Here is another tack of questions for journalists.
97% of the supply of antibiotics are made in China, insert other facts about dominance of China in the supply chain of crucial chemicals, drugs and equipment e.g. China seized the stock pile and production of the largest British owned producer of PPE.
Do you think the government relaxed attitude to China increasing dominance of sectors crucial to national security and self sufficiency have been a mistake. Will we see a shift going forward? Are the government undertaking any further assessments of other crucial sectors that are being affected by the fact we rely on a few countries for many items e.g. Germany for reagents, in case this crisis continues for many months or years.
The Japanese government is already allocating money to bring manufacturing back from China, and also providing money to move manufacturing to countries other than China. I expect we will see a lot more action like this in the years ahead.
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
Nope. We can and should look further ahead. We need a realistic discussion post lockdown.
Are we aiming to eradicate CV19 for the UK now and close borders until a vaccine arises? Are we aiming to keep CV19 cases within he capacity of the NHS to deal with them until a vaccine arises? Are we returning to herd immunity?
Assume it is (2), then it is perfectly possible to model that and suggest what that might mean for people.
I agree, but a grown-up discussion with multiple complex scenarios and trade-offs, all complicated by the current huge uncertainties, is not what Sir Keir is asking for. He is asking for an official strategy - which of course he must know cannot exist, he's not stupid - to be published. I expected much better of him.
The government must have a preferred approach now. If it doesn't have one it is negligent. So they can publish and we can all start to plan for our personal lives and professional lives.
I don't really understand why Harris is a strong favourite to be the VP nominee. Electorally a white woman from the Midwest would seem more appealing, and there are good options there. Harris would be a fine choice, but she doesn't seem the standout choice to me. What am I missing?
I agree that she's too short but what you might be missing is that Biden's campaign was saved from life support by the very enthusiastic endorsement of Jim Clyburn, who has very explicitly said that the next VP should be a black woman. It's plausible that Biden actually made that a promise to him, and it's also plausible that although he hasn't promised it, he'll want to return the favour if he can.
That said: 1) You can also make a similar case for KLOBUCHAR, who endorsed at just the right time and seemed very perky right afterwards, maybe she made a deal 2) If it's going to be a black woman there are some other choices - the virus crisis tilts it in an *experienced* direction, but for example how about Susan Rice?
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
Nope. We can and should look further ahead. We need a realistic discussion post lockdown.
Are we aiming to eradicate CV19 for the UK now and close borders until a vaccine arises? Are we aiming to keep CV19 cases within he capacity of the NHS to deal with them until a vaccine arises? Are we returning to herd immunity?
Assume it is (2), then it is perfectly possible to model that and suggest what that might mean for people.
I agree, but a grown-up discussion with multiple complex scenarios and trade-offs, all complicated by the current huge uncertainties, is not what Sir Keir is asking for. He is asking for an official strategy - which of course he must know cannot exist, he's not stupid - to be published. I expected much better of him.
He is cynical, and he assumes the public are stupid.
Of topic: just thought I`d remind everyone that in the budget Sunak doubled - yes doubled - the junior ISA allowance. Those with children can invest up to £9000 for each child as from Monday. With the markets down it may be a good time to do this??
Not sure why he doubled the JISA allowance - I don`t think any reasoning was given, it was unexpected and hadn`t been lobbied for.
Didn't realize that. Another big giveaway to the wealthy.
Another ISA tip: there is a quirk in the system in that a child aged 16 or over can have a Cash ISA (allowance £20,000). A child can have a Junior ISA until age 18. Therefore parents of a 16 or 17 year old can invest £29,000 in ISAs for their 16/17 year old this tax year (and presumable next).
But the London Media Elite said British people who never ever under any circumstances do such a job.
One interesting thing from that "students also available for work.". When I was first an undergrad pretty much everybody I knew got a summer job doing something like this. I worked in a factory and also a food processing plant. I did Christmas and Easter as well.
That really hasn't been the case now, as by the time students return from uni, farms usually have filled the positions by imported labour, as they are able to start much earlier than when student finish for the summer.
I don't see the need for a unity government but the Opposition should be involved to the extent of having open access to all expert briefings and access as required to the ministers that they are shadowing. Parliament was eventually closed after a frightening number of them got the virus but the government still needs to be held to account, challenged by different points of view and made to address awkward facts. This needs to be done more one to one at the moment but it also needs to be done on an informed basis.
This need is all the more urgent given the lamentable performance by the Westminster press pack. Why they are still giving questions to people who may (or may not) know about politics but who seem essentially innumerate and unable to grasp the clear explanations being presented by the experts is beyond me. Surely the media employ some people with science degrees?
This government has made and will continue to make mistakes. Frankly, if they are not making mistakes they are not moving nearly fast enough. The priority is to spot and correct those mistakes early. An opposition led by someone with a brain can assist with that. Its a really important role.
The government is refusing point blank to discuss how it is even making decisions just now. The idea that different questions will elicit answers with any meaning when it is so contemptuous of being held to account and so readily supported by gullible followers is fanciful.
But they have. Cabinet are meeting and cabinet are making decisions.
Collective responsibility is a polite fiction not a decision-making process. Unless you believe that all decisions are inevitably unanimous because no other decision could be reached on the evidence.
Whose finger is on the button?
Boris is still PM and his letter of last resort to Trident sub commanders still stands in the very unlikely event we are hit by a nuclear strike.
Otherwise constitutionally there is no requirement for a PM other than by convention, the position only arose as the most senior of the monarch's ministers in the 18th century but it is the monarch, not the PM who is head of state.
The PM is simply the most senior member of her majesty's government in parliament
That is a literal answer to what was a metaphorical question.
He has certainly not left a letter indicating how he wished pandemic policy to change over the next weeks and months. There are going to be some hard choices to be made, and the only person with a strong mandate to lead the cabinet in those choices is Boris.
Constitutionally you are correct - but practically, there is for now no clear leader who might rule on cabinet arguments.
Yes there is a clear leader. Its Raab. Raab is deputising for Johnson.
If Raab gets incapacitated too then next in line is Sunak.
What's confusing about that?
Nothing; but in reality, Raab is the nominal leader only. Controversial decisions - and what happens next will be hugely controversial - are not going to be made by Raab.
In a split cabinet, Boris would prevail given his clear mandate. That is simply not the case for Raab.
Raab is the nominal leader in the sense that we only need a nominal leader.
If a decision needs to be made and if the Cabinet is split then Raab is in place to make the PM's decision. That's all that matters.
The big decisions right now have been made, as much as the media are acting like idiots about whether lockdown gets extended or not - its not getting extended its getting reviewed, we were told from the start 12 weeks was likely.
Alcohol-related deaths are mainly chronic conditions so you wouldn't expect to see a relationship between that and a change that happened 8 months ago.
Not against deaths, I asusme the comaprison is against consumption.
If you read the report (and I suggest you don't since it's flawed) the author says that the 7.3% reduction in alcohol related deaths in Scotland is basically the same as the 7.1% reduction in alcohol related deaths in England and Wales.
Ergo no health benefit from minimum pricing.
It's a bit like saying, we introduced healthy meals in schools yesterday, but the children still seem to be overweight. Clearly the policy has failed.
It wouldn't actually be that surprising that the minimum pricing in Scotland wouldn't have much effect.
The studies of minimum pricing/taxation scheme around the world generally show that a fairly heroic price increase is required to change behaviour. Think Finnish levels. Essentially pricing the poor out of being able to drink.
