The government is still committed to driving the country over a cliff at the end of the year .
Every time you think Sunak might be quite sane the lunacy of that decision brings home the fact that beneath the veneer of sanity which might have been shown with their response to the economic impact of the virus you’ll still find a bunch of nutjobs .
Can you explain your first sentence
Nothings ready . The virus has stopped the recruitment of customs officers , no infrastructure in NI , business after being devastated by the virus will be forced to enact more changes with little time left .
Only a government which has become ideologically fixated with ending the transition period at the end of the year would subject business to this . Even many Leavers are okay with extending that but the government seems determined to plow on regardless!
It’s absolute lunacy !
Actually Leavers are opposed 48% to 37% to extending the transition period
Thanks - but wait until the REALLY showy stuff starts turning up!
Amazing colours! Did you paint that yourself?
A slightly worn Garden Tiger. A moth that has declined sharply in recent years. I have left a rank area of the garden to give it a fighting chance. (My excuse for the rank area of the garden....)
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
Which Scotland's National Clinical Director called rubbish.
Who to believe the SNP or the clinical director?
Neither. Believe the evidence that care homes in Scotland and Wales were refused supplies on the direction of Public Health England. I would suggest NOT screaming "false narrative peddled by the SNP playing politics in the midst of a pandemic". Instead I would suggest either explaining the equally good Scottish and Welsh arrangements that are available to care homes in those countries, or admit someone screwed up and we'll sort it out. This denial in the face of evidence is doing no-one any good.
Actually Public Health England said they would be pleased to help but the Scottish government needed to step up with the funding first.
Sturgeon must have known she was peddling a false narrative
Why would a Nat do that I wonder?
As far as I can see we are getting outright denial that the situation has arisen at all. In any case, it's not answering the question. These care homes are desperate for PPE and their staff dying due to a lack of it but they are told they can't have any because they are Scottish or Welsh. They need a much better explanation than that. If the policy is that the UK government allocates 85% or whatever it is to England on a population share provided through authorised dealers while Scotland and Wales handle their share through other named distributors, for goodness sake make that clear.
So it's my birthday today .. read on if you need light relief:
Ate an apple and lost a filling. Went to dentist - closed because of the lockdown. Rang number and can only get antibiotics if the pain gets bad. Came back to the car - flat tyre. Emergency people take me to garage in Las Norias - 2 day wait and nearly €200 for a new one. Back home and it just started raining - I live in the sunniest and driest region in Europe. One hour later vomited up breakfast. WTF! Almost as unbelievable as the idea a deadly virus could paralyse the world in a few months.
The saddest thing about this Scotland v England PPE story is that many SNP supporters will actually believe it.
Though there has been appropriate criticism of Labour's recent racism problems, anti-English racism has rather got a pass from the media.
Thank goodness anti Scottish racism has been shown up to be the fantasy that it is.
I have never encountered anti-Scottish racism anywhere in England, except perhaps a bit of borderline national stereotyping about parsimony and yet you only have to get in a taxi from the airport in Glasgow to the centre to hear anti-English racism on regular occasion. It normally starts with " I am not anti-English but...." and then a tedious prejudiced rant about "the English" as though we are some homogenous group of Jacob Rees Moggs. I spent two years travelling to Scotland once a week, and while I met some of the nicest friendliest people in the world, they were also interspersed with a significant minority who were some of the worst bigots I have ever encountered. I suspect most of the latter vote SNP.
Definitely happened.
I'm reminded of those outraged folk who say that some bloke in a pub called them an 'English cnut' under the mistaken impression that only one of those descriptors was accurate.
Cunt or otherwise, the fact would not usually be brought to someone's attention in a pub by a stranger, or paired with the unfortunate person's nationality as if this was part of the insult. If someone in a pub in England was called a 'Scottish cunt', I would condemn it as racist bigotry.
Which Scotland's National Clinical Director called rubbish.
Who to believe the SNP or the clinical director?
I didn't think the intellectual level could be lowered, but hey..
You mean the clinical director who works for the SNP government and regularly appears at briefings with the SNP FM? Who is this 'the SNP' of whom you speak and what unbelievable things have they been saying?
Embarrassing that their own clinical director says Sturgeon's claim is rubbish,he's obviously seen through her diversionary tactics.
Any idea why Sturgeon is only allowing one question at her briefings before the mic is cut off with no follow up questions allowed?
To make it easier for the FM and fairer for the journalists. Or possibly because the SNP has not cottoned on to Number 10's technique of allowing three questions then mysteriously forgetting to answer the harder ones.
Steve Bannon predicted that it would not end well with Trump. It would end very badly.
It's intriguing to consider how he will act post presidency (assuming he avoids jail). I can see no way that he will let go of his "base". I think he'll monetize it big time. The adoration of 50 million total mugs. That means DOLLARS.
