production in that time" "Chaos is far superior"
etc
Showing your ignorance there again. I said chaos versus authoritarianism, fixing a broken machine doesn't fall under that binary split.
Indeed, adapting to understand that "this is broken, lets stop what we're doing and fix it" is closer to the chaos side of the ledger than "lets continue with what we're doing regardless because this is what I've been told to do, disregarding the fact the machine is broken".
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
Chaos is better than authoritarianism. Chaos is a good thing. Chaos is how we evolve.
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
"Chaos is a good thing" say the citizens of Haiti and Somalia.
"Authoritarianism is a good thing" say the citizens of Russia and Belarus.
Chaotic liberty > authoritarianism, absolutely. Chaos is part of people having free will.
I think Barty is a handy reminder of why ideologues should be nowhere near power.
"Prime Minister, they are rioting in the streets!" "Good. Chaos is how we evolve"
And you're still pretending to be a liberal! 🤣
Yes, people having the free will to protest in the streets is absolutely a good thing that is 100% part of a free society.
Belarus and Russia will send the military/police in to halt that because they prefer "order" over "chaos". Authoritarian "order" is not superior to chaotic liberty.
Senator Markwayne Mullin on the Russia-Ukraine war: "The best thing that's taken place in Europe is the war, because all the other countries are waking up." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1927539488735052255
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
Chaos is better than authoritarianism. Chaos is a good thing. Chaos is how we evolve.
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
Every opposition leader who led their party into government though, Starmer, Cameron and Blair led on the best PM rating since Thatcher.
Some encouragement for Badenoch that 60% of current Conservative voters prefer her to Farage and Labour, LD and Green voters also prefer her to Farage
Farage does lead as best PM in some polls though. This YouGov has got a lot of attention, but it’s just one pollster
Does suggest the potential for anti Reform tactical voting at least, even for Tories in Tory v Reform seats
The tories best hope in tactical voting is for Reform to back them in LD fights in the Home Counties but there is no sign at all of that being remotely likely. Tories are generally dreadful at attracting tactical votes, so it would be interesting to see if it starts happening at all where they face Reform - locally i shall therefore keep an eye on NW Norfolk and Broadland/Fakenham both of which will be straight Ref vs Con fights (Con held) with a healthy LD vote to try and squeeze (I figure LD is the most likely source of these potential tacticals if they are to appear)
The Tories want Reform tactical votes in LD held southern seats which are still too posh for Reform to breakthrough to win and Labour and LD tactical votes in seats like mine, Brentwood and Ongar, where Reform were second to the Tories at the GE
That's just not going to happen, particularly given Reform's pivot on the two child benefit cap and the WFA. We need to stop thinking of Reform as a right wing party when they are first and foremost a populist party. The only way the Tories will pick up Reform votes in the Home Counties is if they can convince them that they should be voting for a sensible establishment party rather than a populist one.
Or that the LDs want to reverse Brexit in LD held seats where the Tories were second last time and Reform a poor third
Every opposition leader who led their party into government though, Starmer, Cameron and Blair led on the best PM rating since Thatcher.
Some encouragement for Badenoch that 60% of current Conservative voters prefer her to Farage and Labour, LD and Green voters also prefer her to Farage
Farage does lead as best PM in some polls though. This YouGov has got a lot of attention, but it’s just one pollster
Does suggest the potential for anti Reform tactical voting at least, even for Tories in Tory v Reform seats
The tories best hope in tactical voting is for Reform to back them in LD fights in the Home Counties but there is no sign at all of that being remotely likely. Tories are generally dreadful at attracting tactical votes, so it would be interesting to see if it starts happening at all where they face Reform - locally i shall therefore keep an eye on NW Norfolk and Broadland/Fakenham both of which will be straight Ref vs Con fights (Con held) with a healthy LD vote to try and squeeze (I figure LD is the most likely source of these potential tacticals if they are to appear)
The Tories want Reform tactical votes in LD held southern seats which are still too posh for Reform to breakthrough to win and Labour and LD tactical votes in seats like mine, Brentwood and Ongar, where Reform were second to the Tories at the GE
Want versus get though. They've always had problems attracting tacticals, a few LD types aside
33% of LD voters and 22% of Labour voters now say they would tactically vote Tory if only Reform or the Conservatives could win their constituency.
