Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
Another big rise in daily deaths - the rate of increase in new cases still slowing and the ICU figure is very worrying.
Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
To put that in context, in 2018 there were 474,523 deaths in Spain (This in itself was a dramatic spike from five years previously, probably due to the increasing age of the Spanish population). That’s about 1300 a day.
So this is on the face of it causing the number of deaths to increase by somewhere over 60%.
Of course, some of those people would have died this year due to other causes, but however you look at it that’s a dramatic uplift.
Sky News suggesting big problems brewing in Italy after 15 days of lockdown.
Given the numbers there you would need to be pretty stupid to be wanting to go out.
Three weeks - no money and no food in parts of the south are having their effect apparently, according to the Sky report.
3 weeks with little or no food would do it. Pretty crap in UK if you cannot get out to shops/get someone to shop for you. They should have made supermarkets prioritise people who can not get out and don't have ways to get food.
We are fortunate in that our neighbours..... he a Scot...... offer to shop for us. As does one of the grandchildren (others too far away/cannot drive) and our son-in-law. And the lady across the road. And two local off-licences will deliver, although there appears to be a bit of a wait with one.
OKC , good to see the off-licences looking after customers, a refreshment will be welcome if you are permanently in the house, especially if weather keeps improving and you can sit in the garden.
I don't know about improvement, my friend, we had a snow shower this morning.
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Britain must remain in full lockdown until June if it is to avoid the worst effects of the coronavirus, the government’s leading epidemiology adviser warned last night.
As the virus claimed its 1,000th life in the UK — a doubling of the death toll in just three days — Professor Neil Ferguson said in an interview that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months.
Boris Johnson said yesterday that the pandemic crisis would “get worse before it gets better”.
Senior figures in government have been more optimistic, suggesting the restrictions could be eased sooner than June, with the peak of the crisis predicted to come in the week of April 12 with as few as 5,700 deaths.
But Ferguson said: “We’re going to have to keep these measures [the full lockdown] in place, in my view, for a significant period of time — probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic.”
He said that when the lockdown was finally lifted, people would probably still be asked to enforce some forms of social distancing for months more. That could mean schools and universities not reopening until the autumn, and people told to continue working from home rather than return to their offices.
I am not disputing the scientific evidence that suggests we should do this til June (or later!) but I think it is going to be a huge ask to suggest that people are going to be able to keep this up for 12 weeks.
The economy is going to be completely and utterly f****d by that point. Most businesses will have to have closed or planned significant redundancies. Meanwhile people have to make mortgage payments, pay bills and rent (as I understand it payments are only deferred at the moment not cancelled entirely) and many will be faced with the continued prospect of living alone and their mental health declining precipitously.
What happens then? People start to slowly break the rules little by little until they become imposed even more strictly with the army on the streets? It is scary to think what will happen to this country.
There are no easy answers. I think if we stand any chance of preventing mass unemployment and a general depression in this country we need these antibody tests and for there to be a strategy to restart the economy.
Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
Another big rise in daily deaths - the rate of increase in new cases still slowing and the ICU figure is very worrying.
The number of deaths per day, whilst high, is at least stablising though. Also looks like number of new cases has stabilised - not sure one can say it is declining yet but this is evidence the lockdown is working. Still going to be very tough on the ICUs though...
The weather is not helping, with flood warnings down the North Sea Coast.
Opposite for me, brilliant sunshine in Ayrshire and no problem with lockdown whatsoever. Tidied up garden yesterday , planted my M&S seed packages up, a few beers etc. All very pleasant indeed amid the doom and gloom.
What about your second home in england?
Both my houses are in Scotland, in the same town even.
I see you ignore the actual numbers, the fact that unionists said trial would kill the SNP and fact that Salmond is NOT guilty on all charges. We will see when the perjury cases come up and the names are published, the conspirators cannot hide forever and unionist attempts to try and continue the charade are doomed.
Salmond's defence was that he was a real nasty bastard who was not safe round women, but his conduct fell just short of criminal.
Nice guy.
Is that a fantasy story you are peddling Mark, I think he said he was human and may have made a few errors, hardly the mince you pretend. It was a bad attempt at a stitch up as was easily proven, prosecution did not question any of the defence witnesses as they did not have a leg to stand on. Their pals in unionist media trying valiantly to keep pushing it to no avail.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
That's a lot of words. But not knowing anything about the case, I do know he was found not guilty. That's all that matters.
I see you ignore the actual numbers, the fact that unionists said trial would kill the SNP and fact that Salmond is NOT guilty on all charges. We will see when the perjury cases come up and the names are published, the conspirators cannot hide forever and unionist attempts to try and continue the charade are doomed.
Salmond's defence was that he was a real nasty bastard who was not safe round women, but his conduct fell just short of criminal.
Nice guy.
Is that a fantasy story you are peddling Mark, I think he said he was human and may have made a few errors, hardly the mince you pretend. It was a bad attempt at a stitch up as was easily proven, prosecution did not question any of the defence witnesses as they did not have a leg to stand on. Their pals in unionist media trying valiantly to keep pushing it to no avail.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
That's a lot of words. But not knowing anything about the case, I do know he was found not guilty. That's all that matters.
No. What also matters is that complainants in sexual assault trials are not prosecuted for perjury - as Malc suggests.
1. The US is a country in epic decline. 2. China is a country that cannot be trusted. 3. Ditto Russia 4. The EU talks solidarity but does not practise it. There is some major shit still ahead of us all.
Thats enough to send to send me off to church for the first time, to seek comfort and to be surrounded by my fellow man and woman. Oh.
Quite a time of broadening of innovation, though all of this has been possible for 10-15 years now.
I really hope schools finally ditch their antediluvian opposition to mobile phones and wake up to the reality that they are a vital part of all our lives and therefore should be a vital part of education.
Shout at me as much as you like but it's true.
There might be space for a fundamental reimagining of education, as Gove promised but did not deliver; both its aims and delivery. Is it time to ditch geography? Is English Literature just a posh version of Media Studies? On delivery, it looks like the early hopes for "flipping the classroom" (where children would watch video lectures at home then solve problems at school) were not fulfilled.
Teachers of pb -- is Gavin Williamson directing how and what to teach during lockdown or is it every school for itself?
I see you ignore the actual numbers, the fact that unionists said trial would kill the SNP and fact that Salmond is NOT guilty on all charges. We will see when the perjury cases come up and the names are published, the conspirators cannot hide forever and unionist attempts to try and continue the charade are doomed.
Salmond's defence was that he was a real nasty bastard who was not safe round women, but his conduct fell just short of criminal.