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Has the government released any results from the Porton Down testing? I can't find any, and I was hoping by now that it would provide a good guide to the general rate of infection in the country.
The article that was posted here said they would be doing it "in the coming months", so I'm not holding my breath.
This tweet is interesting: https://twitter.com/Simmonds_Lab/status/1248626116463452163. 1000 blood donors in Scotland were screened on 17 March and 21-23 March for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and 6 were found to be positive (but asymptomatic presumably). This is 0.6%. On 22nd March there were 5683 confirmed cases in the UK (Wikipedia) and today there are 93,873 cases.
0.6% x 93873/5683 = 9.9%. Allowing for the growth of the epidemic there could now be about 10% with antibodies in Scotland. Obviously 6 is a small number of positives so there is significant statistical uncertainty about this.
Two correcting factors can be allowed for. Due to seroconversion time antibody tests cannot detect the virus immediately after infection, so some cases would be missed by this type of test. Secondly, most people who donate blood do not do so when they have been sick, so this could also reduce the number of cases detected to below the prevalent level. Based on these test results the proportion of people in Scotland who have at some time been infected with SARS-CoV-2 could be around 10% or even more.
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Mr Gompels explained that the PPE in question had come from Public Health England’s own stocks which were stockpiled in case of a flu pandemic. Much of the kit was in storage and past sell by date, but has been retested so safe to use in coronavirus.
“I somehow can’t imagine Scottish health authorities supplying English care homes to be perfectly blunt.” Sam Gompels, MD of Gompels HealthCare
The government is still committed to driving the country over a cliff at the end of the year .
Every time you think Sunak might be quite sane the lunacy of that decision brings home the fact that beneath the veneer of sanity which might have been shown with their response to the economic impact of the virus you’ll still find a bunch of nutjobs .
Sunak certainly looks good enough to be next Prime Minister; certainly better than the others we've seen recently. He is the only one I've heard get favourable reactions in my ad hoc focus groups of people in the fish and chip shop where they have the telly on. He slightly reminds me of Obama but that could be because I've just watched the Obama endorsement video posted earlier.
BUT I doubt Sunak will ever be PM now Boris has survived his brush with Covid-19. If Theresa May had made Sunak Chancellor then he may well have beaten Boris to the top job last summer but she didn't so he didn't. If there is no scandal then Boris will hang around for the next decade, and if there is then Boris might take Sunak down with him and eventually Sunak will be added to the list of best prime ministers we never had.
There seems to be 'summat up' with Vanilla. Couldn't edit my post to remove an old quote I had forgotten to reply to. If we can't edit, expect posts from me to be even messier and more typo-laden than before!
Not sure why people express views on political agreements like that. If you cannot arrange a majority that's hard cheese. I don't think Jacinda thinks she lost her last election.
Steve Bannon predicted that it would not end well with Trump. It would end very badly.
It's intriguing to consider how he will act post presidency (assuming he avoids jail). I can see no way that he will let go of his "base". I think he'll monetize it big time. The adoration of 50 million total mugs. That means DOLLARS.
He already is - the Trump campaign and RNC raised $212 million first quarter.
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Mr Gompels explained that the PPE in question had come from Public Health England’s own stocks which were stockpiled in case of a flu pandemic. Much of the kit was in storage and past sell by date, but has been retested so safe to use in coronavirus.
“I somehow can’t imagine Scottish health authorities supplying English care homes to be perfectly blunt.” Sam Gompels, MD of Gompels HealthCare
One of the things about the asymmetry between the nations of the UK is that Public Health England is a very different beast in size and scope to Public Health Wales, the new Public Health Scotland and the Public Health Agency in NI.
In certain respects PHE effectively works as Public Health UK, in other respects it doesn't. Because of that split, and particularly because of its association with national government, it wouldn't seem unreasonable to many people if PHE released its own stockpile to access by the other nations... and indeed it will seem unreasonable, particularly to some of those who live outside England, if they didn't! If we had, say, very strong regional "Public Health Yorkshire", "Public Health London" type agencies, then it might seem less unfair for them to release their stockpiles only to local users (though it would still seem messy and uncoordinated, at least it wouldn't seem like Scotland, Wales and NI were being discriminated against).
This is purely a comment on the optics. What is actually a sensible way of dealing with the agencies' stockpiles, goodness only knows - I suspect if Scotland or Wales were at the heart of the outbreak and their stockpiles were running low, efforts would be being made to transfer more stuff to them. Obviously there's a moral hazard issue if smaller agencies didn't "need" to keep a stockpile because the other agencies would always bail them out, but I don't think this is the time or place to worry about moral hazard (cf the banking crisis).
Agreed that Trump is not beaten, and that the Dems do not have the best candidate to beat him. But Trump's approval should be markedly better currently given he is the incumbent mid-crisis. That he has received almost no crisis bounce in his approvals bodes really badly for him
And it's bugging him something terrible. He's really chasing it now. I predict implosion.