Yes, migration is out of control and needs to be checked significantly Yes, universities are starved of cash and thus reliant on Chinese students who then fuel the migrant statistics No, the response isn't net zero migration - or negative as some want
Lets finger what is really at play here - racism. MAGA wants to stop all these funny looking folk coming in, but welcomes the Boer fleeing from their "genocide". Stop the Boats here also moans about all these chinese students suddenly all over Sheffield, but if they were white Americans that would be fine.
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
Chaos is better than authoritarianism. Chaos is a good thing. Chaos is how we evolve.
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
You are Jason Statham and I claim my 5 dollars!
Michael Douglas - I think Bart was doing Gordon Gekko there with "chaos" instead of "greed".
Every opposition leader who led their party into government though, Starmer, Cameron and Blair led on the best PM rating since Thatcher.
Some encouragement for Badenoch that 60% of current Conservative voters prefer her to Farage and Labour, LD and Green voters also prefer her to Farage
Farage does lead as best PM in some polls though. This YouGov has got a lot of attention, but it’s just one pollster
Does suggest the potential for anti Reform tactical voting at least, even for Tories in Tory v Reform seats
The tories best hope in tactical voting is for Reform to back them in LD fights in the Home Counties but there is no sign at all of that being remotely likely. Tories are generally dreadful at attracting tactical votes, so it would be interesting to see if it starts happening at all where they face Reform - locally i shall therefore keep an eye on NW Norfolk and Broadland/Fakenham both of which will be straight Ref vs Con fights (Con held) with a healthy LD vote to try and squeeze (I figure LD is the most likely source of these potential tacticals if they are to appear)
The Tories want Reform tactical votes in LD held southern seats which are still too posh for Reform to breakthrough to win and Labour and LD tactical votes in seats like mine, Brentwood and Ongar, where Reform were second to the Tories at the GE
Want versus get though. They've always had problems attracting tacticals, a few LD types aside
33% of LD voters and 22% of Labour voters now say they would tactically vote Tory if only Reform or the Conservatives could win their constituency.
That does give them some potential then. Locally, for example, it might make NW Norfolk, Broadland, Mid Norfolk more likely to be Tory holds vs Reform in tight contests (but will Labour conclude they cannot win ftom second?) but SW Norfolk and South Norfolk Labour will think they can win as they hold them - they have no chance of a hold in either of course.
SW Norfolk is going to be fascinating. The Bagge 12% will be crucial. I actually think without poison Liz it leans Tory again
On the Covid, away from the detail of it, I found it heartening - and a little surprising - how 'we' were prepared to prioritise the collective interest. I know the money helped with that, and the law was wielded too, but still, big picture, I think government did ok and response of the population (esp younger people) was more than ok.
I was astonished how little argument from there was from the public to the government’s response to covid. It felt to me like a real life Milgram experiment, with similar results. Personally I pretty much stuck to the rules, and even had two of the jabs, but I always felt like I was being had over a bit. Lots of my mates, probably 40%, didn’t have any jabs, and to be fair to them, they’re all none the worse for it
Five years on and hindsight's a wonderful thing.
At the time, my experience was most people were happy to go into lockdown - they were scared and the stories coming out of hospitals about the impact of the virus did nothing to alleviate that fear. No one wanted to die gasping for breath hooked up to a ventilator.
Mrs Stodge had to go into work for ten days before she was told to work at home and she was terrified of going on the tube and getting infected.