Strangely, this level of pricing didn't attract approval from the politicians. So they settled on a much lower level.
Brexit happened on January 31st if you were asleep that day
It did. But applying the long established principle of 'substance over form' it didn't and we remain in the EU. With the advent of coronavirus, a global catastrophe on a scale not seen outside apocalyptic fiction, this state of quasi Remain seems likely to persist for many years. Indeed I wonder, when the time finally comes that we can turn our attention back to leaving, whether there will be much of an appetite for it.
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
Nope. We can and should look further ahead. We need a realistic discussion post lockdown.
Are we aiming to eradicate CV19 for the UK now and close borders until a vaccine arises? Are we aiming to keep CV19 cases within he capacity of the NHS to deal with them until a vaccine arises? Are we returning to herd immunity?
Assume it is (2), then it is perfectly possible to model that and suggest what that might mean for people.
I agree, but a grown-up discussion with multiple complex scenarios and trade-offs, all complicated by the current huge uncertainties, is not what Sir Keir is asking for. He is asking for an official strategy - which of course he must know cannot exist, he's not stupid - to be published. I expected much better of him.
The government must have a preferred approach now. If it doesn't have one it is negligent. So they can publish and we can all start to plan for our personal lives and professional lives.
Keir is right.
Work is currently ongoing. But this is really complex and the lack of an antibody test is problematic both now and also we massive uncertainty for the future when / if this will become available. This lack of crucial data is absolutely enormous. It will totally change what we can do going forward.
There isn't even a 13 year old model to just fire up or previous evidence to go on. Nobody has decided to lockdown half the world for months on end. Things are having to be made from scratch / adapted on the fly.
So any preferred option would be based on very limited data / science and could quickly see a "U-Turn" as the academic work rolls in. Sort of like you know the government initial response i.e. dodgy Chinese data in, dodgy result from an old outdated model...
The government must have a preferred approach now. If it doesn't have one it is negligent. So they can publish and we can all start to plan for our personal lives and professional lives.
Keir is right.
At a minimum I think it makes sense for the government to say whether they are only waiting for the peak. The peak is going to come soon, they would be wise to have warned people that isn't the indicator to think things will be relaxed.
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
Nope. We can and should look further ahead. We need a realistic discussion post lockdown.
Are we aiming to eradicate CV19 for the UK now and close borders until a vaccine arises? Are we aiming to keep CV19 cases within he capacity of the NHS to deal with them until a vaccine arises? Are we returning to herd immunity?
Assume it is (2), then it is perfectly possible to model that and suggest what that might mean for people.
I agree, but a grown-up discussion with multiple complex scenarios and trade-offs, all complicated by the current huge uncertainties, is not what Sir Keir is asking for. He is asking for an official strategy - which of course he must know cannot exist, he's not stupid - to be published. I expected much better of him.
He is cynical, and he assumes the public are stupid.
and p.s. as this is the way he starts as loto I have lowered my expectations that he'll represent a great improvement on Corbyn.
I would like to see the treasury economic modelling. How is the government responding and planning to respond to the fact that the private sector is not going to be able to contribute to tax (no salaries, no profits, no consumer spending)?
Here is another tack of questions for journalists.
97% of the supply of antibiotics are made in China, insert other facts about dominance of China in the supply chain of crucial chemicals, drugs and equipment e.g. China seized the stock pile and production of the largest British owned producer of PPE.
Do you think the government relaxed attitude to China increasing dominance of sectors crucial to national security and self sufficiency have been a mistake. Will we see a shift going forward? Are the government undertaking any further assessments of other crucial sectors that are being affected by the fact we rely on a few countries for many items e.g. Germany for reagents, in case this crisis continues for many months or years.
The Japanese government is already allocating money to bring manufacturing back from China, and also providing money to move manufacturing to countries other than China. I expect we will see a lot more action like this in the years ahead.
Who in their right minds would want any of the labour front bench in government? There isn't one of them who would be an improvement on the actual 80 seat majority government and as they are all remainers, you just know they'd spend most their time trying to rescind and stop Brexit, all over again.
It would allow the blame for any bad decisions to be shared around.
Labour would be absolutely mad if they accepted it.
Personally, not interested in the blame game, rather that the right decisions are made. Based upon his performance as shadow Brexit secretary, Starmer will already be marked down as a snake in the grass by the government, even May's lot didn't trust him. Decisions are being made on the available science and belief to some extent in the modelling from Imperial, although, ultimately, some value judgments will have to be made.
Hector Drummonds blog is well worth a read on this subject.
But you do take my serious point, I trust, about the GE19 mandate disappearing.
That phrase "the past is another country" has never been so true. If the country had known on Dec 12th that in a few short weeks Labour would be led by Starmer not Corbyn, that the country would be in lockdown to fight a deadly new virus, and that Brexit would therefore be a matter of zero concern to anybody, how would they have voted? Of course neither you or I can know, but it seems a safe bet that it would have been Hung Parliament with Labour largest party.
Who in their right minds would want any of the labour front bench in government? There isn't one of them who would be an improvement on the actual 80 seat majority government and as they are all remainers, you just know they'd spend most their time trying to rescind and stop Brexit, all over again.
It would allow the blame for any bad decisions to be shared around.
Labour would be absolutely mad if they accepted it.
Personally, not interested in the blame game, rather that the right decisions are made. Based upon his performance as shadow Brexit secretary, Starmer will already be marked down as a snake in the grass by the government, even May's lot didn't trust him. Decisions are being made on the available science and belief to some extent in the modelling from Imperial, although, ultimately, some value judgments will have to be made.
Hector Drummonds blog is well worth a read on this subject.
Mr Imperial modelling is now being superseded. It is now far more than just one bloke and his 13 year old model working on this.
Brexit happened on January 31st if you were asleep that day
It did. But applying the long established principle of 'substance over form' it didn't and we remain in the EU. With the advent of coronavirus, a global catastrophe on a scale not seen outside apocalyptic fiction, this state of quasi Remain seems likely to persist for many years. Indeed I wonder, when the time finally comes that we can turn our attention back to leaving, whether there will be much of an appetite for it.
I don't see the need for a unity government but the Opposition should be involved to the extent of having open access to all expert briefings and access as required to the ministers that they are shadowing. Parliament was eventually closed after a frightening number of them got the virus but the government still needs to be held to account, challenged by different points of view and made to address awkward facts. This needs to be done more one to one at the moment but it also needs to be done on an informed basis.
This need is all the more urgent given the lamentable performance by the Westminster press pack. Why they are still giving questions to people who may (or may not) know about politics but who seem essentially innumerate and unable to grasp the clear explanations being presented by the experts is beyond me. Surely the media employ some people with science degrees?
This government has made and will continue to make mistakes. Frankly, if they are not making mistakes they are not moving nearly fast enough. The priority is to spot and correct those mistakes early. An opposition led by someone with a brain can assist with that. Its a really important role.
The government is refusing point blank to discuss how it is even making decisions just now. The idea that different questions will elicit answers with any meaning when it is so contemptuous of being held to account and so readily supported by gullible followers is fanciful.
But they have. Cabinet are meeting and cabinet are making decisions.
Collective responsibility is a polite fiction not a decision-making process. Unless you believe that all decisions are inevitably unanimous because no other decision could be reached on the evidence.
Whose finger is on the button?