His ego won`t allow exposing himself to defeat. He can`t bear losing. This is why, as I`ve said before, that if internal pollsters tell him he is unlikely to win, he will withdraw, loudly and petulantly, rather than run and be defeated. Even at this late stage I don`t think it`s a cert that he`ll run.
I have my doubts as to whether Trump is going to be up for the hard grind that is going to be required to sort out the post-virus mess which will totally dominate any second term he gets. I think he may jump ship if it looks like he is headed for defeat. The world will be a better place the day he disappears from view.
Not sure why people express views on political agreements like that. If you cannot arrange a majority that's hard cheese. I don't think Jacinda thinks she lost her last election.
Ironic Sinn Fein will be in government in Belfast not Dublin though despite getting a higher percentage of votes in the Republic of Ireland than Northern Ireland
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Mr Gompels explained that the PPE in question had come from Public Health England’s own stocks which were stockpiled in case of a flu pandemic. Much of the kit was in storage and past sell by date, but has been retested so safe to use in coronavirus.
“I somehow can’t imagine Scottish health authorities supplying English care homes to be perfectly blunt.” Sam Gompels, MD of Gompels HealthCare
One of the things about the asymmetry between the nations of the UK is that Public Health England is a very different beast in size and scope to Public Health Wales, the new Public Health Scotland and the Public Health Agency in NI.
In certain respects PHE effectively works as Public Health UK, in other respects it doesn't. Because of that split, and particularly because of its association with national government, it wouldn't seem unreasonable to many people if PHE released its own stockpile to access by the other nations... and indeed it will seem unreasonable, particularly to some of those who live outside England, if they didn't! If we had, say, very strong regional "Public Health Yorkshire", "Public Health London" type agencies, then it might seem less unfair for them to release their stockpiles only to local users (though it would still seem messy and uncoordinated, at least it wouldn't seem like Scotland, Wales and NI were being discriminated against).
This is purely a comment on the optics. What is actually a sensible way of dealing with the agencies' stockpiles, goodness only knows - I suspect if Scotland or Wales were at the heart of the outbreak and their stockpiles were running low, efforts would be being made to transfer more stuff to them. Obviously there's a moral hazard issue if smaller agencies didn't "need" to keep a stockpile because the other agencies would always bail them out, but I don't think this is the time or place to worry about moral hazard (cf the banking crisis).
I don't see why English systems should be made poorer just because the Scottish system isn't up to snuff (yet?) or due to SNP / Nationalist politicking.
Perhaps we need to consider undevolving some things instead as well as devolving some extra things, when we eventually get around to a careful review of the Curate's Egg that is devolution.
The government is still committed to driving the country over a cliff at the end of the year .
Every time you think Sunak might be quite sane the lunacy of that decision brings home the fact that beneath the veneer of sanity which might have been shown with their response to the economic impact of the virus you’ll still find a bunch of nutjobs .
Can you explain your first sentence
Leaving the EU with a trade deal. There was a time you were strongly opposed to such a thing.
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Mr Gompels explained that the PPE in question had come from Public Health England’s own stocks which were stockpiled in case of a flu pandemic. Much of the kit was in storage and past sell by date, but has been retested so safe to use in coronavirus.
“I somehow can’t imagine Scottish health authorities supplying English care homes to be perfectly blunt.” Sam Gompels, MD of Gompels HealthCare
One of the things about the asymmetry between the nations of the UK is that Public Health England is a very different beast in size and scope to Public Health Wales, the new Public Health Scotland and the Public Health Agency in NI.
In certain respects PHE effectively works as Public Health UK, in other respects it doesn't. Because of that split, and particularly because of its association with national government, it wouldn't seem unreasonable to many people if PHE released its own stockpile to access by the other nations... and indeed it will seem unreasonable, particularly to some of those who live outside England, if they didn't! If we had, say, very strong regional "Public Health Yorkshire", "Public Health London" type agencies, then it might seem less unfair for them to release their stockpiles only to local users (though it would still seem messy and uncoordinated, at least it wouldn't seem like Scotland, Wales and NI were being discriminated against).
This is purely a comment on the optics. What is actually a sensible way of dealing with the agencies' stockpiles, goodness only knows - I suspect if Scotland or Wales were at the heart of the outbreak and their stockpiles were running low, efforts would be being made to transfer more stuff to them. Obviously there's a moral hazard issue if smaller agencies didn't "need" to keep a stockpile because the other agencies would always bail them out, but I don't think this is the time or place to worry about moral hazard (cf the banking crisis).
Great post. Regardless of optics and moral hazard and politics, the most effective overall approach is simply to pool resources and to apply them to where they are most needed and will be most effective, albeit within the other constraint of having to manage these resources not just in the moment, but over the duration of the crisis.