Hindsight may be a wonderful thing, but I was saying it on here at the time
The Kemi charge begins, Tories up 3% to 19% as she reaches base camp on her way to the peak of a Tory landslide in 2029 as she squeezes Labour and the LDs. Reform advance halted before Farage can reach 30% too
Or a reversion to the mean. The last Yougov was a bit of an outlier with the Tories on 16 and the LDs above them on 17
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Perhaps and I certainly agree winter fuel payments to higher rate tax payers are hard to defend. I could support winter fuel payments to basic rate taxpayers though I'm not sure what would mean in terms of money and there's an assumption the Government's own software can differentiate between pensioners on different tax rates and codes.
It costs a lot of money to means test of course, and if you're just excluding a small number it would probably cost more to administer than the savings you're making my not giving it to those people.
Depends what you mean by means test
I think it is safe to assume hmrc have a database I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database contains date of birth I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database has information on how much tax you paid last year
Means testing could there for as simple as an sql script to produce a list of everyone that is a pensioner and paid less than a certain amount of tax. Would take less than a day of one persons time to means test the entire pensioner cohort
You are assuming
1) a clear, well maintained database. 2) data which is easy to write queries against. 3) the ability to write queries 4) the absence of the belief that Something Important must be A Big Project. So the query become a new sub-department, complete with a Richard Rogers designed office.
One day, after the lagershed, I will tell you of a database I encountered. Where all the data was in a single column…
Karl Popper - “If we wish to remain human, then there is one price we must pay: it is to live in a society that has freedom, and therefore a measure of insecurity.”
John Dewey - The quest for certainty is a quest for relief from the pangs of doubt and the shocks of change. It is not the quest for truth.
John Stewart Mill - A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
Or RochdalePioneers - Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos.
Problem with the @MaxPB approach to Covid is that it wilfully ignores psychology and the herd mentality. "No lockdown 1" - by which he means everyone told Go About Your Business.
So how do we enforce that? Weeks before lockdown Tesco abruptly closed their campus to visitors - would Max have sent the police round to enforce them to open up?
People don't carry on as normal when they see the impacts of Covid. The Australian grand prix was pulled due to personnel getting ill. Football & Rugby would have been decimated, putting the fear into people. Lockdown or no lockdown, a lot of people aren't going to work and their employers aren't forcing them to do so. Work From Home happens anyway with increasing speed.
Does Max send in the police to force everyone to be "normal"?
As for "let the NHS be overwhelmed". Again, the psychological impact on people would have been huge. Same with schools where so many staff are sick that the school cannot open. Max sending the police round again? The police are also desperately ill.
It is - sorry to say it - whining bullshit. Nobody liked lockdown. It was a disaster in so many ways. But the alternative to a controlled lockdown was an uncontrolled lockdown. Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos. Which is a bigger economic and social disaster as Covid rips deeper through society.
I think you're the one being ignorant here.
Max never said people should be obliged to go about their business as normal.
There is a world of difference between people choosing to change their actions, and government diktats saying that you're obliged to do so regardless of preference.
An uncontrolled lockdown, a la Sweden, is far better than a controlled one. Let people make their own judgments and use their own common sense and do whatever they individually deem appropriate.
Max is railing against the cost - financially and sociologically - of lockdown. There are two scenarios - we lock down, or we don't lock down. Max posted "In retrospect I wouldn't have done the first lockdown either." which meant that people would absolutely have been going about their lives and catching covid because then he posted "Yup, people live or die at home. Only take COVID patients under 18, everyone else deals with it at home and assesses their own risk." and "We can't halt everyone's lives because there isn't enough healthcare provision, "
Note that last part - "we can't halt people's lives". No lockdown = go about your normal routine. If the government was insistent that this happen then people using their "own common sense" and not going into work is a major problem.
You talked up Sweden endlessly, as if we would have been Sweden. We wouldn't. A wholly different country in terms of geography and population density and travel frequency both from abroad and within. "Just be Sweden" is the "I believe in fairies" solution, where Covid was just the flu and should have been ignored.