Boris is still PM and his letter of last resort to Trident sub commanders still stands in the very unlikely event we are hit by a nuclear strike.
Otherwise constitutionally there is no requirement for a PM other than by convention, the position only arose as the most senior of the monarch's ministers in the 18th century but it is the monarch, not the PM who is head of state.
The PM is simply the most senior member of her majesty's government in parliament
That is a literal answer to what was a metaphorical question.
He has certainly not left a letter indicating how he wished pandemic policy to change over the next weeks and months. There are going to be some hard choices to be made, and the only person with a strong mandate to lead the cabinet in those choices is Boris.
Constitutionally you are correct - but practically, there is for now no clear leader who might rule on cabinet arguments.
Yes there is a clear leader. Its Raab. Raab is deputising for Johnson.
If Raab gets incapacitated too then next in line is Sunak.
What's confusing about that?
Nothing; but in reality, Raab is the nominal leader only. Controversial decisions - and what happens next will be hugely controversial - are not going to be made by Raab.
In a split cabinet, Boris would prevail given his clear mandate. That is simply not the case for Raab.
What's the solution then? An actual PM who wasnt Boris would face the same questions of mandate as people always say mandate requires an election. It's not true, but it's another example of how unhelpful thinking of mandates is, it means nothing at all. Surely the order of precedence exists for these very situations.
But you do take my serious point, I trust, about the GE19 mandate disappearing.
That phrase "the past is another country" has never been so true. If the country had known on Dec 12th that in a few short weeks Labour would be led by Starmer not Corbyn, that the country would be in lockdown to fight a deadly new virus, and that Brexit would therefore be a matter of zero concern to anybody, how would they have voted? Of course neither you or I can know, but it seems a safe bet that it would have been Hung Parliament with Labour largest party.
If none of us can know how can we also consider that outcome a safe bet?
FPT - Foxy, there are theories that moths are attracted to bright light - positive phototaxis - because they use the moon to navigate and think it is the moon. Certainly, on nights with a full moon, fewer moths are attracted to the competing light of the moth trap.
On the other hand, they might be dumb. Or attracted to the significant warmth of a 125 mercury vapour bulb on a cool night.
One of the annoying things about the lockdown is the inability to nip over to Dartmoor and try and get a better, sharper picture of an Emperor Moth than that I have managed to date. They should be flying low over the heather in good numbers today - conditions are perfect. Hard to convince myself it is an "essential journey" though....even less, to convince Plod! "But look, officer, the wings on this image aren't sharp...It's doing my head in!"
Lovely pic. I just never seem to come across them at rest. Always something zooming away into the middle distance. Their caterpillars are pretty cool though and rather easier to photograph..
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Germany rose by 4,974 in the past 24 hours to 108,202 on Thursday, climbing for the third straight day after four previous days of drops, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The reported death toll rose by 246 to 2,107.
Japan’s health ministry said Thursday that the country had more than 500 new cases for the first time on Wednesday, bringing the national total to 4,768 excluding hundreds from a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo earlier this year.
Who in their right minds would want any of the labour front bench in government? There isn't one of them who would be an improvement on the actual 80 seat majority government and as they are all remainers, you just know they'd spend most their time trying to rescind and stop Brexit, all over again.
It would allow the blame for any bad decisions to be shared around.
Labour would be absolutely mad if they accepted it.
Personally, not interested in the blame game, rather that the right decisions are made. Based upon his performance as shadow Brexit secretary, Starmer will already be marked down as a snake in the grass by the government, even May's lot didn't trust him. Decisions are being made on the available science and belief to some extent in the modelling from Imperial, although, ultimately, some value judgments will have to be made.
Hector Drummonds blog is well worth a read on this subject.
Unlike Tom Watson, Starmer has managed to avoid criticim over his role in the Carl Beech affair and, more generally, the believe-the-victim paradigm. This really ought to come back to bite him in the arse at some point.
I would like to see the treasury economic modelling. How is the government responding and planning to respond to the fact that the private sector is not going to be able to contribute to tax (no salaries, no profits, no consumer spending)?
But you do take my serious point, I trust, about the GE19 mandate disappearing.
That phrase "the past is another country" has never been so true. If the country had known on Dec 12th that in a few short weeks Labour would be led by Starmer not Corbyn, that the country would be in lockdown to fight a deadly new virus, and that Brexit would therefore be a matter of zero concern to anybody, how would they have voted? Of course neither you or I can know, but it seems a safe bet that it would have been Hung Parliament with Labour largest party.
Labour is only now led by Starmer not Corbyn precisely because Corbyn was trounced on December 12th, if it had been a hung parliament with Labour largest party Corbyn would now be PM
Who in their right minds would want any of the labour front bench in government? There isn't one of them who would be an improvement on the actual 80 seat majority government and as they are all remainers, you just know they'd spend most their time trying to rescind and stop Brexit, all over again.
It would allow the blame for any bad decisions to be shared around.
Labour would be absolutely mad if they accepted it.
Personally, not interested in the blame game, rather that the right decisions are made. Based upon his performance as shadow Brexit secretary, Starmer will already be marked down as a snake in the grass by the government, even May's lot didn't trust him. Decisions are being made on the available science and belief to some extent in the modelling from Imperial, although, ultimately, some value judgments will have to be made.
Hector Drummonds blog is well worth a read on this subject.
Mr Imperial modelling is now being superseded. It is now far more than just one bloke and his 13 year old model working on this.
The Imperial Model was by a team of a dozen or more if I recall.
It was the others (eg Oxford) which were btsoyp efforts.
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
So you think the government and experts shouldn't yet be thinking about this question at all, or that they should be thinking about it but keeping their deliberations a secret?
I don't see the need for a unity government but the Opposition should be involved to the extent of having open access to all expert briefings and access as required to the ministers that they are shadowing. Parliament was eventually closed after a frightening number of them got the virus but the government still needs to be held to account, challenged by different points of view and made to address awkward facts. This needs to be done more one to one at the moment but it also needs to be done on an informed basis.
This need is all the more urgent given the lamentable performance by the Westminster press pack. Why they are still giving questions to people who may (or may not) know about politics but who seem essentially innumerate and unable to grasp the clear explanations being presented by the experts is beyond me. Surely the media employ some people with science degrees?
This government has made and will continue to make mistakes. Frankly, if they are not making mistakes they are not moving nearly fast enough. The priority is to spot and correct those mistakes early. An opposition led by someone with a brain can assist with that. Its a really important role.
The government is refusing point blank to discuss how it is even making decisions just now. The idea that different questions will elicit answers with any meaning when it is so contemptuous of being held to account and so readily supported by gullible followers is fanciful.
But they have. Cabinet are meeting and cabinet are making decisions.
Collective responsibility is a polite fiction not a decision-making process. Unless you believe that all decisions are inevitably unanimous because no other decision could be reached on the evidence.
Whose finger is on the button?
Boris is still PM and his letter of last resort to Trident sub commanders still stands in the very unlikely event we are hit by a nuclear strike.
Otherwise constitutionally there is no requirement for a PM other than by convention, the position only arose as the most senior of the monarch's ministers in the 18th century but it is the monarch, not the PM who is head of state.
The PM is simply the most senior member of her majesty's government in parliament
That is a literal answer to what was a metaphorical question.
He has certainly not left a letter indicating how he wished pandemic policy to change over the next weeks and months. There are going to be some hard choices to be made, and the only person with a strong mandate to lead the cabinet in those choices is Boris.