I’ve never eaten them myself but the flowers and leaves of primroses can be eaten. Flower petals get put into salads. The same can be done with violas, for instance. Or nasturtiums.
The leaves are a bit tougher so you’d have to cook them. Or you can crystallise them.
Personally, early spring flowers are so welcome that I like looking at them rather than using them.
Not sure why people express views on political agreements like that. If you cannot arrange a majority that's hard cheese. I don't think Jacinda thinks she lost her last election.
Ironic Sinn Fein will be in government in Belfast not Dublin though despite getting a higher percentage of votes in the Republic of Ireland than Northern Ireland
WRONG!
NI Assembly election 2017 = 27.9% Sinn Fein Republic general election 2020 = 24.5% Sinn Fein
I’ve never eaten them myself but the flowers and leaves of primroses can be eaten. Flower petals get put into salads. The same can be done with violas, for instance. Or nasturtiums.
The leaves are a bit tougher so you’d have to cook them. Or you can crystallise them.
Personally, early spring flowers are so welcome that I like looking at them rather than using them.
We had our first aparagus of the year from our garden on Easter Sunday - earliest ever. Just crowing saying.
Not sure why people express views on political agreements like that. If you cannot arrange a majority that's hard cheese. I don't think Jacinda thinks she lost her last election.
Ironic Sinn Fein will be in government in Belfast not Dublin though despite getting a higher percentage of votes in the Republic of Ireland than Northern Ireland
WRONG!
NI Assembly election 2017 = 27.9% Sinn Fein Republic general election 2020 = 24.5% Sinn Fein
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Golly, Mr Gompels can't even get the site of his own company singing from the same hymn sheet.
His website is clear - PHE says these masks can only be supplied in England. Or do you think NHS Scotland should be supplying English Care homes from its stockpile?
Nat outrage factory scores own goal showing up NHS Scotland.
The lower graph looks like not much of a change, but this is actually a surge back for the CDU/CSU. For most of the last 12 months they were comfotably under 30% and only 5 points above the Greens (at times closer).
Edit to point out that the CDU surge started early to mid march.
Hardly unique - the lead Government party is doing well in almost every country - some other examples which you forgot to mention:
Austria - ruling OVP lead by 25 points Spain - ruling Socialists lead by 8 points. Denmark - ruling Social Democrats lead by 13 points. Malta - ruling Labour Party lead by 35 points (to be fair that's down from a 40 point lead last month). Poland - ruling Law & Justice Party lead by 25 points,
To be fair, the governing parties in Estonia and Slovenia not doing so well.
Hardly unique - the lead Government party is doing well in almost every country - some other examples which you forgot to mention:
Austria - ruling OVP lead by 25 points Spain - ruling Socialists lead by 8 points. Denmark - ruling Social Democrats lead by 13 points. Malta - ruling Labour Party lead by 35 points (to be fair that's down from a 40 point lead last month). Poland - ruling Law & Justice Party lead by 25 points,
To be fair, the governing parties in Estonia and Slovenia not doing so well.
I don't think he forgot to mention anything, he was only posting the poll results.
VERY finely balanced. We need STV to sort this one out.
Well done to the 36% answering "don't know". Certainly the correct answer for almost all respondents, and nice to see a reasonable number of people (albeit nowhere near a majority) with the wisdom to accept their own limitations.
I continue to suspect that the Nightingales, even if originally conceived as extra capacity to deal with the current emergency, are now being built more with the second wave in mind, or possibly even the third.
If there are further spikes in Covid cases then it may become necessary to move seriously ill patients into the emergency hospitals to free up space for treatment to continue in the conventional ones, even if (as now seems possible) the NHS can cope without them using its existing capacity if it simply shoos enough non-Covid patients away.
Remember, at the moment a lot of resources are being diverted away from other treatments to fight Covid. If routine screening, elective surgery and so on keep being cancelled indefinitely then the negative effects of that on health outcomes could be enough to outweigh all the efforts to put a cap on the coronavirus, even before all the implications of the lockdown are also taken into consideration.
Not sure why people express views on political agreements like that. If you cannot arrange a majority that's hard cheese. I don't think Jacinda thinks she lost her last election.
Ironic Sinn Fein will be in government in Belfast not Dublin though despite getting a higher percentage of votes in the Republic of Ireland than Northern Ireland
WRONG!
NI Assembly election 2017 = 27.9% Sinn Fein Republic general election 2020 = 24.5% Sinn Fein
You know that if the subject is about forming a government in NI then you don't take election results from a UKGE. It is as absurd as saying the Conservatives should not be in government because they only got 8.8% of the vote in a national election last year.
The government is still committed to driving the country over a cliff at the end of the year .
Every time you think Sunak might be quite sane the lunacy of that decision brings home the fact that beneath the veneer of sanity which might have been shown with their response to the economic impact of the virus you’ll still find a bunch of nutjobs .