In the real world with no lockdown, people start being seriously ill and dying in large numbers, society ceases to function as people choose to "assess their own risk". Chaos. Which is why in any process it is better to have control than no control.
Chaos is better than authoritarianism. Chaos is a good thing. Chaos is how we evolve.
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
You are Jason Statham and I claim my 5 dollars!
Michael Douglas - I think Bart was doing Gordon Gekko there with "chaos" instead of "greed".
After yesterday's discussion on worst Tweeter I'd like to propose Matt Goodwin who now just seems to post polls showing Reform leading and commenting 'WOW!' You'd think hed know all about the risks of relying on polls without question
They're building a block of flats next door, they're currently doing the works to build a basement car park. It's noisy. Is it going to get noisier or will this be the worst it gets?
I seriously doubt that the science base the administration is in the process of destroying is significantly more LGBTQ than the rest of the country. Even if that were the case, is homophobia really a justification ?
Leavitt: "Electricians, plumbers -- we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University. And that's what this administration's position is." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1927534822701826111
Ignoring the less/fewer SNAFU, does she mean graduates who are gay, or does she mean degrees in subjects that are 'gay' ?
N.B. She herself is a graduate in communications...
She means the humanities. It is a curious anomaly that in America, the liberal arts are regarded as left-wing but in Britain as right-wing.
No, she means LGBTQ studies, I don't think humanities are regarded as rightwing in either. Indeed virtually every department in most universities leans left of centre apart from maybe engineering and economics
Write a list of well-known politicians who have championed a liberal arts education. I'll start you off – Michael Gove.
To repeat, in Britain, this is reckoned a right-wing indulgence. In America, left.
Yes, Gove supports English and History taught in a traditional way, I don't remember him promoting LGBT or gender studies?
Even in the US George W Bush studied History and Mitt Romney English as their college majors (Trump unsurprisingly studied economics)
Very little about Trump's actions as President would lead you to imagine he had ever studied economics.
After yesterday's discussion on worst Tweeter I'd like to propose Matt Goodwin who now just seems to post polls showing Reform leading and commenting 'WOW!' You'd think hed know all about the risks of relying on polls without question
Matthew Goodwin sadly was radicalised long ago. He's the classic example of somebody - left or right - that becomes totally obsessed with Twitter.
My mum fell and broke her hip in Marlow last week.
Waited 4 hours for an ambulance BAD
Had a private room in hospital GOOD
Had hip replacement two days later GOOD
Been asked to buy for her own equipment off Amazon to help her up the stairs and to the toilet because she lives in Havering and the accident and operation took place in Buckinghamshire BAD
You or she needs to talk to these people about help. They should send out someone to assess, Then there will be a discussion about how much the Council or NHS will pay.
Home adaptations are the responsibility of the local authority aiui. I think It's called a Disabled Facilities Grant. They cover things like moving around the house.
It's possible there may be edge cases around "elderly or disabled?", but you find out by asking.
For basic equipment that comes in a van eg bath board, high loo seat, toilet support frames, maybe standalone shower seat, walking frame or wheelchair, you get them on loan (not the loo seat - they don't want those back) from the British Red Cross service. They should send someone out to do an assessment.
I'm not sure what they are on about with their "talk to Buckinghamshire".
(There may I suppose be anomalies by area, and Havering is Havering.)
My suggested contact is the Age UK helpline: Age UK Advice Line - 0800 678 1602
They're building a block of flats next door, they're currently doing the works to build a basement car park. It's noisy. Is it going to get noisier or will this be the worst it gets?
Yes, migration is out of control and needs to be checked significantly Yes, universities are starved of cash and thus reliant on Chinese students who then fuel the migrant statistics No, the response isn't net zero migration - or negative as some want
Lets finger what is really at play here - racism. MAGA wants to stop all these funny looking folk coming in, but welcomes the Boer fleeing from their "genocide". Stop the Boats here also moans about all these chinese students suddenly all over Sheffield, but if they were white Americans that would be fine.