Constitutionally you are correct - but practically, there is for now no clear leader who might rule on cabinet arguments.
Yes there is a clear leader. Its Raab. Raab is deputising for Johnson.
If Raab gets incapacitated too then next in line is Sunak.
What's confusing about that?
Nothing; but in reality, Raab is the nominal leader only. Controversial decisions - and what happens next will be hugely controversial - are not going to be made by Raab.
In a split cabinet, Boris would prevail given his clear mandate. That is simply not the case for Raab.
Raab is the nominal leader in the sense that we only need a nominal leader.
If a decision needs to be made and if the Cabinet is split then Raab is in place to make the PM's decision. That's all that matters.
Quite. If the delegation from the PM that Raab leads on this wont be followed thats a whole other problem really.
Who in their right minds would want any of the labour front bench in government? There isn't one of them who would be an improvement on the actual 80 seat majority government and as they are all remainers, you just know they'd spend most their time trying to rescind and stop Brexit, all over again.
It would allow the blame for any bad decisions to be shared around.
Labour would be absolutely mad if they accepted it.
Personally, not interested in the blame game, rather that the right decisions are made. Based upon his performance as shadow Brexit secretary, Starmer will already be marked down as a snake in the grass by the government, even May's lot didn't trust him. Decisions are being made on the available science and belief to some extent in the modelling from Imperial, although, ultimately, some value judgments will have to be made.
Hector Drummonds blog is well worth a read on this subject.
Mr Imperial modelling is now being superseded. It is now far more than just one bloke and his 13 year old model working on this.
The Imperial Model was by a team of a dozen or more if I recall.
It was the others (eg Oxford) which were btsoyp efforts.
Yes I know, I was kinda of joking. Is it 13 years old though and by Ferguson's own admission the code is totally outdated and a shit show.
What I meant was the effects are much larger, are multidisciplinary and more sophisticated now. But for modelling our way out of a worldwide lockdown, this is novel territory.
What's the solution then? An actual PM who wasnt Boris would face the same questions of mandate as people always say mandate requires an election. It's not true, but it's another example of how unhelpful thinking of mandates is, it means nothing at all. Surely the order of precedence exists for these very situations.
The solution would be to pick a new PM, optimizing for competence instead of brexit enthusiasm.
Unfortunately the current cabinet is unlikely to do that, because they owe their jobs to optimizing for brexit enthusiasm instead of competence.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Germany rose by 4,974 in the past 24 hours to 108,202 on Thursday, climbing for the third straight day after four previous days of drops, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The reported death toll rose by 246 to 2,107.
Japan’s health ministry said Thursday that the country had more than 500 new cases for the first time on Wednesday, bringing the national total to 4,768 excluding hundreds from a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo earlier this year.
German's numbers look very like ours 2 weeks ago.
Despite being the biggest country in Europe by population though Germany still has fewer cases than France, Italy and Spain and fewer deaths than us.
The German model of mass testing and high numbers of ventilators not just lockdown remains the one to follow
But you do take my serious point, I trust, about the GE19 mandate disappearing.
That phrase "the past is another country" has never been so true. If the country had known on Dec 12th that in a few short weeks Labour would be led by Starmer not Corbyn, that the country would be in lockdown to fight a deadly new virus, and that Brexit would therefore be a matter of zero concern to anybody, how would they have voted? Of course neither you or I can know, but it seems a safe bet that it would have been Hung Parliament with Labour largest party.
As a left-leaner I disagree. It's not 'a safe bet' that the result would have been that. It's massive speculation.
The Conservatives won fair and square under Boris: a handsome victory. They are in charge and they need to sort this out.
The thread-header opinion polling on a GNU was little better than voodoo polling. How are you supposed to oppose such an eminently sensible sounding, but profoundly leading, question?
I don't think Labour should get drawn into this. There are (allegedly) plenty of highly capable Conservative ministers. They can sort it out. What they, and the country, need is a strong, healthy, Boris Johnson back at the helm, not tapping up outsiders.
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
So you think the government and experts shouldn't yet be thinking about this question at all, or that they should be thinking about it but keeping their deliberations a secret?
I would prefer the government to report when they had the required data and significant modelling had taken place. Otherwise, all that will happen is screams of U-Turn every other week, as the advice changes, as more data and analysis are performed.
It is why in the initial response, the likes of SAGE spent 2 months looking through all the data available at the time, debating all the options, asking academic to run models. Then when they had considered these, signed off a plan and spoke to the press and the people.
And...even then...new data emerged and required a big change to the plan. Luckily many other strands of the plan, such as establishing overflow capacity, seem to have come together well.
Who in their right minds would want any of the labour front bench in government? There isn't one of them who would be an improvement on the actual 80 seat majority government and as they are all remainers, you just know they'd spend most their time trying to rescind and stop Brexit, all over again.
It would allow the blame for any bad decisions to be shared around.
Labour would be absolutely mad if they accepted it.
Personally, not interested in the blame game, rather that the right decisions are made. Based upon his performance as shadow Brexit secretary, Starmer will already be marked down as a snake in the grass by the government, even May's lot didn't trust him. Decisions are being made on the available science and belief to some extent in the modelling from Imperial, although, ultimately, some value judgments will have to be made.
Hector Drummonds blog is well worth a read on this subject.
Unlike Tom Watson, Starmer has managed to avoid criticim over his role in the Carl Beech affair and, more generally, the believe-the-victim paradigm. This really ought to come back to bite him in the arse at some point.
I agree. However, the difference is that Starmer paved the way for Beech to exploit the new guidelines. Watson pumped Beech and his story in person. One was indirect. The other direct.
Starmer made an error of judgement (not his first). Watson was downright Machiavellian.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
"Middle classes in the south of England were to blame for stockpiling, Tesco’s boss suggested, as the supermarket’s data revealed it was less of an issue in other parts of the country. Shoppers splashed billions on groceries last month, more than at Christmas, filling their cupboards and freezers as the pandemic panic took hold. As a result, Tesco's sales jumped by almost a third as people began to stockpile, with Londonders hoarding most goods."
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Germany rose by 4,974 in the past 24 hours to 108,202 on Thursday, climbing for the third straight day after four previous days of drops, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The reported death toll rose by 246 to 2,107.
Japan’s health ministry said Thursday that the country had more than 500 new cases for the first time on Wednesday, bringing the national total to 4,768 excluding hundreds from a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo earlier this year.
German's numbers look very like ours 2 weeks ago.
Today's deaths at 4.9% of new cases whereas the long run average is at ~ 2.0% now. Indicates mild cases might be slipping through even Germany's high testing numbers.
She already endorsed him. And yes, it was a cynical lash up.
You'll like this one -
Feel sorry for Bernie Sanders. Was hoping that something would happen to show Americans why they need universal healthcare, unfortunate that nothing came up.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Germany rose by 4,974 in the past 24 hours to 108,202 on Thursday, climbing for the third straight day after four previous days of drops, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The reported death toll rose by 246 to 2,107.
Japan’s health ministry said Thursday that the country had more than 500 new cases for the first time on Wednesday, bringing the national total to 4,768 excluding hundreds from a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo earlier this year.
German's numbers look very like ours 2 weeks ago.
Today's deaths at 4.9% of new cases whereas the long run average is at ~ 2.0% now. Indicates mild cases might be slipping through even Germany's high testing numbers.