Nice guy.
Is that a fantasy story you are peddling Mark, I think he said he was human and may have made a few errors, hardly the mince you pretend. It was a bad attempt at a stitch up as was easily proven, prosecution did not question any of the defence witnesses as they did not have a leg to stand on. Their pals in unionist media trying valiantly to keep pushing it to no avail.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
That's a lot of words. But not knowing anything about the case, I do know he was found not guilty. That's all that matters.
No. What also matters is that complainants in sexual assault trials are not prosecuted for perjury - as Malc suggests.
Is this a rewriting of the law or is it the case already?
These are the charts the government should send to every household.
Might it not be prudent to wait at least a couple of weeks to see how the lockdown is working before trying to extrapolate the data as confidently as that?
People struggle with statistics and probabilities enough anyway, when the experts message keeps changing it damages public confidence further.
Id use the government messaging on the longer term future sparingly and when it needs to done, for now the vast majority of people buy into the present and that is what matters. Explaining its going to get worse for the next couple of weeks despite the lockdown is rightly the key message imo.
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
On Topic SKS wins the contest easily. RLB is not leader material. I voted Nandy BTW
He has been handed the golden ticket with the virus.
I hope he brings Labour success.
I don't think he will personally.
He will not inspire.
A boring Londoncentric ultra Remainer will be a kick in the teeth to WWC.
Of course a 2024 defeat will be Corbyns fault!!
Of course, in 1992 it seemed as if Labour would never be in power again, and 5 short years later was a different story.
At the moment the Tories are doing well by throwing raw meat on nationalism to the pack, while spaffing money on everything possible. That approach contains the seeds of it's own downfall, as the external threats are now universal, in disease and climate change, rather than from foreign powers, and sooner or later those bills will need to be paid.
An opposition cannot out Union Jack the Tories, or plausibly spend more while still attracting aspirational voters. It needs to choose its approach rather more astutely.
Britain must remain in full lockdown until June if it is to avoid the worst effects of the coronavirus, the government’s leading epidemiology adviser warned last night.
As the virus claimed its 1,000th life in the UK — a doubling of the death toll in just three days — Professor Neil Ferguson said in an interview that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months.
Boris Johnson said yesterday that the pandemic crisis would “get worse before it gets better”.
Senior figures in government have been more optimistic, suggesting the restrictions could be eased sooner than June, with the peak of the crisis predicted to come in the week of April 12 with as few as 5,700 deaths.
But Ferguson said: “We’re going to have to keep these measures [the full lockdown] in place, in my view, for a significant period of time — probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic.”
He said that when the lockdown was finally lifted, people would probably still be asked to enforce some forms of social distancing for months more. That could mean schools and universities not reopening until the autumn, and people told to continue working from home rather than return to their offices.
The number of deaths per day, whilst high, is at least stablising though. Also looks like number of new cases has stabilised - not sure one can say it is declining yet but this is evidence the lockdown is working. Still going to be very tough on the ICUs though...
A different way of considering the peak would be to view it as the point in time at which more than half of those who will die of the virus during this epidemic have already been infected, whether they know it or not. And therefore that LESS than half of the ultimate death toll are still to be infected. It is possible that for the UK we are at this point now or even past it. I find this a comforting thought, if so.
Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
To put that in context, in 2018 there were 474,523 deaths in Spain (This in itself was a dramatic spike from five years previously, probably due to the increasing age of the Spanish population). That’s about 1300 a day.
So this is on the face of it causing the number of deaths to increase by somewhere over 60%.
Of course, some of those people would have died this year due to other causes, but however you look at it that’s a dramatic uplift.
And that’s *with* lockdown.
Well it’s over 60% if there are still 1300 other daily deaths in Spain at the moment. Are there? I don’t know, I’m not saying you’re wrong
Britain must remain in full lockdown until June if it is to avoid the worst effects of the coronavirus, the government’s leading epidemiology adviser warned last night.
As the virus claimed its 1,000th life in the UK — a doubling of the death toll in just three days — Professor Neil Ferguson said in an interview that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months.
Boris Johnson said yesterday that the pandemic crisis would “get worse before it gets better”.
Senior figures in government have been more optimistic, suggesting the restrictions could be eased sooner than June, with the peak of the crisis predicted to come in the week of April 12 with as few as 5,700 deaths.
But Ferguson said: “We’re going to have to keep these measures [the full lockdown] in place, in my view, for a significant period of time — probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic.”
He said that when the lockdown was finally lifted, people would probably still be asked to enforce some forms of social distancing for months more. That could mean schools and universities not reopening until the autumn, and people told to continue working from home rather than return to their offices.
We need more work on how the virus is actually spread. Where is the peak from the Cheltenham Festival? Could the snooker have gone ahead behind closed doors? Why are Jews and Muslims disproportionately hit? What is the point of a takeaway enforcing social distancing if it provides a box of wooden forks for customers to rummage in? Should we buy wrapped rather than loose fruit and veg?
In other words, we need a more intelligent, better tuned lockdown.
The Japanese government tried to do this by coming up with a bunch of recommendations for situations that are especially contagious, namely: 1) A closed area 2) With poor ventiation 3) Where people are talking or shouting
Unfortunately when they started saying this (at the same time as announcing that they're reopen schools) everyone went, "OK cool, we'll watch out for that combination and otherwise go back to normal" and a week later the infection rate went from flat to mad growth.
* Although most of the growth is Tokyo and surroundings, which had been mysteriously mostly spared until then, so there's a plausible conspiracy theory that they were avoiding testing until it was clear the Olympics wouldn't happen.
Just an aside on your point 3, it is possible that our social distancing is undermined by shouted conversations increasing the amount of saliva in the air.
I'm not the one presenting an MOE change or no change as "further increased".
you were cheering yesterday when some idiot had the tories 3% behind on a 99 person subsample , not even from a real poll
And I expressed surprise that Nicola had not got more of a boost from her excellent handling of the Virus. I know a lot of people who are very far from Nationalists who have been impressed.
Sure, but I assumed most people already regarded her as a competent figure so less of a boost?
I mean, the competence of the SNP leadership has been part of the problem for unionists generally.
The incompetence of their own leaderships is a greater part of the problem.
SKS needs to be looking for Leonard's resignation, in addition to Formby and Murphy's to be honest. For one last time, and it's for own good, he needs to treat SLAB as a branch office, and send Leonard packing. Of course, SLAB managing to get a leader who looks First Minister material is easier said than done... but ejecting a proven absolute loser would be a start.