Can you explain your first sentence
Leaving the EU with a trade deal. There was a time you were strongly opposed to such a thing.
I am only opposed to a deal that prevents us trading with the ROW, fails to recognises we are an independent coastal country and that we have control over our laws, and have no responsibilty, especially now, for eurozone debt
Not sure why people express views on political agreements like that. If you cannot arrange a majority that's hard cheese. I don't think Jacinda thinks she lost her last election.
I suppose it's because those people are denied the chance to confirm that they are comfortable to proceed with being governed by such a grand coalition for the next 5 years, when FF and FG were campaigning on an entirely different premise throughout the earlier GE campaign.
If as part of this deal there was first to be another immediate GE and the combined FF and FG seats then held up enough to sustain such a coalition, then fair enough. However, that's not on offer.
The alternative, if you don't like FPTP, is to move to variants of PR which allocate additional top up seats to the coalition of parties getting the most votes. Parties are then incentivised to form transparent coalitions prior to the GE, as they won't stand a chance of forming the next government if their coalition doesn't capture the top up bonus.
The government is still committed to driving the country over a cliff at the end of the year .
Every time you think Sunak might be quite sane the lunacy of that decision brings home the fact that beneath the veneer of sanity which might have been shown with their response to the economic impact of the virus you’ll still find a bunch of nutjobs .
Can you explain your first sentence
Leaving the EU with a trade deal. There was a time you were strongly opposed to such a thing.
I am only opposed to a deal that prevents us trading with the ROW, fails to recognises we are an independent coastal country and that we have control over our laws, and have no responsibilty, especially now, for eurozone debt
They will have to extend transition. We all know that. HMG just need to pick their time to announce it.
The government is still committed to driving the country over a cliff at the end of the year .
Every time you think Sunak might be quite sane the lunacy of that decision brings home the fact that beneath the veneer of sanity which might have been shown with their response to the economic impact of the virus you’ll still find a bunch of nutjobs .
Can you explain your first sentence
Leaving the EU with a trade deal. There was a time you were strongly opposed to such a thing.
I am only opposed to a deal that prevents us trading with the ROW, fails to recognises we are an independent coastal country and that we have control over our laws, and have no responsibilty, especially now, for eurozone debt
They will have to extend transition. We all know that. HMG just need to pick their time to announce it.
I didn't have the chance to listen to Rishi Sunak's comments at today's press briefing but clearly the economic impact of the coronavirus is exercising his mind as you would expect.
I would have thought the priority, once the health crisis has eased, would be to get economic activity going again and then worry about the deficit and the public finances as it's as important to get the money coming in before we worry about the money going out.
Bringing the finances back under control (which presumably means a balanced budget) isn't going to be easy if economic activity remains in the doldrums. I presume it will then be back to the tired old argument of one person's spending cut or another person's tax increase.
I've seen it reported (a bit like radio audience numbers I suppose) that the triple lock might be under threat. Not one of the Coalition's finest hours perhaps though it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Mr Gompels explained that the PPE in question had come from Public Health England’s own stocks which were stockpiled in case of a flu pandemic. Much of the kit was in storage and past sell by date, but has been retested so safe to use in coronavirus.
“I somehow can’t imagine Scottish health authorities supplying English care homes to be perfectly blunt.” Sam Gompels, MD of Gompels HealthCare
One of the things about the asymmetry between the nations of the UK is that Public Health England is a very different beast in size and scope to Public Health Wales, the new Public Health Scotland and the Public Health Agency in NI.
In certain respects PHE effectively works as Public Health UK, in other respects it doesn't. Because of that split, and particularly because of its association with national government, it wouldn't seem unreasonable to many people if PHE released its own stockpile to access by the other nations... and indeed it will seem unreasonable, particularly to some of those who live outside England, if they didn't! If we had, say, very strong regional "Public Health Yorkshire", "Public Health London" type agencies, then it might seem less unfair for them to release their stockpiles only to local users (though it would still seem messy and uncoordinated, at least it wouldn't seem like Scotland, Wales and NI were being discriminated against).
This is purely a comment on the optics. What is actually a sensible way of dealing with the agencies' stockpiles, goodness only knows - I suspect if Scotland or Wales were at the heart of the outbreak and their stockpiles were running low, efforts would be being made to transfer more stuff to them. Obviously there's a moral hazard issue if smaller agencies didn't "need" to keep a stockpile because the other agencies would always bail them out, but I don't think this is the time or place to worry about moral hazard (cf the banking crisis).
Great post. Regardless of optics and moral hazard and politics, the most effective overall approach is simply to pool resources and to apply them to where they are most needed and will be most effective, albeit within the other constraint of having to manage these resources not just in the moment, but over the duration of the crisis.