Do we know what the accuracy of the German test is? I was really surprised when Dr Foxy said that the UK one was only ~75-80% accurate and we haven't followed the route of the likes of Spain that bought a load of duff tests from China and put into circulation.
I presume the German one is at least as good, but even high 90% accuracy can still let a lot of people slip through the net. I posted an interesting video on why even tests that are 98% accurate are problematic when it comes to something like a pandemic.
I don't see the need for a unity government but the Opposition should be involved to the extent of having open access to all expert briefings and access as required to the ministers that they are shadowing. Parliament was eventually closed after a frightening number of them got the virus but the government still needs to be held to account, challenged by different points of view and made to address awkward facts. This needs to be done more one to one at the moment but it also needs to be done on an informed basis.
This need is all the more urgent given the lamentable performance by the Westminster press pack. Why they are still giving questions to people who may (or may not) know about politics but who seem essentially innumerate and unable to grasp the clear explanations being presented by the experts is beyond me. Surely the media employ some people with science degrees?
This government has made and will continue to make mistakes. Frankly, if they are not making mistakes they are not moving nearly fast enough. The priority is to spot and correct those mistakes early. An opposition led by someone with a brain can assist with that. Its a really important role.
The government is refusing point blank to discuss how it is even making decisions just now. The idea that different questions will elicit answers with any meaning when it is so contemptuous of being held to account and so readily supported by gullible followers is fanciful.
But they have. Cabinet are meeting and cabinet are making decisions.
Collective responsibility is a polite fiction not a decision-making process. Unless you believe that all decisions are inevitably unanimous because no other decision could be reached on the evidence.
Whose finger is on the button?
Regrettably the virus is not vulnerable to a nuclear attack so it doesn't really matter. What is important is that there is what @GeoffM critical feedback.
geoffw. GeoffM was an interesting poster based in Gibraltar iirc.
Apologies. I just clicked on the name suggested without checking.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
To be fair, a max spec Mac Pro (obviously required for reading email and reading documents) costs north of £50,000
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
So you think the government and experts shouldn't yet be thinking about this question at all, or that they should be thinking about it but keeping their deliberations a secret?
There is actually a solid public health reason for not being totally open with their deliberations, namely that the effectiveness of the current lockdown could be dangerously impaired if the public gets the impression that the worst is over and it's all plain sailing from here. The result? More time spent in lockdown, more economic damage, more infections, more deaths.
This is where that wide-eyed Labour naiveté - even from someone like Starmer, who should know better - has me shaking my head.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
"Middle classes in the south of England were to blame for stockpiling, Tesco’s boss suggested, as the supermarket’s data revealed it was less of an issue in other parts of the country. Shoppers splashed billions on groceries last month, more than at Christmas, filling their cupboards and freezers as the pandemic panic took hold. As a result, Tesco's sales jumped by almost a third as people began to stockpile, with Londonders hoarding most goods."
I'm not hugely convinced that there was any great number of stockpiliers, when it comes to normal goods. 30% more is on in three people adding another packet of pasta to the one they would already have bought.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
Ah yes, they just released a new iPad, so got to have one of those too!
(They're actually quite lovely, will be replacing my five-year-old iPad with the new Pro in the next few weeks. I have the existing iPad setup with everything I need to work from a pub, the new one will come even closer to replacing the laptop for all but the longest of report writing).
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
So you think the government and experts shouldn't yet be thinking about this question at all, or that they should be thinking about it but keeping their deliberations a secret?
There is actually a solid public health reason for not being totally open with their deliberations, namely that the effectiveness of the current lockdown could be dangerously impaired if the public gets the impression that the worst is over and it's all plain sailing from here. The result? More time spent in lockdown, more economic damage, more infections, more deaths.
This is where that wide-eyed Labour naiveté - even from someone like Starmer, who should know better - has me shaking my head.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
For just doing emails and word processing, you can get a Chromebook or a cheap laptop for just £300-400.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Germany rose by 4,974 in the past 24 hours to 108,202 on Thursday, climbing for the third straight day after four previous days of drops, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The reported death toll rose by 246 to 2,107.
Japan’s health ministry said Thursday that the country had more than 500 new cases for the first time on Wednesday, bringing the national total to 4,768 excluding hundreds from a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo earlier this year.
German's numbers look very like ours 2 weeks ago.
Today's deaths at 4.9% of new cases whereas the long run average is at ~ 2.0% now. Indicates mild cases might be slipping through even Germany's high testing numbers.
Do we know what the accuracy of the German test is? I was really surprised when Dr Foxy said that the UK one was only ~75-80% accurate and we haven't followed the route of the likes of Spain that bought a load of duff tests from China and put into circulation.
I presume the German one is at least as good, but still that lets people slip through the net.
The current test is actually very accurate - the problem is in getting a good swab from the patient.
This means that:
If you get a positive is is almost certain to be right.
If you get a negative, 25% of the time that is due to the swab not getting enough COVID19 on it. So you end up doing multiple tests on some people - 25% of 25% of 25% etc....
I don't see the need for a unity government but the Opposition should be involved to the extent of having open access to all expert briefings and access as required to the ministers that they are shadowing. Parliament was eventually closed after a frightening number of them got the virus but the government still needs to be held to account, challenged by different points of view and made to address awkward facts. This needs to be done more one to one at the moment but it also needs to be done on an informed basis.
This need is all the more urgent given the lamentable performance by the Westminster press pack. Why they are still giving questions to people who may (or may not) know about politics but who seem essentially innumerate and unable to grasp the clear explanations being presented by the experts is beyond me. Surely the media employ some people with science degrees?
This government has made and will continue to make mistakes. Frankly, if they are not making mistakes they are not moving nearly fast enough. The priority is to spot and correct those mistakes early. An opposition led by someone with a brain can assist with that. Its a really important role.
The government is refusing point blank to discuss how it is even making decisions just now. The idea that different questions will elicit answers with any meaning when it is so contemptuous of being held to account and so readily supported by gullible followers is fanciful.
But they have. Cabinet are meeting and cabinet are making decisions.
Collective responsibility is a polite fiction not a decision-making process. Unless you believe that all decisions are inevitably unanimous because no other decision could be reached on the evidence.
Whose finger is on the button?
Boris is still PM and his letter of last resort to Trident sub commanders still stands in the very unlikely event we are hit by a nuclear strike.
Otherwise constitutionally there is no requirement for a PM other than by convention, the position only arose as the most senior of the monarch's ministers in the 18th century but it is the monarch, not the PM who is head of state.
The PM is simply the most senior member of her majesty's government in parliament
That is a literal answer to what was a metaphorical question.
He has certainly not left a letter indicating how he wished pandemic policy to change over the next weeks and months. There are going to be some hard choices to be made, and the only person with a strong mandate to lead the cabinet in those choices is Boris.
Constitutionally you are correct - but practically, there is for now no clear leader who might rule on cabinet arguments.
Yes there is a clear leader. Its Raab. Raab is deputising for Johnson.
If Raab gets incapacitated too then next in line is Sunak.
What's confusing about that?
Nothing; but in reality, Raab is the nominal leader only. Controversial decisions - and what happens next will be hugely controversial - are not going to be made by Raab.
In a split cabinet, Boris would prevail given his clear mandate. That is simply not the case for Raab.