I'm pretty liberal on migration but there are good reasons to be more concerned about Universities relying on Chinese nationals (as distinct from ethnically Chinese) than on American ones. The way that some of our major Universities have debased themselves to the Chinese government in order to continue to attract Chinese students is pretty unpleasant. Also some of the campuses in China that they have lent their names too don't exactly operate within their best traditions.
They're building a block of flats next door, they're currently doing the works to build a basement car park. It's noisy. Is it going to get noisier or will this be the worst it gets?
You aren’t going all NIMBY on us, are you?
I'm fully supportive of these being built and won't be going anywhere, I was just more curious.
I think Barty is a handy reminder of why ideologues should be nowhere near power.
"Prime Minister, they are rioting in the streets!" "Good. Chaos is how we evolve"
And you're still pretending to be a liberal! 🤣
Yes, people having the free will to protest in the streets is absolutely a good thing that is 100% part of a free society.
Belarus and Russia will send the military/police in to halt that because they prefer "order" over "chaos". Authoritarian "order" is not superior to chaotic liberty.
So, we should encourage free will in Gaza and oppose the authoritarian rule of Israel?
They're building a block of flats next door, they're currently doing the works to build a basement car park. It's noisy. Is it going to get noisier or will this be the worst it gets?
Karl Popper - “If we wish to remain human, then there is one price we must pay: it is to live in a society that has freedom, and therefore a measure of insecurity.”
John Dewey - The quest for certainty is a quest for relief from the pangs of doubt and the shocks of change. It is not the quest for truth.
John Stewart Mill - A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
Or RochdalePioneers - Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos.
You think Liberals are anarchists?
Liberals created the modern welfare state. Education. Medical Care. Not "sort it out yourselves"
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Perhaps and I certainly agree winter fuel payments to higher rate tax payers are hard to defend. I could support winter fuel payments to basic rate taxpayers though I'm not sure what would mean in terms of money and there's an assumption the Government's own software can differentiate between pensioners on different tax rates and codes.
It costs a lot of money to means test of course, and if you're just excluding a small number it would probably cost more to administer than the savings you're making my not giving it to those people.
Depends what you mean by means test
I think it is safe to assume hmrc have a database I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database contains date of birth I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database has information on how much tax you paid last year
Means testing could there for as simple as an sql script to produce a list of everyone that is a pensioner and paid less than a certain amount of tax. Would take less than a day of one persons time to means test the entire pensioner cohort
You are assuming
1) a clear, well maintained database. 2) data which is easy to write queries against. 3) the ability to write queries 4) the absence of the belief that Something Important must be A Big Project. So the query become a new sub-department, complete with a Richard Rogers designed office.
One day, after the lagershed, I will tell you of a database I encountered. Where all the data was in a single column…
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Interesting that Badenoch has taken a firm line against changing the 2 child cap (only party to do so) and supports extending WFP but not to 'millionaires'
Perhaps and I certainly agree winter fuel payments to higher rate tax payers are hard to defend. I could support winter fuel payments to basic rate taxpayers though I'm not sure what would mean in terms of money and there's an assumption the Government's own software can differentiate between pensioners on different tax rates and codes.
It costs a lot of money to means test of course, and if you're just excluding a small number it would probably cost more to administer than the savings you're making my not giving it to those people.
Depends what you mean by means test
I think it is safe to assume hmrc have a database I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database contains date of birth I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database has information on how much tax you paid last year
Means testing could there for as simple as an sql script to produce a list of everyone that is a pensioner and paid less than a certain amount of tax. Would take less than a day of one persons time to means test the entire pensioner cohort
You are assuming
1) a clear, well maintained database. 2) data which is easy to write queries against. 3) the ability to write queries 4) the absence of the belief that Something Important must be A Big Project. So the query become a new sub-department, complete with a Richard Rogers designed office.