Yes, the over the duration bit is important and obviously it's harder because we don't know with certainty how long that will be or how badly different parts of the country will be affected! I think it's what the Operational Research guys call a hierarchical dynamic stochastic programming problem... the maths is complicated but the intuition is pretty obvious, the more constraints you apply (eg stockpile X can only be used in place Y), the more suboptimal your overall solution becomes.
I don't see why English systems should be made poorer just because the Scottish system isn't up to snuff (yet?) or due to SNP / Nationalist politicking.
Perhaps we need to consider undevolving some things instead as well as devolving some extra things, when we eventually get around to a careful review of the Curate's Egg that is devolution.
But it will all need a long, careful process.
Fundamentally, as per @TimT, the "best" thing to do in terms of overall outcomes is pool and distribute as needed. Any region hoarding is suboptimal, and regions focusing on their own needs first are suboptimal if the need is greater elsewhere. Now you might say regional bodies have a remit to do what's best for their individual region, and they aren't tasked to worry about "the whole", but ultimately if we're in a United Kingdom - and particularly if the government of the UK wants to keep things that way - then frankly someone at the top ought to just put their foot down and say "we're taking care of the whole country, no squabbling, pool your kit and do what's best for everyone".
The political angle is that the asymmetry between Public Health England and its counterpart matters - in reality, it's unlikely that the stockpiles in Scotland or Wales or NI would have enough surplus to bail England out if England were worst hit, but England's stockpile ought to be an order of magnitude bigger than the rest of them combined and would be relevant if the others were in trouble. Moreover, the English stockpile is effectively under the control of UK central government, whereas the others are under the devolved administrations. It's really not a good look for the UK government to be seen to be denying vital PPE to sectors in desperate need in the devolved nations, regardless of whether those users "ought", in your view, to be looking at the devolved stockpile first. Neither is it a good look for the devolved and Westminster governments to be rowing about who's cocked up or blocking what.
What would be really interesting from a political point of view, though I cross my fingers it never comes to this, is if England were hardest-hit, stocks were running low, and Westminster was facing the issue of "should we demand some of the Scottish and Welsh inventories be released for English use to at least alleviate the disaster?" As per @TimT that would almost certainly be the optimal solution in terms of health outcomes. But the optics of that would look absolutely awful. That's a suggestion Westminster should really be seeking to avoid.
I suggest the different administrations should get their thinking hats on and (maybe quietly) come together to agree on a resource pooling strategy.
Not sure why people express views on political agreements like that. If you cannot arrange a majority that's hard cheese. I don't think Jacinda thinks she lost her last election.
Ironic Sinn Fein will be in government in Belfast not Dublin though despite getting a higher percentage of votes in the Republic of Ireland than Northern Ireland
WRONG!
NI Assembly election 2017 = 27.9% Sinn Fein Republic general election 2020 = 24.5% Sinn Fein
I've seen it reported (a bit like radio audience numbers I suppose) that the triple lock might be under threat. Not one of the Coalition's finest hours perhaps though it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
The cessation of the endless kowtowing to the "But I paid my taxes!" stick-bangers would be a sure sign that the Conservatives intend actually to help someone beyond their core audience of the rich and the elderly.
This would be especially fitting when, ten years after an economic crisis during which the young were pummelled whilst the old were largely insulated from its fallout by the gold-plating of state pensions, we now arrive in an even worse situation in which the livelihoods and future prospects of the young are (once again) thrown on the bonfire, this time in the course of the country's efforts to fight a disease that preys disproportionately upon the old.
Call me a dreadful cynic but I'll believe it when I see it.
I didn't have the chance to listen to Rishi Sunak's comments at today's press briefing but clearly the economic impact of the coronavirus is exercising his mind as you would expect.
I would have thought the priority, once the health crisis has eased, would be to get economic activity going again and then worry about the deficit and the public finances as it's as important to get the money coming in before we worry about the money going out.
Bringing the finances back under control (which presumably means a balanced budget) isn't going to be easy if economic activity remains in the doldrums. I presume it will then be back to the tired old argument of one person's spending cut or another person's tax increase.
I've seen it reported (a bit like radio audience numbers I suppose) that the triple lock might be under threat. Not one of the Coalition's finest hours perhaps though it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
There won't be many after his job for a while.
A synchronised printing of money globally is clearly the solution. It's hard to know what the risks are though. It'd be a one time deal and it'd risk an inflation spike in the tens of percent. Alternatively no-one would notice.
I think that's about what that 6,000 figure for one week implies. That's why I thought it looked consistent with a total of 50,000 deaths for the whole wave.
Corbynism may be going down in flames. It looks like the Corbynistas are attempting to take the mother ship down with them. Every last man (and woman) jack of them are scoundrels to the core.
I think that's about what that 6,000 figure for one week implies. That's why I thought it looked consistent with a total of 50,000 deaths for the whole wave.