Which is basically what was said yesterday, about the days of Margaret Thatcher. She would sum up a discussion, in which she had been on the losing, or smaller side and then say that what she had argued for was what they were going to do.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
To be fair, a max spec Mac Pro (obviously required for reading email and reading documents) costs north of £50,000
LOL, yes I've seen those, for the MP who wants to render Pixar-quality animations while working from home. (Or mine Bitcoin all day as they'll be claiming the 'leccy bill on expenses too!)
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
For just doing emails and word processing, you can get a Chromebook or a cheap laptop for just £300-400.
My civil service outfit is allowing staff to purchase kit for home working (monitors etc.). But no way are we allowed anywhere near the sort of money the MPs are getting.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Germany rose by 4,974 in the past 24 hours to 108,202 on Thursday, climbing for the third straight day after four previous days of drops, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The reported death toll rose by 246 to 2,107.
Japan’s health ministry said Thursday that the country had more than 500 new cases for the first time on Wednesday, bringing the national total to 4,768 excluding hundreds from a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo earlier this year.
German's numbers look very like ours 2 weeks ago.
Today's deaths at 4.9% of new cases whereas the long run average is at ~ 2.0% now. Indicates mild cases might be slipping through even Germany's high testing numbers.
Do we know what the accuracy of the German test is? I was really surprised when Dr Foxy said that the UK one was only ~75-80% accurate and we haven't followed the route of the likes of Spain that bought a load of duff tests from China and put into circulation.
I presume the German one is at least as good, but still that lets people slip through the net.
The current test is actually very accurate - the problem is in getting a good swab from the patient.
This means that:
If you get a positive is is almost certain to be right.
If you get a negative, 25% of the time that is due to the swab not getting enough COVID19 on it. So you end up doing multiple tests on some people - 25% of 25% of 25% etc....
I was interested to hear Bill Gates claim that they have done testing that shows there no difference between accuracy from the invasive swabs that go all the way down the nose to the back of throat than just swabbing at the front of the nasal cavity.
I think the government does have an exit strategy, namely:
1. Do not relax restrictions until it is highly probable that new infections will be within the capacity of the NHS to cope 2. Do not relax the restrictions all at once but in a sequence 3. Continually investigate and update the relaxation options including: a. by age group (schools) b. by region c. by economic activity (small shops, construction) and evaluate the economic/health trade off for each option. 4. DO NOT DISCUSS THIS WITH THE PUBLIC. It will encourage anticipation of possible relaxations. Focus the public on obeying current rules.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
For just doing emails and word processing, you can get a Chromebook or a cheap laptop for just £300-400.
Even then I think if you’ve got six staff that’s £2,500.
For example LBG, HSBC, and my own employer are paying staff to buy their own chairs to avoid back pain.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
For just doing emails and word processing, you can get a Chromebook or a cheap laptop for just £300-400.
Even then I think if you’ve got six staff that’s £2,500.
For example LBG, HSBC, and my own employer are paying staff to buy their own chairs to avoid back pain.
"Middle classes in the south of England were to blame for stockpiling, Tesco’s boss suggested, as the supermarket’s data revealed it was less of an issue in other parts of the country. Shoppers splashed billions on groceries last month, more than at Christmas, filling their cupboards and freezers as the pandemic panic took hold. As a result, Tesco's sales jumped by almost a third as people began to stockpile, with Londonders hoarding most goods."
I'm not hugely convinced that there was any great number of stockpiliers, when it comes to normal goods. 30% more is on in three people adding another packet of pasta to the one they would already have bought.
What I think happened, is that a lot of people who ordinarily don't cook very much, filled their cupboards to capacity. I don't mean a vast pile in the living room, I mean all the kitchen storage space.
A much smaller number cleared the garage and bought 3 months of non-perishables.
Given that the government was talking about a three month lock down and we are in lock down (that will probably last 3 months) - not sure that buying a bread maker and three months worth of flour (for example) would count as anything I would consider panic.
I look forward to some real analysis of the supermarket data when this is all over.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
For just doing emails and word processing, you can get a Chromebook or a cheap laptop for just £300-400.
My civil service outfit is allowing staff to purchase kit for home working (monitors etc.). But no way are we allowed anywhere near the sort of money the MPs are getting.
Yes, we're getting reimbursed for two monitors a wireless mouse and keyboard and a decent chair up to £1.5k.
But you do take my serious point, I trust, about the GE19 mandate disappearing.
That phrase "the past is another country" has never been so true. If the country had known on Dec 12th that in a few short weeks Labour would be led by Starmer not Corbyn, that the country would be in lockdown to fight a deadly new virus, and that Brexit would therefore be a matter of zero concern to anybody, how would they have voted? Of course neither you or I can know, but it seems a safe bet that it would have been Hung Parliament with Labour largest party.
Err - No not at all.
It is a pipe dream by labour supporters and will not happen
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
For just doing emails and word processing, you can get a Chromebook or a cheap laptop for just £300-400.
Even then I think if you’ve got six staff that’s £2,500.
For example LBG, HSBC, and my own employer are paying staff to buy their own chairs to avoid back pain.
But there’s other costs for working from home.
Silly question, are you saying no staff with currently have laptops? Do they really buy them desktops in this day and age, where nobody needs one, unless you are doing some very specific types of work e.g. ML research.
The obvious setup for an office employee doing clerical stuff, especially if they go out into the community, is a laptop and a monitor.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
To be fair, a max spec Mac Pro (obviously required for reading email and reading documents) costs north of £50,000
LOL, yes I've seen those, for the MP who wants to render Pixar-quality animations while working from home. (Or mine Bitcoin all day as they'll be claiming the 'leccy bill on expenses too!)
How many staff does a MP's office have? All of them will require a laptop, printer and stamps when previously that would just be using Parliament's post room.
I think the government does have an exit strategy, namely:
1. Do not relax restrictions until it is highly probable that new infections will be within the capacity of the NHS to cope 2. Do not relax the restrictions all at once but in a sequence 3. Continually investigate and update the relaxation options including: a. by age group (schools) b. by region c. by economic activity (small shops, construction) and evaluate the economic/health trade off for each option. 4. DO NOT DISCUSS THIS WITH THE PUBLIC. It will encourage anticipation of possible relaxations. Focus the public on obeying current rules.
There you are. A ready made exit trategy.
Brilliant. That IS the Government strategy in a nutshell, which makes it all the more inexplicable that the LOTO wants it to publish something so self-evident.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
For just doing emails and word processing, you can get a Chromebook or a cheap laptop for just £300-400.
Even then I think if you’ve got six staff that’s £2,500.
For example LBG, HSBC, and my own employer are paying staff to buy their own chairs to avoid back pain.
But there’s other costs for working from home.
Silly question, are you saying no staff with currently have laptops? Do they really buy them desktop in this day and age, where nobody needs one unless you are doing some very specific types of work e.g. ML research.
Yep - people who aren't aware will think they are less of a security risk than laptops
I think the government does have an exit strategy, namely:
1. Do not relax restrictions until it is highly probable that new infections will be within the capacity of the NHS to cope 2. Do not relax the restrictions all at once but in a sequence 3. Continually investigate and update the relaxation options including: a. by age group (schools) b. by region c. by economic activity (small shops, construction) and evaluate the economic/health trade off for each option. 4. DO NOT DISCUSS THIS WITH THE PUBLIC. It will encourage anticipation of possible relaxations. Focus the public on obeying current rules.
There you are. A ready made exit trategy.