I see you ignore the actual numbers, the fact that unionists said trial would kill the SNP and fact that Salmond is NOT guilty on all charges. We will see when the perjury cases come up and the names are published, the conspirators cannot hide forever and unionist attempts to try and continue the charade are doomed.
Salmond's defence was that he was a real nasty bastard who was not safe round women, but his conduct fell just short of criminal.
Nice guy.
Is that a fantasy story you are peddling Mark, I think he said he was human and may have made a few errors, hardly the mince you pretend. It was a bad attempt at a stitch up as was easily proven, prosecution did not question any of the defence witnesses as they did not have a leg to stand on. Their pals in unionist media trying valiantly to keep pushing it to no avail.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
That's a lot of words. But not knowing anything about the case, I do know he was found not guilty. That's all that matters.
No. What also matters is that complainants in sexual assault trials are not prosecuted for perjury - as Malc suggests.
Is this a rewriting of the law or is it the case already?
It’s a matter of policy, not law, complainants can be so prosecuted, but should not be, unless there are some pretty extraordinary circumstances a la Carl Beech. The effect on complainants coming forward would be disastrous. Here, Salmond’s own counsel summed up by saying the standard of proof had not been reached, not that the women were lying. So clearly this is not even close to being such extraordinary circumstances as happened in Operation Midland - where prosecutions were not even brought.
These are the charts the government should send to every household.
Might it not be prudent to wait at least a couple of weeks to see how the lockdown is working before trying to extrapolate the data as confidently as that?
People struggle with statistics and probabilities enough anyway, when the experts message keeps changing it damages public confidence further.
Id use the government messaging on the longer term future sparingly and when it needs to done, for now the vast majority of people buy into the present and that is what matters. Explaining its going to get worse for the next couple of weeks despite the lockdown is rightly the key message imo.
I also think that social distancing in October is a nice idea in theory, but probably impractical. At the point that we’re told we can go outside I suspect most people will be giddy with freedom and not particularly bothered about the fact that the government says we still need to not visit our relatives.
Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
To put that in context, in 2018 there were 474,523 deaths in Spain (This in itself was a dramatic spike from five years previously, probably due to the increasing age of the Spanish population). That’s about 1300 a day.
So this is on the face of it causing the number of deaths to increase by somewhere over 60%.
Of course, some of those people would have died this year due to other causes, but however you look at it that’s a dramatic uplift.
And that’s *with* lockdown.
Lockdown now kicking in reducing daily new cases, deaths a lagging indicator which are also impacted by the system breaking down, especially in Madrid and Barcelona. Waiting for the community by community figures to se what is happening but local hospital still making appeals for more respirators. Felix, do you know if the are moving patients round from one area to another to load balance?
Slightly spooky, and Mary must have had a great skincare regime. Also confirmation that Holbein was the only portraitist working in the British isles in the 16thC.
I see you ignore the actual numbers, the fact that unionists said trial would kill the SNP and fact that Salmond is NOT guilty on all charges. We will see when the perjury cases come up and the names are published, the conspirators cannot hide forever and unionist attempts to try and continue the charade are doomed.
Salmond's defence was that he was a real nasty bastard who was not safe round women, but his conduct fell just short of criminal.
Nice guy.
Is that a fantasy story you are peddling Mark, I think he said he was human and may have made a few errors, hardly the mince you pretend. It was a bad attempt at a stitch up as was easily proven, prosecution did not question any of the defence witnesses as they did not have a leg to stand on. Their pals in unionist media trying valiantly to keep pushing it to no avail.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
To put that in context, in 2018 there were 474,523 deaths in Spain (This in itself was a dramatic spike from five years previously, probably due to the increasing age of the Spanish population). That’s about 1300 a day.
So this is on the face of it causing the number of deaths to increase by somewhere over 60%.
Of course, some of those people would have died this year due to other causes, but however you look at it that’s a dramatic uplift.
And that’s *with* lockdown.
Well it’s over 60% if there are still 1300 other daily deaths in Spain at the moment. Are there? I don’t know, I’m not saying you’re wrong
That is a good point, to which the honest answer is, I hadn’t checked, and now I do check, I can’t find the relevant figures. I suspect that they will only be collated for release next year.
Britain must remain in full lockdown until June if it is to avoid the worst effects of the coronavirus, the government’s leading epidemiology adviser warned last night.
As the virus claimed its 1,000th life in the UK — a doubling of the death toll in just three days — Professor Neil Ferguson said in an interview that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months.
Boris Johnson said yesterday that the pandemic crisis would “get worse before it gets better”.
Senior figures in government have been more optimistic, suggesting the restrictions could be eased sooner than June, with the peak of the crisis predicted to come in the week of April 12 with as few as 5,700 deaths.
But Ferguson said: “We’re going to have to keep these measures [the full lockdown] in place, in my view, for a significant period of time — probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic.”
He said that when the lockdown was finally lifted, people would probably still be asked to enforce some forms of social distancing for months more. That could mean schools and universities not reopening until the autumn, and people told to continue working from home rather than return to their offices.
I am not disputing the scientific evidence that suggests we should do this til June (or later!) but I think it is going to be a huge ask to suggest that people are going to be able to keep this up for 12 weeks.
The economy is going to be completely and utterly f****d by that point. Most businesses will have to have closed or planned significant redundancies. Meanwhile people have to make mortgage payments, pay bills and rent (as I understand it payments are only deferred at the moment not cancelled entirely) and many will be faced with the continued prospect of living alone and their mental health declining precipitously.
What happens then? People start to slowly break the rules little by little until they become imposed even more strictly with the army on the streets? It is scary to think what will happen to this country.
There are no easy answers. I think if we stand any chance of preventing mass unemployment and a general depression in this country we need these antibody tests and for there to be a strategy to restart the economy.
Don’t forget the weather too. If we get a seriously hot spell of 25-30 degrees - entirely possible in May/June - then it will be dangerous to expect people to stay at home - especially the elderly. Not everyone has a garden.
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
I found myself driven to ‘liking’ a post by Richard Tyndall where he said Hitchens should be allowed to say such things, but he should be called out on them.
However, I cannot agree his views are ‘infantile.’ Many infants have much more sense than Peter Hitchens.
I've been following the discussions here online but have had trouble logging on and have changed my user name and password; if you're reading this it's worked!
The question of when the lockdown is released needs to be accompanied by a clear view of how it is released. If we suddenly go from lockdown to national celebrations, mass parties, etc then a serious second wave is almost guaranteed. However a long-term 'social distancing' policy risks grinding society into something unrecognisable from the Britain of the past - and not for the better.