Do you reckon the 2500 ‘non covid’ extra deaths are covid in care homes?
Not surprising in the slightest. She probably leaked it as well. Formby had an obvious motive in that she wants to stop Oldknow from taking her job.
Which part of at the EHRC request of full disclosure do you not understand
"Every member of staff at Labour HQ who had any knowledge or involvement in the allegations was asked to do the same – in what I’m told is in requirement with the EHRC request of full disclosure.
The research for the report granted the writers access to staff members' emails and they looked at approximately 100,000 while compiling the report."
One source told me that by chance they “found much more than they bargained for.”
Every member of staff at Labour HQ who had any knowledge or involvement in the allegations was asked to do the same – in what I’m told is in requirement with the EHRC request of full disclosure.
The research for the report granted the writers access to staff members' emails and they looked at approximately 100,000 while compiling the report.
One source told me that by chance they “found much more than they bargained for.”
In one case a senior Labour staffer had sent themselves their entire WhatsApp conversation history – which included group chats of colleagues at Labour HQ discussing their opinions about Corbyn and Labour’s performance at the 2017 general election.
Some of the conversations included “abusive and inappropriate language about the leader, MPs, Labour members and about other staff”, the report claims.
Corbynism may be going down in flames. It looks like the Corbynistas are attempting to take the mother ship down with them. Every last man (and woman) jack of them are scoundrels to the core.
The only residual issue will be why on earth Starmer served under Corbyn?
He has to argue it was for the greater good and he has to do it really soon. In doing so he'll be disposing of Momentum.
The cessation of the endless kowtowing to the "But I paid my taxes!" stick-bangers would be a sure sign that the Conservatives intend actually to help someone beyond their core audience of the rich and the elderly.
This would be especially fitting when, ten years after an economic crisis during which the young were pummelled whilst the old were largely insulated from its fallout by the gold-plating of state pensions, we now arrive in an even worse situation in which the livelihoods and future prospects of the young are (once again) thrown on the bonfire, this time in the course of the country's efforts to fight a disease that preys disproportionately upon the old.
Call me a dreadful cynic but I'll believe it when I see it.
It would be, to quote Sir Humphrey, "courageous" but it's not as though Starmer will be in any position to restore it. As part of a general series of pain likely in say 2022 (not a nice midterm present but there you go) it might be the least worst option and Sunak's popularity is going to do an Icarus.
The questions are when and how Sunak will try to put the public finances back into order - one could argue we ran with QE long after it was necessary and thus kept interest rates artificially low prolonging the lives of zombie companies which would otherwise have failed - and whether the politics will override the economics.
"To pay for [social care in old age], Burnham tells me we should tap the wealth of the older generation, so everyone contributes 15% of their assets on retirement, usually through equity release on their property: the state pays for those without assets. Every family keeps 85%, so no family risks losing everything after paying for years of care: with risk fairly shared, inheritances are secured, with better free care for all. Who owns care homes is secondary once all staff are NHS/care employees. Gordon Brown so liked the plan he sent Burnham a framed front page of the 1948 NHS act on his 40th birthday, writing that he would be “the new Bevan”. It didn’t work out that way – or not yet."
Better get their fingers out and let @gompelshc ('one of the biggest suppliers to Scottish care homes') know then, they seemed to gave got the wrong end of the stick.
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
“The fact is Public Health England got their finger out and organised these distribution channels and are getting pilloried for it because public health Scotland, or whatever the equivalent is, have not necessarily organised the same and that’s probably the nub of it.”
Golly, Mr Gompels can't even get the site of his own company singing from the same hymn sheet.
His website is clear - PHE says these masks can only be supplied in England. Or do you think NHS Scotland should be supplying English Care homes from its stockpile?
Nat outrage factory scores own goal showing up NHS Scotland.
I don't think I've been expressing much outrage, hardly even at the Herd's customary immunity to seeing its own hypocrisy.
I'm just pointing and laughing at the goons whining about Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP because of a story broken by the Times based on statements by an English company. The bleating about anti English racism is the icing on the cake.
Corbynism may be going down in flames. It looks like the Corbynistas are attempting to take the mother ship down with them. Every last man (and woman) jack of them are scoundrels to the core.
Try to spin this as much as you like it is not Corbyn or his supporters who are at fault here. Try reading the 800 pages.
Some staffers let AS people off if they were on the right of the party, wanted the Tories to win and adopted abusive and racist language as part of their roles.
Corbynism may be going down in flames. It looks like the Corbynistas are attempting to take the mother ship down with them. Every last man (and woman) jack of them are scoundrels to the core.
To this outsider it looks more like the scene in Blazing Saddles where Cleavon Little gets out of being lynched by threatening to shoot himself.
Which side is Cleavon Little, I’ll leave up to you.