Brilliant. That IS the Government strategy in a nutshell, which makes it all the more inexplicable that the LOTO wants it to publish something so self-evident.
It`s just mischief-making. Opposition has to find something to moan about.
I think the government does have an exit strategy, namely:
1. Do not relax restrictions until it is highly probable that new infections will be within the capacity of the NHS to cope 2. Do not relax the restrictions all at once but in a sequence 3. Continually investigate and update the relaxation options including: a. by age group (schools) b. by region c. by economic activity (small shops, construction) and evaluate the economic/health trade off for each option. 4. DO NOT DISCUSS THIS WITH THE PUBLIC. It will encourage anticipation of possible relaxations. Focus the public on obeying current rules.
That's quite impressive. Given a high-end laptop comes in at £1,500, Dropbox and Webex are either free or $10 a month, and a 'burner' mobile phone is £500 plus £50 a month for unlimited calls, how the hell does an MP come close to spending £10k on working from home??
For a government with no income that cannot be justified.
It's bonkers, but typical of the way MPs personally have no scruples about voting themselves more largesse funded by the taxpayer.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Got have an iPad Pro as well...you know in case you lose your iMac and your iPhone.
It’s for their staff who normally work in the constituency office but now are now working from home.
For just doing emails and word processing, you can get a Chromebook or a cheap laptop for just £300-400.
Even then I think if you’ve got six staff that’s £2,500.
For example LBG, HSBC, and my own employer are paying staff to buy their own chairs to avoid back pain.
But there’s other costs for working from home.
Silly question, are you saying no staff with currently have laptops? Do they really buy them desktops in this day and age, where nobody needs one, unless you are doing some very specific types of work e.g. ML research.
The obvious setup for an office employee doing clerical stuff, especially if they go out into the community, is a laptop and a monitor.
How are we doing at the 2-weeks behind Italy measure?
The predictable use of it by Boris haters only when we were around the same or worse than Italy is the only reason I ever mentioned it. I just wanted to point out you wouldn’t until you could use it as a criticism, and said so at the time. They call it a free option.
Second time you’ve fallen into the trap.
And you only mentioned it when you wanted to push your whole oblique isn't this a total over reaction about nothing narrative.
Motes and eyes and all that.
As was pointed out it was the direction of travel not the exact numbers that was important.
FPT - Foxy, there are theories that moths are attracted to bright light - positive phototaxis - because they use the moon to navigate and think it is the moon. Certainly, on nights with a full moon, fewer moths are attracted to the competing light of the moth trap.
On the other hand, they might be dumb. Or attracted to the significant warmth of a 125 mercury vapour bulb on a cool night.
One of the annoying things about the lockdown is the inability to nip over to Dartmoor and try and get a better, sharper picture of an Emperor Moth than that I have managed to date. They should be flying low over the heather in good numbers today - conditions are perfect. Hard to convince myself it is an "essential journey" though....even less, to convince Plod! "But look, officer, the wings on this image aren't sharp...It's doing my head in!"
Lovely pic. I just never seem to come across them at rest. Always something zooming away into the middle distance. Their caterpillars are pretty cool though and rather easier to photograph..
The trick is to get a pheromone lure.
And then not to lose it, somewhere on Dartmoor....
As a left-leaner I disagree. It's not 'a safe bet' that the result would have been that. It's massive speculation.
The Conservatives won fair and square under Boris: a handsome victory. They are in charge and they need to sort this out.
The thread-header opinion polling on a GNU was little better than voodoo polling. How are you supposed to oppose such an eminently sensible sounding, but profoundly leading, question?
I don't think Labour should get drawn into this. There are (allegedly) plenty of highly capable Conservative ministers. They can sort it out. What they, and the country, need is a strong, healthy, Boris Johnson back at the helm, not tapping up outsiders.
A left-leaner? Hmm. It's possible that you are but the 'look and feel' is not quite right.
But, yes, I agree with you that a GNU can safely join Corbyn as PM, EURef2, and Trump's re-election as a Not Happening Event. I also agree that Labour should steer well clear of it if it was offered.
As for the Cons winning the election fair and square, yes they did. It was a great victory for them and it provided a clear mandate. Trouble is, the mandate has been demolished in very short order by events. There is just the one issue now - coronavirus - and it received not a single mention in the manifesto.
I think the government does have an exit strategy, namely:
1. Do not relax restrictions until it is highly probable that new infections will be within the capacity of the NHS to cope 2. Do not relax the restrictions all at once but in a sequence 3. Continually investigate and update the relaxation options including: a. by age group (schools) b. by region c. by economic activity (small shops, construction) and evaluate the economic/health trade off for each option. 4. DO NOT DISCUSS THIS WITH THE PUBLIC. It will encourage anticipation of possible relaxations. Focus the public on obeying current rules.
There you are. A ready made exit trategy.
I agree. But would add. Explain clearly and simply what is permitted and what not, and why. No exceptions or special pleading except in the most urgent cases.
"Middle classes in the south of England were to blame for stockpiling, Tesco’s boss suggested, as the supermarket’s data revealed it was less of an issue in other parts of the country. Shoppers splashed billions on groceries last month, more than at Christmas, filling their cupboards and freezers as the pandemic panic took hold. As a result, Tesco's sales jumped by almost a third as people began to stockpile, with Londonders hoarding most goods."
I'm not hugely convinced that there was any great number of stockpiliers, when it comes to normal goods. 30% more is on in three people adding another packet of pasta to the one they would already have bought.
What I think happened, is that a lot of people who ordinarily don't cook very much, filled their cupboards to capacity. I don't mean a vast pile in the living room, I mean all the kitchen storage space.
A much smaller number cleared the garage and bought 3 months of non-perishables.
Given that the government was talking about a three month lock down and we are in lock down (that will probably last 3 months) - not sure that buying a bread maker and three months worth of flour (for example) would count as anything I would consider panic.
I look forward to some real analysis of the supermarket data when this is all over.
There was some the other day sales up by 70% - 120% over loo roll, dried pasta, tins of stuff.
Nothing too outlandish but presumably a shock to the JiT systems.
The 'grown-up' approach is to share and discuss the criteria on which the decision will be made. You don't need to say exactly when it will happen to make progress on the goals of the policy. If a relaxation is weeks away, we should know what we want to achieve by the lockdown now.
You are making the same error Sir Keir deliberately makes - to pretend that the only uncertainty is the duration.
As for what we want to achieve by lockdown, what could possibly be clearer? To save lives and to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It's not exactly complicated, and it has been repeated ad nauseam by the government. How we end it - indeed how any country ends it - is completely unknown at this stage. We just have to be patient.
Nope. We can and should look further ahead. We need a realistic discussion post lockdown.
Are we aiming to eradicate CV19 for the UK now and close borders until a vaccine arises? Are we aiming to keep CV19 cases within he capacity of the NHS to deal with them until a vaccine arises? Are we returning to herd immunity?
Assume it is (2), then it is perfectly possible to model that and suggest what that might mean for people.
I agree, but a grown-up discussion about multiple complex scenarios and trade-offs, all complicated by the current huge uncertainties, is not what Sir Keir is asking for. He is asking for an official strategy - which of course he must know cannot exist, he's not stupid - to be published. I expected much better of him.
Government must have a fairly clear idea by now what conditions would need to be satisfied in order to begin easing the lockdown. If they shared that with us we could at least make our own assessments of the progress we are making towards meeting those criteria.