The number of deaths per day, whilst high, is at least stablising though. Also looks like number of new cases has stabilised - not sure one can say it is declining yet but this is evidence the lockdown is working. Still going to be very tough on the ICUs though...
A different way of considering the peak would be to view it as the point in time at which more than half of those who will die during this epidemic have already been infected, whether they know it or not. And therefore that LESS than half of the ultimate death toll are still to be infected. It is possible that for the UK we are at this point now or even past it. I find this a comforting thought, if so.
That's a very good way of thinking about it. The maximum number of new infections should have happened on the last day before lockdown, with declining numbers thereafter. Hence, every day moving forward, we should have fewer new infections due to the social distancing. In particular, by today the number of new infections should really be a lot lower than two weeks ago.
Additionally, since the country has been performing some degree of social distancing for 1-2 weeks (although extreme measures only 1 week ago) we should expect the number of deaths per day to rise over the next week but, if we are lucky, at not too high a rate (not so confident about this - it depends a lot on how seriously people have been distancing / washing hands prior to the lockdown).
Once we hit two weeks after the more extreme social distancing measures kicked in (towards the end of this week perhaps?), the numbers of deaths should stabilise and plateau for a while.
Britain must remain in full lockdown until June if it is to avoid the worst effects of the coronavirus, the government’s leading epidemiology adviser warned last night.
As the virus claimed its 1,000th life in the UK — a doubling of the death toll in just three days — Professor Neil Ferguson said in an interview that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months.
Boris Johnson said yesterday that the pandemic crisis would “get worse before it gets better”.
Senior figures in government have been more optimistic, suggesting the restrictions could be eased sooner than June, with the peak of the crisis predicted to come in the week of April 12 with as few as 5,700 deaths.
But Ferguson said: “We’re going to have to keep these measures [the full lockdown] in place, in my view, for a significant period of time — probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic.”
He said that when the lockdown was finally lifted, people would probably still be asked to enforce some forms of social distancing for months more. That could mean schools and universities not reopening until the autumn, and people told to continue working from home rather than return to their offices.
I am not disputing the scientific evidence that suggests we should do this til June (or later!) but I think it is going to be a huge ask to suggest that people are going to be able to keep this up for 12 weeks.
The economy is going to be completely and utterly f****d by that point. Most businesses will have to have closed or planned significant redundancies. Meanwhile people have to make mortgage payments, pay bills and rent (as I understand it payments are only deferred at the moment not cancelled entirely) and many will be faced with the continued prospect of living alone and their mental health declining precipitously.
What happens then? People start to slowly break the rules little by little until they become imposed even more strictly with the army on the streets? It is scary to think what will happen to this country.
There are no easy answers. I think if we stand any chance of preventing mass unemployment and a general depression in this country we need these antibody tests and for there to be a strategy to restart the economy.
Don’t forget the weather too. If we get a seriously hot spell of 25-30 degrees - entirely possible in May/June - then it will be dangerous to expect people to stay at home - especially the elderly. Not everyone has a garden.
Indeed, the 2003 heatwave killed 15,000 in France and that was without any restrictions. Rioting and the associated problems is also a strong possibility in a hot summer lockdown.
Labour is now the party of urban and university town Britain, the Tories the party of rural, small town and market town Britain. That is unlikely to change, the swing areas are suburban Britain and to a lesser extent ex industrial and mining and seaside towns.
I see you ignore the actual numbers, the fact that unionists said trial would kill the SNP and fact that Salmond is NOT guilty on all charges. We will see when the perjury cases come up and the names are published, the conspirators cannot hide forever and unionist attempts to try and continue the charade are doomed.
Salmond's defence was that he was a real nasty bastard who was not safe round women, but his conduct fell just short of criminal.
Nice guy.
Is that a fantasy story you are peddling Mark, I think he said he was human and may have made a few errors, hardly the mince you pretend. It was a bad attempt at a stitch up as was easily proven, prosecution did not question any of the defence witnesses as they did not have a leg to stand on. Their pals in unionist media trying valiantly to keep pushing it to no avail.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
I think the quickest way to destroy the SNP is to personalise the trial result as a conspiracy against Salmond. It looks like that is going to happen. Egos and personality cult will destroy that chimera of independence.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Britain must remain in full lockdown until June if it is to avoid the worst effects of the coronavirus, the government’s leading epidemiology adviser warned last night.
As the virus claimed its 1,000th life in the UK — a doubling of the death toll in just three days — Professor Neil Ferguson said in an interview that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months.
Boris Johnson said yesterday that the pandemic crisis would “get worse before it gets better”.
Senior figures in government have been more optimistic, suggesting the restrictions could be eased sooner than June, with the peak of the crisis predicted to come in the week of April 12 with as few as 5,700 deaths.
But Ferguson said: “We’re going to have to keep these measures [the full lockdown] in place, in my view, for a significant period of time — probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic.”
He said that when the lockdown was finally lifted, people would probably still be asked to enforce some forms of social distancing for months more. That could mean schools and universities not reopening until the autumn, and people told to continue working from home rather than return to their offices.
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
Most formal links between the UK and Australia had been ended by the 1931 Statute of Westminster anyway
The number of deaths per day, whilst high, is at least stablising though. Also looks like number of new cases has stabilised - not sure one can say it is declining yet but this is evidence the lockdown is working. Still going to be very tough on the ICUs though...
A different way of considering the peak would be to view it as the point in time at which more than half of those who will die during this epidemic have already been infected, whether they know it or not. And therefore that LESS than half of the ultimate death toll are still to be infected. It is possible that for the UK we are at this point now or even past it. I find this a comforting thought, if so.
That's a very good way of thinking about it. The maximum number of new infections should have happened on the last day before lockdown, with declining numbers thereafter. Hence, every day moving forward, we should have fewer new infections due to the social distancing. In particular, by today the number of new infections should really be a lot lower than two weeks ago.
Additionally, since the country has been performing some degree of social distancing for 1-2 weeks (although extreme measures only 1 week ago) we should expect the number of deaths per day to rise over the next week but, if we are lucky, at not too high a rate (not so confident about this - it depends a lot on how seriously people have been distancing / washing hands prior to the lockdown).
Once we hit two weeks after the more extreme social distancing measures kicked in (towards the end of this week perhaps?), the numbers of deaths should stabilise and plateau for a while.
I can see we are (hopefully) close to the peak in terms of weekly or daily numbers, but it feels very unlikely we are near the halfway point? Arent we expecting the numbers post the peak to remain significant for many weeks post the high point? Unless you are counting a possible autumn/winter outbreak as a separate epidemic?