One day, after the lagershed, I will tell you of a database I encountered. Where all the data was in a single column…
Common Reporting Standard. Every securities brokerage, crypto exchange and futures brokerage, in the world, report every sale, dividend, and account balance to the OECD. Tax authorities can purchase the data for $72. Introduced in 2017.
Karl Popper - “If we wish to remain human, then there is one price we must pay: it is to live in a society that has freedom, and therefore a measure of insecurity.”
John Dewey - The quest for certainty is a quest for relief from the pangs of doubt and the shocks of change. It is not the quest for truth.
John Stewart Mill - A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
Or RochdalePioneers - Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos.
These sweeping sayings by the great and good never stand up to scrutiny.
Look at Ray Stevens: "Everything is beautiful ... in its own way"
What? Hardly. Nothing beautiful about being stationary on the M1.
Karl Popper - “If we wish to remain human, then there is one price we must pay: it is to live in a society that has freedom, and therefore a measure of insecurity.”
John Dewey - The quest for certainty is a quest for relief from the pangs of doubt and the shocks of change. It is not the quest for truth.
John Stewart Mill - A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
Or RochdalePioneers - Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos.
You think Liberals are anarchists?
Liberals created the modern welfare state. Education. Medical Care. Not "sort it out yourselves"
There's a difference between liberal and anarchy, though liberals lean more into the anarchy/chaos side of the divide than the authoritarian/order side of it, yes.
There is a difference between liberal welfare and socialist welfare. Between support for those who need it as a safety net, which is liberal, and compelling everyone to do it without a choice, which is illiberal.
A Swedish style voluntary furlough for those who wish to shut down because they think its the right thing for them to do, is a liberal solution over the authoritarian you must shut down because we want order that we had and you advocate.
Comments
So you can probably add Maths, Physics, Chemistry, etc
Hard to know if the last YouGov was little more than post-local election froth at this stage.
Pay in taxes to a safety net and use the NHS - what i pay me taxes for innit?
Pay in taxes to a safety net and later get sick and claim benefits- scroungers innit?
Get child benefit despite having a well paid job - i deserve it, it's the only thing I get from the government
WFA - bloody wealthy pensioners, I'm 35 (hope I'm not cold when I'm old)
After the general there's the specifics on things like disability - 'proper' disabled people are apparently deserving. You know, the ones that fall out of their light blue invalid carriage and claw their way into the supermarket on bloodied stumps to the satisfaction of the self appointed disabled parking inspectors 'put the bat away Gav, he's a proper cripple, bless him'.
At the time, my experience was most people were happy to go into lockdown - they were scared and the stories coming out of hospitals about the impact of the virus did nothing to alleviate that fear. No one wanted to die gasping for breath hooked up to a ventilator.
Mrs Stodge had to go into work for ten days before she was told to work at home and she was terrified of going on the tube and getting infected.
We don't have hypothecated taxation - might be nice if we did.
Greens as a metaphor for what left wing voters and young voters think Labour should be
Discussing MP's casework (again) and reminded of this 1950s Tory broadcast which begins with Bill Deedes basically telling a constituent to fuck off, and then tells the voters more widely to stop moaning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HSXIA3lZNA
https://bsky.app/profile/joxley.jmoxley.co.uk/post/3lq7txzo2yk2h
The reality is that bill payers will end up paying to fix the problems of pretty well all water companies. To whose ultimate benefit is the real question.
Some of the arguments for restricting benefits to the disabled you hear (often framed around the arseholish 'working people are all that count' Labour approach) are not far from suggesting we should only allow ultra expensive NHS treatment on people if its getting them back to being fit to go down the pit. Otherwise, nah, they aren't going to be productive.
My entitlements are the good entitlements. It's all quite depressing.
He can never outdo Farage
Full fat left wing policies would bring many such voters on board, mid-term, but lose votes from more moderate Labour voters.