Comments
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-mps-given-extra-10-000-each-for-home-working-expenses-w0h5sx99l
Keir is right.
That said:
1) You can also make a similar case for KLOBUCHAR, who endorsed at just the right time and seemed very perky right afterwards, maybe she made a deal
2) If it's going to be a black woman there are some other choices - the virus crisis tilts it in an *experienced* direction, but for example how about Susan Rice?
One interesting thing from that "students also available for work.". When I was first an undergrad pretty much everybody I knew got a summer job doing something like this. I worked in a factory and also a food processing plant. I did Christmas and Easter as well.
That really hasn't been the case now, as by the time students return from uni, farms usually have filled the positions by imported labour, as they are able to start much earlier than when student finish for the summer.
If a decision needs to be made and if the Cabinet is split then Raab is in place to make the PM's decision. That's all that matters.
The big decisions right now have been made, as much as the media are acting like idiots about whether lockdown gets extended or not - its not getting extended its getting reviewed, we were told from the start 12 weeks was likely.
The studies of minimum pricing/taxation scheme around the world generally show that a fairly heroic price increase is required to change behaviour. Think Finnish levels. Essentially pricing the poor out of being able to drink.
Strangely, this level of pricing didn't attract approval from the politicians. So they settled on a much lower level.
There isn't even a 13 year old model to just fire up or previous evidence to go on. Nobody has decided to lockdown half the world for months on end. Things are having to be made from scratch / adapted on the fly.
So any preferred option would be based on very limited data / science and could quickly see a "U-Turn" as the academic work rolls in. Sort of like you know the government initial response i.e. dodgy Chinese data in, dodgy result from an old outdated model...
Decisions are being made on the available science and belief to some extent in the modelling from Imperial, although, ultimately, some value judgments will have to be made.
Hector Drummonds blog is well worth a read on this subject.
But you do take my serious point, I trust, about the GE19 mandate disappearing.
That phrase "the past is another country" has never been so true. If the country had known on Dec 12th that in a few short weeks Labour would be led by Starmer not Corbyn, that the country would be in lockdown to fight a deadly new virus, and that Brexit would therefore be a matter of zero concern to anybody, how would they have voted? Of course neither you or I can know, but it seems a safe bet that it would have been Hung Parliament with Labour largest party.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1247914921855254529?s=20
Japan’s health ministry said Thursday that the country had more than 500 new cases for the first time on Wednesday, bringing the national total to 4,768 excluding hundreds from a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo earlier this year.
German's numbers look very like ours 2 weeks ago.
It was the others (eg Oxford) which were btsoyp efforts.
What I meant was the effects are much larger, are multidisciplinary and more sophisticated now. But for modelling our way out of a worldwide lockdown, this is novel territory.
Unfortunately the current cabinet is unlikely to do that, because they owe their jobs to optimizing for brexit enthusiasm instead of competence.
The German model of mass testing and high numbers of ventilators not just lockdown remains the one to follow
The Conservatives won fair and square under Boris: a handsome victory. They are in charge and they need to sort this out.
The thread-header opinion polling on a GNU was little better than voodoo polling. How are you supposed to oppose such an eminently sensible sounding, but profoundly leading, question?
I don't think Labour should get drawn into this. There are (allegedly) plenty of highly capable Conservative ministers. They can sort it out. What they, and the country, need is a strong, healthy, Boris Johnson back at the helm, not tapping up outsiders.
It is why in the initial response, the likes of SAGE spent 2 months looking through all the data available at the time, debating all the options, asking academic to run models. Then when they had considered these, signed off a plan and spoke to the press and the people.
And...even then...new data emerged and required a big change to the plan. Luckily many other strands of the plan, such as establishing overflow capacity, seem to have come together well.
Starmer made an error of judgement (not his first). Watson was downright Machiavellian.
Almost all will actually *need* no more than a phone number so they're not making calls from their personal mobile, and these days I could configure a softphone system, to make it look like they're in the office when they're not, for a few hundred quid all in.
I guess it's good news for Apple, they've probably just sold a couple of thousand laptops and phones.
Shoppers splashed billions on groceries last month, more than at Christmas, filling their cupboards and freezers as the pandemic panic took hold.
As a result, Tesco's sales jumped by almost a third as people began to stockpile, with Londonders hoarding most goods."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/08/middle-classes-south-england-blame-stockpiling-says-tescos-boss/
Indicates mild cases might be slipping through even Germany's high testing numbers.
I presume the German one is at least as good, but even high 90% accuracy can still let a lot of people slip through the net. I posted an interesting video on why even tests that are 98% accurate are problematic when it comes to something like a pandemic.
This is where that wide-eyed Labour naiveté - even from someone like Starmer, who should know better - has me shaking my head.
(They're actually quite lovely, will be replacing my five-year-old iPad with the new Pro in the next few weeks. I have the existing iPad setup with everything I need to work from a pub, the new one will come even closer to replacing the laptop for all but the longest of report writing).
This means that:
If you get a positive is is almost certain to be right.
If you get a negative, 25% of the time that is due to the swab not getting enough COVID19 on it. So you end up doing multiple tests on some people - 25% of 25% of 25% etc....
A couple of hundred pounds can get all the quality IT that is required. Not a couple of thousand or ten thousand.
We're talking millions of pounds wasted here. For what?
1. Do not relax restrictions until it is highly probable that new infections will be within the capacity of the NHS to cope
2. Do not relax the restrictions all at once but in a sequence
3. Continually investigate and update the relaxation options including:
a. by age group (schools)
b. by region
c. by economic activity (small shops, construction)
and evaluate the economic/health trade off for each option.
4. DO NOT DISCUSS THIS WITH THE PUBLIC. It will encourage anticipation of possible relaxations. Focus the public on obeying current rules.
There you are. A ready made exit trategy.
For example LBG, HSBC, and my own employer are paying staff to buy their own chairs to avoid back pain.
But there’s other costs for working from home.
Are there any ex-MEPs who are now MPs? If so, have they received two allowances?
A much smaller number cleared the garage and bought 3 months of non-perishables.
Given that the government was talking about a three month lock down and we are in lock down (that will probably last 3 months) - not sure that buying a bread maker and three months worth of flour (for example) would count as anything I would consider panic.
I look forward to some real analysis of the supermarket data when this is all over.
It is a pipe dream by labour supporters and will not happen
The obvious setup for an office employee doing clerical stuff, especially if they go out into the community, is a laptop and a monitor.
Motes and eyes and all that.
As was pointed out it was the direction of travel not the exact numbers that was important.
https://order-order.com/2020/04/09/labour-councillor-thinks-boriss-icu-stay-publicity-stunt/
And then not to lose it, somewhere on Dartmoor....
Sheldon Thomas, who founded the Gangsline Foundation Trust, said county lines and "cuckooing" activity have also decreased."
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-gang-rivalries-put-on-hold-and-violence-stops-due-to-lockdown-11970591
But, yes, I agree with you that a GNU can safely join Corbyn as PM, EURef2, and Trump's re-election as a Not Happening Event. I also agree that Labour should steer well clear of it if it was offered.
As for the Cons winning the election fair and square, yes they did. It was a great victory for them and it provided a clear mandate. Trouble is, the mandate has been demolished in very short order by events. There is just the one issue now - coronavirus - and it received not a single mention in the manifesto.
https://twitter.com/ScotParl/status/1248185155069624321?s=20
Nothing too outlandish but presumably a shock to the JiT systems.