I see you ignore the actual numbers, the fact that unionists said trial would kill the SNP and fact that Salmond is NOT guilty on all charges. We will see when the perjury cases come up and the names are published, the conspirators cannot hide forever and unionist attempts to try and continue the charade are doomed.
Salmond's defence was that he was a real nasty bastard who was not safe round women, but his conduct fell just short of criminal.
Nice guy.
Is that a fantasy story you are peddling Mark, I think he said he was human and may have made a few errors, hardly the mince you pretend. It was a bad attempt at a stitch up as was easily proven, prosecution did not question any of the defence witnesses as they did not have a leg to stand on. Their pals in unionist media trying valiantly to keep pushing it to no avail.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
That's a lot of words. But not knowing anything about the case, I do know he was found not guilty. That's all that matters.
No. What also matters is that complainants in sexual assault trials are not prosecuted for perjury - as Malc suggests.
Is this a rewriting of the law or is it the case already?
It’s a matter of policy, not law, complainants can be so prosecuted, but should not be, unless there are some pretty extraordinary circumstances a la Carl Beech. The effect on complainants coming forward would be disastrous. Here, Salmond’s own counsel summed up by saying the standard of proof had not been reached, not that the women were lying. So clearly this is not even close to being such extraordinary circumstances as happened in Operation Midland - where prosecutions were not even brought.
Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
To put that in context, in 2018 there were 474,523 deaths in Spain (This in itself was a dramatic spike from five years previously, probably due to the increasing age of the Spanish population). That’s about 1300 a day.
So this is on the face of it causing the number of deaths to increase by somewhere over 60%.
Of course, some of those people would have died this year due to other causes, but however you look at it that’s a dramatic uplift.
And that’s *with* lockdown.
There was interesting report (can't lay my hands on it just now) from a community in Italy. That community saw a big increase in expected deaths compared with previous years. The main component of that increase was heart attacks, strokes and so on, and not COVID19. The point being that the coronavirus is leeching resource away from prevention and cure of normal diseases. Which is not as simple as saying the resource allocation is wrong. COVID19 is very demanding of resources.
Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
To put that in context, in 2018 there were 474,523 deaths in Spain (This in itself was a dramatic spike from five years previously, probably due to the increasing age of the Spanish population). That’s about 1300 a day.
So this is on the face of it causing the number of deaths to increase by somewhere over 60%.
Of course, some of those people would have died this year due to other causes, but however you look at it that’s a dramatic uplift.
And that’s *with* lockdown.
Well it’s over 60% if there are still 1300 other daily deaths in Spain at the moment. Are there? I don’t know, I’m not saying you’re wrong
That is a good point, to which the honest answer is, I hadn’t checked, and now I do check, I can’t find the relevant figures. I suspect that they will only be collated for release next year.
@AndreaParma_82 has posted figures from Bergamo, suggesting that background mortality is significantly raised. This would suggest that these are not just slightly earlier deaths, but rather that extra deaths are happening on top of COVID19.
Interesting data point but it's a sample of a little over 1000 people selected proportionally by state, and swing counties must be a pretty teensy proportion of the total, I bet there's a monster margin of error on those counties.
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
Australia wasn't the Empire - with huge respect to that amazing and inspiring country. India was.
Britain must remain in full lockdown until June if it is to avoid the worst effects of the coronavirus, the government’s leading epidemiology adviser warned last night.
As the virus claimed its 1,000th life in the UK — a doubling of the death toll in just three days — Professor Neil Ferguson said in an interview that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months.
Boris Johnson said yesterday that the pandemic crisis would “get worse before it gets better”.
Senior figures in government have been more optimistic, suggesting the restrictions could be eased sooner than June, with the peak of the crisis predicted to come in the week of April 12 with as few as 5,700 deaths.
But Ferguson said: “We’re going to have to keep these measures [the full lockdown] in place, in my view, for a significant period of time — probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic.”
He said that when the lockdown was finally lifted, people would probably still be asked to enforce some forms of social distancing for months more. That could mean schools and universities not reopening until the autumn, and people told to continue working from home rather than return to their offices.
So May is possible, but unlikely. Seems reasonable as an optimistic hope in that case, whilst recognising it could be a bit later.
And if Sweden shows this is all bollocks?
We change our minds. But the probability is that Sweden is wrong, and will blink before it is beyond doubt that they are wrong, so people will continue to argue about whether they were wrong.
Sky News suggesting big problems brewing in Italy after 15 days of lockdown.
Given the numbers there you would need to be pretty stupid to be wanting to go out.
Three weeks - no money and no food in parts of the south are having their effect apparently, according to the Sky report.
3 weeks with little or no food would do it. Pretty crap in UK if you cannot get out to shops/get someone to shop for you. They should have made supermarkets prioritise people who can not get out and don't have ways to get food.
We are fortunate in that our neighbours..... he a Scot...... offer to shop for us. As does one of the grandchildren (others too far away/cannot drive) and our son-in-law. And the lady across the road. And two local off-licences will deliver, although there appears to be a bit of a wait with one.
OKC , good to see the off-licences looking after customers, a refreshment will be welcome if you are permanently in the house, especially if weather keeps improving and you can sit in the garden.
I don't know about improvement, my friend, we had a snow shower this morning.
Ski-ing as well, you really are lucky. Second day of sunshine for us, had forgotten what it looked like.
All of this talk of lengthy lockdowns and social distancing is fine but Italy’s lockdown in just Lombardy started barely a month ago. China’s was eased after six weeks. We have literally no idea how a population will react. This has never been done before.
Labour is now the party of urban and university town Britain, the Tories the party of rural, small town and market town Britain. That is unlikely to change, the swing areas are suburban Britain and to a lesser extent ex industrial and mining and seaside towns.
Boris is currently riding high on a wave of public adulation.
If that changes, the voting public are fickle, and that might well change. With Starmer as leader, votes go, probably to Labour. With RLB in the driving seat- to who knows where?
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
Most formal links between the UK and Australia had been ended by the 1931 Statute of Westminster anyway
The jaundiced view that you get from Australians of my grandmothers generation, about how Churchill and Britain acted in 1941 are the psychological point of departure where they realised that the "Mother Country" did not have their interests at heart.
It was an inevitable moment of realisation, but made the Empire and Commonwealth untenable. Other colonies had similar epiphanies, when they too felt abandoned. The US Colonies in the 7 years war, and India by the Bengal famine being other moments.