It would have killed the story while it was still small, and not led to the boring technical point that unrepentant flat-out lying at the Despatch Box is a sacking offence.
But Boris was and is incapable of doing that.
(My answer is that he'd have survived Partygate but that something else would have come along at some point- character, destiny and all that.)
Partially joking! But i think the Greens are actually a hard 5 to 7% now with upside to double figures. They got 7% when there was a more popular Labour and a Tory government to remove and many no longer see Labour as on the side of the angels anyway
Attorney General should have been his role
We could have approached things differently. Japan never had a national lockdown, for example. But they did much better at keeping infection rates low and intervening very early on with outbreaks. A national lockdown is a measure of failure, that you haven’t controlled the infection rate better, but once you get to a certain point, it’s one of the few tools left.
Proposals by some here to literally let people die in the streets are unconscionable.
We saw the same thing when Reform passed Labour. Initially woah, then a bit of correction, then the trend continues and becomes clearer. We will see how this one plays out...
The general picture may change, yes, I didn't say it was eternal
They should tweak the thresholds but not u turn entirely. They won’t receive any political capital for doing so.
We simply must stop favouring the elderly.
With the historic propensity for a bit of Labour overstatement and a bit of Tory understatement in polling and looking at today's MiC and YG and the Merlin red wall poll, is it in fact Labour that are closer to an existential result?
Squeeze 'em til they protest.
(They were asking here for an increase to £70 per week in today's money. Currently £230 per week.)
Even in the US George W Bush studied History and Mitt Romney English as their college majors (Trump unsurprisingly studied economics)
Pish in the South though!
https://careadvice.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/adult-social-care-services/contact-adult-social-care/
You are the one pretending that Max said that everyone should go about their normal routines, then tilting against a windmill of your own creation.
Authoritarianism means that we are all compelled to act like the lowest common denominator. That it doesn't matter if we want to work, or not. That it doesn't matter if we're sick, or not. That it doesn't matter if we want to go about our normal lives, or not.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we're sick, then stay at home - for a day or two, or a week or two, until we recover. Not five months.
Chaos is far superior. It means we get to choose. If we want to isolate, then we can - for as long as we want to. If we don't, then don't.
Chaos is part of free will. Governments trying to abolish it are authoritarian monstrosities that should be opposed.
A so-called "liberal" democrat ought to understand this.
Happily you aren't in charge of anything.
"Boss, this machine is broken and its going to ruin the production run if we leave it running"
"Leave it on. Chaos is a good thing"
"But when it lets go properly it will damage itself so completely that we'll need to replace it at great cost with no production in that time"
"Chaos is far superior"
etc
Or like Sweden did.
They had it being optional to shutdown not mandatory. For those who took the option, the furlough scheme was available. For those who did not, it was not. But it was done based on free will, not authoritarianism, which is far superior.
That way those who are vulnerable or have reasons to desire to isolate (or whose firms have lost their customers) can furlough while those who wish to be open can choose not to, and its done based on free choice, not the lowest common denominator.
I think it is safe to assume hmrc have a database
I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database contains date of birth
I think it is safe to assume the hmrc database has information on how much tax you paid last year
Means testing could there for as simple as an sql script to produce a list of everyone that is a pensioner and paid less than a certain amount of tax. Would take less than a day of one persons time to means test the entire pensioner cohort
Indeed, adapting to understand that "this is broken, lets stop what we're doing and fix it" is closer to the chaos side of the ledger than "lets continue with what we're doing regardless because this is what I've been told to do, disregarding the fact the machine is broken".
"Prime Minister, they are rioting in the streets!"
"Good. Chaos is how we evolve"
Chaotic liberty > authoritarianism, absolutely. Chaos is part of people having free will.
Yes, people having the free will to protest in the streets is absolutely a good thing that is 100% part of a free society.