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
Most formal links between the UK and Australia had been ended by the 1931 Statute of Westminster anyway
The jaundiced view that you get from Australians of my grandmothers generation, about how Churchill and Britain acted in 1941 are the psychological point of departure where they realised that the "Mother Country" did not have their interests at heart.
It was an inevitable moment of realisation, but made the Empire and Commonwealth untenable. Other colonies had similar epiphanies, when they too felt abandoned. The US Colonies in the 7 years war, and India by the Bengal famine being other moments.
Australia was already effectively independent by the end of WW2, Australia is also more conservative on average than the UK and closer to the US than us (New Zealand is still closer to the UK than USA however). Both however remain in the Commonwealth as does India
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
I've been following the discussions here online but have had trouble logging on and have changed my user name and password; if you're reading this it's worked!
The question of when the lockdown is released needs to be accompanied by a clear view of how it is released. If we suddenly go from lockdown to national celebrations, mass parties, etc then a serious second wave is almost guaranteed. However a long-term 'social distancing' policy risks grinding society into something unrecognisable from the Britain of the past - and not for the better.
Welcome. I fear that the government will find it hard to release the lockdown.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
But that's 95% of his posts, isn't it?
That’s why I rarely respond to them. But the idea that sexual assault complainants should face perjury charges simply because the prosecution that resulted from their allegations, particularly in these circumstances, fails is so utterly repugnant that I had to challenge it. Carl Beech, okay, that’s an exception, and there may be a few others, but not here. If a state prosecutor, in any jurisdiction, believes someone enough to bring a case based on their testimony they should not turn on that person after the trial that prosecutor failed to win. No one would ever come forward again.
Labour is now the party of urban and university town Britain, the Tories the party of rural, small town and market town Britain. That is unlikely to change, the swing areas are suburban Britain and to a lesser extent ex industrial and mining and seaside towns.
Boris is currently riding high on a wave of public adulation.
If that changes, the voting public are fickle, and that might well change. With Starmer as leader, votes go, probably to Labour. With RLB in the driving seat- to who knows where?
Perhaps but I doubt Starmer will win a majority and if Starmer does gain Tory seats as I said they will mainly be in the suburbs and a few recently lost ex industrial towns not the shires
I see you ignore the actual numbers, the fact that unionists said trial would kill the SNP and fact that Salmond is NOT guilty on all charges. We will see when the perjury cases come up and the names are published, the conspirators cannot hide forever and unionist attempts to try and continue the charade are doomed.
Salmond's defence was that he was a real nasty bastard who was not safe round women, but his conduct fell just short of criminal.
Nice guy.
Is that a fantasy story you are peddling Mark, I think he said he was human and may have made a few errors, hardly the mince you pretend. It was a bad attempt at a stitch up as was easily proven, prosecution did not question any of the defence witnesses as they did not have a leg to stand on. Their pals in unionist media trying valiantly to keep pushing it to no avail.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
I think the quickest way to destroy the SNP is to personalise the trial result as a conspiracy against Salmond. It looks like that is going to happen. Egos and personality cult will destroy that chimera of independence.
Draw a line under the seedy affair and move on.
The participants at the top of the SNP need to be cleared out and it will not be done by the current lot, just as they will be highly unlikely to get independence given they believe they need Boris's approval to even vote on it. Too many of them got their feet under the table and are fat and happy on position they have and independence is being put on back burner.
All of this talk of lengthy lockdowns and social distancing is fine but Italy’s lockdown in just Lombardy started barely a month ago. China’s was eased after six weeks. We have literally no idea how a population will react. This has never been done before.
One thing I've found in my infrequent and essential visits to the shops is that everyone avoids eye contact. We're becoming afraid of each other and getting used to physically moving away from our fellows. I can't help feeling that society will be more suspicious (and less human) when we come out of this.
Actualizamos los datos sobre coronavirus en España. Se registran 838 nuevos fallecidos en las últimas 24 horas y el número de muertos ya supera los 6.500. Los casos confirmados ascienden a 78.797, de los que 4.907 precisan UCI
To put that in context, in 2018 there were 474,523 deaths in Spain (This in itself was a dramatic spike from five years previously, probably due to the increasing age of the Spanish population). That’s about 1300 a day.
So this is on the face of it causing the number of deaths to increase by somewhere over 60%.
Of course, some of those people would have died this year due to other causes, but however you look at it that’s a dramatic uplift.
And that’s *with* lockdown.
Lockdown now kicking in reducing daily new cases, deaths a lagging indicator which are also impacted by the system breaking down, especially in Madrid and Barcelona. Waiting for the community by community figures to se what is happening but local hospital still making appeals for more respirators. Felix, do you know if the are moving patients round from one area to another to load balance?
I've not heard of that happening yet but don't follow too much what's going on in the centre and north. Certainly the daily rise looks to be flattening in Andalucia. I use this:
for detail on my province - and so far Almeria shows the same figure as for yesterday. One problem is some sites show the figures differently. The ICU beds usage is still growing nationwide but less quuckly than yesterday. One other thing I don't know if the w/e figures are as reliable as the weeekday ones.
Tory Klaxon surge on a sub sample did not last long ..........
Sensational Panelbase poll shows SNP have further increased their enormous lead over the Tories - Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions:
SNP 51% (+1) Conservatives 26% (n/c) Labour 14% (n/c) Liberal Democrats 6% (-1) Greens 3% (n/c)
Scottish Parliament regional list voting intentions:
SNP 48% (+1) Conservatives 26% (+1) Labour 13% (-1)
The Tories only got 22% at the 2016 Holyrood elections in both the constituency and regional vote so on that poll Jackson Carlaw will get the highest Scottish Conservative voteshare ever at a Holyrood election of 26%.
All that has happened is Labour have fallen from 22% in 2016 on the constituency vote to 14% and 19% on the regional list vote to 13% and the SNP have gained as a result, we will see if Starmer reverses that
Perhaps as he clearly found Salmond distasteful, his QC decided that he would get him off but there would be a sting in the tail?
I think shooting himself in the head does not suggest that was the aim. Usual ego looks more likely. Salmond got off because he was INNOCENT and it was the jury of his peers that decided it not his lawyer. 9 of the 13 were women as well. Unionists are just pissed it failed.
The number of deaths per day, whilst high, is at least stablising though. Also looks like number of new cases has stabilised - not sure one can say it is declining yet but this is evidence the lockdown is working. Still going to be very tough on the ICUs though...
A different way of considering the peak would be to view it as the point in time at which more than half of those who will die during this epidemic have already been infected, whether they know it or not. And therefore that LESS than half of the ultimate death toll are still to be infected. It is possible that for the UK we are at this point now or even past it. I find this a comforting thought, if so.
That's a very good way of thinking about it. The maximum number of new infections should have happened on the last day before lockdown, with declining numbers thereafter. Hence, every day moving forward, we should have fewer new infections due to the social distancing. In particular, by today the number of new infections should really be a lot lower than two weeks ago.
Additionally, since the country has been performing some degree of social distancing for 1-2 weeks (although extreme measures only 1 week ago) we should expect the number of deaths per day to rise over the next week but, if we are lucky, at not too high a rate (not so confident about this - it depends a lot on how seriously people have been distancing / washing hands prior to the lockdown).
Once we hit two weeks after the more extreme social distancing measures kicked in (towards the end of this week perhaps?), the numbers of deaths should stabilise and plateau for a while.
I can see we are (hopefully) close to the peak in terms of weekly or daily numbers, but it feels very unlikely we are near the halfway point? Arent we expecting the numbers post the peak to remain significant for many weeks post the high point? Unless you are counting a possible autumn/winter outbreak as a separate epidemic?
If we follow Italian trends, which is not certain, I would say we are a week to ten days away from moving from exponential to linear death rates. Deaths are the ultimate lagging indicator, but probably a better reference for trends as cases are under reported by an order of magnitude and are dependent on testing.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
From a quick google it suggests jurors are deliberately given zero guidance on the difference between not proven and not guilty? If so that is absurd!
Perhaps as he clearly found Salmond distasteful, his QC decided that he would get him off but there would be a sting in the tail?
I think shooting himself in the head does not suggest that was the aim. Usual ego looks more likely. Salmond got off because he was INNOCENT and it was the jury of his peers that decided it not his lawyer. 9 of the 13 were women as well. Unionists are just pissed it failed.
Or maybe the jury felt the prosecution had not made its case to the requisite standard of proof, as the defence counsel suggested they do?
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
But that's 95% of his posts, isn't it?
Another loser, DougSeal writes absolute bollox whilst supposedly being a lawyer who does not know that NOT guilty = innocent in our legal system, and then fcukwits like you crawl out from under your rocks to contribute ZERO to the topic.
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Perhaps as he clearly found Salmond distasteful, his QC decided that he would get him off but there would be a sting in the tail?
I think shooting himself in the head does not suggest that was the aim. Usual ego looks more likely. Salmond got off because he was INNOCENT and it was the jury of his peers that decided it not his lawyer. 9 of the 13 were women as well. Unionists are just pissed it failed.
Or maybe the jury felt the prosecution had not made its case to the requisite standard of proof, as the defence counsel suggested they do?
What bit of Innocent of all charges do you not understand, you are supposedly a lawyer. Would you want an innocent but we personally don't like him verdict.
Britain must remain in full lockdown until June if it is to avoid the worst effects of the coronavirus, the government’s leading epidemiology adviser warned last night.
As the virus claimed its 1,000th life in the UK — a doubling of the death toll in just three days — Professor Neil Ferguson said in an interview that the entire population could need to stay at home for nearly three months.
Boris Johnson said yesterday that the pandemic crisis would “get worse before it gets better”.
Senior figures in government have been more optimistic, suggesting the restrictions could be eased sooner than June, with the peak of the crisis predicted to come in the week of April 12 with as few as 5,700 deaths.
But Ferguson said: “We’re going to have to keep these measures [the full lockdown] in place, in my view, for a significant period of time — probably until the end of May, maybe even early June. May is optimistic.”
He said that when the lockdown was finally lifted, people would probably still be asked to enforce some forms of social distancing for months more. That could mean schools and universities not reopening until the autumn, and people told to continue working from home rather than return to their offices.
You have frequently said you would have voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016 and would vote Trump against Bernie Sanders which I understand.
Would you vote for Trump against Biden or would the VP nominee make a difference so for instance would you support Trump/Pence over Biden/Warren or Biden/Harris?
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
Read an interesting book awhile back - IIRC "The Battle for Australia" - the author's point that while Australians are rightly proud of their troops on the Kokoda trail - in the end it didn't have much, if any influence on the outcome of the war - although not clear at the time, Japan was already losing. Meanwhile their compatriots in the second battle of El Alamein helped change the course of the conflict, but its the former who are lauded and the latter often overlooked.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
You have frequently said you would have voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016 and would vote Trump against Bernie Sanders which I understand.
Would you vote for Trump against Biden or would the VP nominee make a difference so for instance would you support Trump/Pence over Biden/Warren or Biden/Harris?
I would probably vote for Biden/Harris over Trump/Pence but not Biden/Warren yes. I would have voted for Bloomberg with some enthusiasm but none of the other Democrats did anything much for me, however I am not American so it does not really matter
All of this talk of lengthy lockdowns and social distancing is fine but Italy’s lockdown in just Lombardy started barely a month ago. China’s was eased after six weeks. We have literally no idea how a population will react. This has never been done before.
There's a world of difference between a lockdown in a cramped one bed flat or houseshare, with no idea when your "furlough "money will come through or if you will even have a job at the end of it all, or if your landlord will evict you once the three months are up, to spending three months of glorious self-isolation in a nice family home with a big garden, savings in the bank and job security.
Most people will fall somewhere in between these two examples, but for people at the shitty end of this, things are going to be shitty.
Factor in the fact that those most likely to be living in poor accommodation are probably young-ish with less to fear from the virus, and almost certainly at the poorer end of the socio-economic scale, and you have a recipe for widespread civil disobedience by summer. As others have pointed out there are already reports of this brewing in Italy.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
All of this talk of lengthy lockdowns and social distancing is fine but Italy’s lockdown in just Lombardy started barely a month ago. China’s was eased after six weeks. We have literally no idea how a population will react. This has never been done before.
One thing I've found in my infrequent and essential visits to the shops is that everyone avoids eye contact. We're becoming afraid of each other and getting used to physically moving away from our fellows. I can't help feeling that society will be more suspicious (and less human) when we come out of this.
On our walks we noticed ourselves smiling and nodding to people when we were over the farmland, but less friendly to people on the street! Not sure why, maybe subconsciously we felt naughty being out in the open but safe in the countryside
I think that COVID19 related mortality in Italy, and probably the rest of the world, will be considerably more than those biologically confirmed. Many community deaths, particularly in the elderly, will go unmarked, other than by their families.
All of this talk of lengthy lockdowns and social distancing is fine but Italy’s lockdown in just Lombardy started barely a month ago. China’s was eased after six weeks. We have literally no idea how a population will react. This has never been done before.