Belarus and Russia will send the military/police in to halt that because they prefer "order" over "chaos". Authoritarian "order" is not superior to chaotic liberty.
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1927539488735052255
43% of Reform voters would vote Tory if only the Conservatives and LDs could win their constituency
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51713-is-tactical-voting-more-of-a-threat-or-opportunity-for-reform-uk
The White House just paused ALL visa interviews for foreign students.
A disaster for longterm US competitiveness in emerging techs.
Five months in, and the damage is adding up. A detailed account of the disruptions to US science, by month. 🧵
https://x.com/colemcfaul/status/1927463294115442784
Yes, migration is out of control and needs to be checked significantly
Yes, universities are starved of cash and thus reliant on Chinese students who then fuel the migrant statistics
No, the response isn't net zero migration - or negative as some want
Lets finger what is really at play here - racism. MAGA wants to stop all these funny looking folk coming in, but welcomes the Boer fleeing from their "genocide". Stop the Boats here also moans about all these chinese students suddenly all over Sheffield, but if they were white Americans that would be fine.
Locally, for example, it might make NW Norfolk, Broadland, Mid Norfolk more likely to be Tory holds vs Reform in tight contests (but will Labour conclude they cannot win ftom second?) but SW Norfolk and South Norfolk Labour will think they can win as they hold them - they have no chance of a hold in either of course.
SW Norfolk is going to be fascinating. The Bagge 12% will be crucial. I actually think without poison Liz it leans Tory again
1) a clear, well maintained database.
2) data which is easy to write queries against.
3) the ability to write queries
4) the absence of the belief that Something Important must be A Big Project. So the query become a new sub-department, complete with a Richard Rogers designed office.
One day, after the lagershed, I will tell you of a database I encountered. Where all the data was in a single column…
Karl Popper - “If we wish to remain human, then there is one price we must pay: it is to live in a society that has freedom, and therefore a measure of insecurity.”
John Dewey - The quest for certainty is a quest for relief from the pangs of doubt and the shocks of change. It is not the quest for truth.
John Stewart Mill - A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
Or RochdalePioneers - Instead of the authorities managing the situation we have panicked people managing it themselves. Chaos.
You'd think hed know all about the risks of relying on polls without question
https://x.com/MrHarryCole/status/1927676293073539156?s=19
They're building a block of flats next door, they're currently doing the works to build a basement car park. It's noisy. Is it going to get noisier or will this be the worst it gets?
Who can get one (this includes "injury"): https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/resources/disabled-facilities-grants#Who
what it can cover: https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/resources/disabled-facilities-grants#What
It's possible there may be edge cases around "elderly or disabled?", but you find out by asking.
For basic equipment that comes in a van eg bath board, high loo seat, toilet support frames, maybe standalone shower seat, walking frame or wheelchair, you get them on loan (not the loo seat - they don't want those back) from the British Red Cross service. They should send someone out to do an assessment.
I'm not sure what they are on about with their "talk to Buckinghamshire".
(There may I suppose be anomalies by area, and Havering is Havering.)
My suggested contact is the Age UK helpline:
Age UK Advice Line - 0800 678 1602
Liberals created the modern welfare state. Education. Medical Care. Not "sort it out yourselves"
The 73-year-old claims officers pulled him out of march for placard which was a ‘racially aggravated breach of the peace’"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/26/veteran-gay-rights-campaigner-peter-tatchell-arrested-hamas/
https://x.com/igorsushko/status/1927500878686060837
Look at Ray Stevens: "Everything is beautiful ... in its own way"
What? Hardly. Nothing beautiful about being stationary on the M1.
There is a difference between liberal welfare and socialist welfare. Between support for those who need it as a safety net, which is liberal, and compelling everyone to do it without a choice, which is illiberal.
A Swedish style voluntary furlough for those who wish to shut down because they think its the right thing for them to do, is a liberal solution over the authoritarian you must shut down because we want order that we had and you advocate.