There's a world of difference between a lockdown in a cramped one bed flat or houseshare, with no idea when your "furlough "money will come through or if you will even have a job at the end of it all, or if your landlord will evict you once the three months are up, to spending three months of glorious self-isolation in a nice family home with a big garden, savings in the bank and job security.
Most people will fall somewhere in between these two examples, but for people at the shitty end of this, things are going to be shitty.
Factor in the fact that those most likely to be living in poor accommodation are probably young-ish with less to fear from the virus, and almost certainly at the poorer end of the socio-economic scale, and you have a recipe for widespread civil disobedience by summer. As others have pointed out there are already reports of this brewing in Italy.
I think the Italy issues were in the south and resulted from food shortages and lack if money. As I’ve said earlier the supermarket home delivery van could become a target if funds don’t get to those that need it soon enough.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Not a fan of Salmond, but he entered court an innocent man and it was the job of the prosecution to prove to a Jury otherwise. They failed. He left the court an innocent man.
Comments
So this is on the face of it causing the number of deaths to increase by somewhere over 60%.
Of course, some of those people would have died this year due to other causes, but however you look at it that’s a dramatic uplift.
And that’s *with* lockdown.
The economy is going to be completely and utterly f****d by that point. Most businesses will have to have closed or planned significant redundancies. Meanwhile people have to make mortgage payments, pay bills and rent (as I understand it payments are only deferred at the moment not cancelled entirely) and many will be faced with the continued prospect of living alone and their mental health declining precipitously.
What happens then? People start to slowly break the rules little by little until they become imposed even more strictly with the army on the streets? It is scary to think what will happen to this country.
There are no easy answers. I think if we stand any chance of preventing mass unemployment and a general depression in this country we need these antibody tests and for there to be a strategy to restart the economy.
As for half-wit you give me undeserved credit!
https://imgur.com/gallery/1S0hXif
Teachers of pb -- is Gavin Williamson directing how and what to teach during lockdown or is it every school for itself?
People struggle with statistics and probabilities enough anyway, when the experts message keeps changing it damages public confidence further.
Id use the government messaging on the longer term future sparingly and when it needs to done, for now the vast majority of people buy into the present and that is what matters. Explaining its going to get worse for the next couple of weeks despite the lockdown is rightly the key message imo.
At the moment the Tories are doing well by throwing raw meat on nationalism to the pack, while spaffing money on everything possible. That approach contains the seeds of it's own downfall, as the external threats are now universal, in disease and climate change, rather than from foreign powers, and sooner or later those bills will need to be paid.
An opposition cannot out Union Jack the Tories, or plausibly spend more while still attracting aspirational voters. It needs to choose its approach rather more astutely.
https://twitter.com/mycolorfulpast/status/1241401583499448322?s=20
https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1243855318741893121
They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that.
There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
However, I cannot agree his views are ‘infantile.’ Many infants have much more sense than Peter Hitchens.
The question of when the lockdown is released needs to be accompanied by a clear view of how it is released. If we suddenly go from lockdown to national celebrations, mass parties, etc then a serious second wave is almost guaranteed. However a long-term 'social distancing' policy risks grinding society into something unrecognisable from the Britain of the past - and not for the better.
That's a very good way of thinking about it. The maximum number of new infections should have happened on the last day before lockdown, with declining numbers thereafter. Hence, every day moving forward, we should have fewer new infections due to the social distancing. In particular, by today the number of new infections should really be a lot lower than two weeks ago.
Additionally, since the country has been performing some degree of social distancing for 1-2 weeks (although extreme measures only 1 week ago) we should expect the number of deaths per day to rise over the next week but, if we are lucky, at not too high a rate (not so confident about this - it depends a lot on how seriously people have been distancing / washing hands prior to the lockdown).
Once we hit two weeks after the more extreme social distancing measures kicked in (towards the end of this week perhaps?), the numbers of deaths should stabilise and plateau for a while.
That is unlikely to change, the swing areas are suburban Britain and to a lesser extent ex industrial and mining and seaside towns.
Draw a line under the seedy affair and move on.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1244139367452626946?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1244120244362326016?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1243617818265948163?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1243617393844387843?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1243616657479794693?s=20
https://twitter.com/krishgm/status/1244184909230551040
If that changes, the voting public are fickle, and that might well change. With Starmer as leader, votes go, probably to Labour. With RLB in the driving seat- to who knows where?
Governments lose elections, oppositions don't win them.
It was an inevitable moment of realisation, but made the Empire and Commonwealth untenable. Other colonies had similar epiphanies, when they too felt abandoned. The US Colonies in the 7 years war, and India by the Bengal famine being other moments.
Both however remain in the Commonwealth as does India
WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/27/821958435/why-death-rates-from-coronavirus-can-be-deceiving
https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20200329/mapa-del-coronavirus-espana/2004681.shtml
for detail on my province - and so far Almeria shows the same figure as for yesterday. One problem is some sites show the figures differently. The ICU beds usage is still growing nationwide but less quuckly than yesterday. One other thing I don't know if the w/e figures are as reliable as the weeekday ones.
All that has happened is Labour have fallen from 22% in 2016 on the constituency vote to 14% and 19% on the regional list vote to 13% and the SNP have gained as a result, we will see if Starmer reverses that
Unionists are just pissed it failed.
This may do him good.
https://twitter.com/jeremycliffe/status/1244191123138138113?s=21
Ministers were warned that the NHS could not cope with a pandemic three years ago but 'terrifying' results were kept secret
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/exclusive-ministers-warned-nhs-could-not-cope-pandemic-three/
Chinese reparations.
“The Mexicans will pay for it,” the sequel.
But if they are right and others wrong, all the better.
Would you vote for Trump against Biden or would the VP nominee make a difference so for instance would you support Trump/Pence over Biden/Warren or Biden/Harris?
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
I would have voted for Bloomberg with some enthusiasm but none of the other Democrats did anything much for me, however I am not American so it does not really matter
Most people will fall somewhere in between these two examples, but for people at the shitty end of this, things are going to be shitty.
Factor in the fact that those most likely to be living in poor accommodation are probably young-ish with less to fear from the virus, and almost certainly at the poorer end of the socio-economic scale, and you have a recipe for widespread civil disobedience by summer. As others have pointed out there are already reports of this brewing in Italy.
https://twitter.com/Annibal97783312/status/1242804806416314368?s=09
I think that COVID19 related mortality in Italy, and probably the rest of the world, will be considerably more than those biologically confirmed. Many community deaths, particularly in the elderly, will go unmarked, other than by their families.