I think that's about what that 6,000 figure for one week implies. That's why I thought it looked consistent with a total of 50,000 deaths for the whole wave.
Do you reckon the 2500 ‘non covid’ extra deaths are covid in care homes?
Surely trying to extrapolate from the 'total' deaths figures are wildly inaccurate and they can demonstrate nothing more than direction of travel. International comparators are almost as pointless too if we are all measuring using different scales.
The strange thing is that despite the weird metric, there is reasonable congruity to the actual map.
I think that map is a classic example of over-complicating a simple point.
As I understand it, what Nate Silver is saying is that if Democrats performed as consistently in towns as Republicans did in rural areas, they'd win Texas and Florida. But they don't, so they don't.
He's just hidden that point under an incomprehensible metric.
"To pay for [social care in old age], Burnham tells me we should tap the wealth of the older generation, so everyone contributes 15% of their assets on retirement, usually through equity release on their property: the state pays for those without assets. Every family keeps 85%, so no family risks losing everything after paying for years of care: with risk fairly shared, inheritances are secured, with better free care for all. Who owns care homes is secondary once all staff are NHS/care employees. Gordon Brown so liked the plan he sent Burnham a framed front page of the 1948 NHS act on his 40th birthday, writing that he would be “the new Bevan”. It didn’t work out that way – or not yet."
Why oh why did AB side with YC and L4%K and come out for austerity lite in 2015 leaders election. He would have beaten Corbyn if he hadnt and would have been LOTO in 2015 and maybe PM in 2017
Corbynism may be going down in flames. It looks like the Corbynistas are attempting to take the mother ship down with them. Every last man (and woman) jack of them are scoundrels to the core.
Try to spin this as much as you like it is not Corbyn or his supporters who are at fault here. Try reading the 800 pages.
Some staffers let AS people off if they were on the right of the party, wanted the Tories to win and adopted abusive and racist language as part of their roles.
They should be expelled
Its very simple - the party needs to split. Frankly that has been the case for a few years now. Your side wants to expel my side and vice versa. As my side won both 30 seats and the leadership election, and your side lost 60 seats and is led by Richard Burgon, it seems fairly clear who gets to keep the name, the party machine etc etc
The Chinese realised very early that a lot of transmission was happening within households, so even mild cases were admitted to these lightly staffed and equipped hospitals. There was some treatment and monitoring, but the main purpose was to test and quarantine, with discharges only with consecutive negative swabs.
This is broadly how I would ease the lock down, by having massively expanded testing and compulsory admission to Nightingale quarantine hospitals.
I think that's about what that 6,000 figure for one week implies. That's why I thought it looked consistent with a total of 50,000 deaths for the whole wave.
Do you reckon the 2500 ‘non covid’ extra deaths are covid in care homes?
Surely trying to extrapolate from the 'total' deaths figures are wildly inaccurate and they can demonstrate nothing more than direction of travel. International comparators are almost as pointless too if we are all measuring using different scales.
Seems to be the current game in town - "let's have a guess at some current, fuzzy, incomplete data - why wait for something actually analysable?"
Corbynism may be going down in flames. It looks like the Corbynistas are attempting to take the mother ship down with them. Every last man (and woman) jack of them are scoundrels to the core.
Try to spin this as much as you like it is not Corbyn or his supporters who are at fault here. Try reading the 800 pages.
Some staffers let AS people off if they were on the right of the party, wanted the Tories to win and adopted abusive and racist language as part of their roles.
They should be expelled
If we get rid of the Marxists and the Social Democrats we might be left with a democratic socialist party full of democratic socialists.
Corbynism may be going down in flames. It looks like the Corbynistas are attempting to take the mother ship down with them. Every last man (and woman) jack of them are scoundrels to the core.
Try to spin this as much as you like it is not Corbyn or his supporters who are at fault here. Try reading the 800 pages.
Some staffers let AS people off if they were on the right of the party, wanted the Tories to win and adopted abusive and racist language as part of their roles.
They should be expelled
Its very simple - the party needs to split. Frankly that has been the case for a few years now. Your side wants to expel my side and vice versa. As my side won both 30 seats and the leadership election, and your side lost 60 seats and is led by Richard Burgon, it seems fairly clear who gets to keep the name, the party machine etc etc
Comments
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1247914921855254529?s=19
https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1250108469329440768?s=19
'We didn't decide these restrictions. The criteria was given to us by Public Health England @PHE_uk. Please don't think we're discriminating against our lovely, loyal Welsh/Scottish customers.'
https://twitter.com/mark_mclaughlin/status/1250052736365867009?s=20
Jersey Tiger is a smart moth too, but its fortunes seem to be very much on the up in this country.
Sam Gompels, MD of Gompels HealthCare
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/1266046/public-health-england-got-their-finger-out-company-at-heart-of-a-cross-border-storm-defends-sending-ppe-kit-to-english-care-homes/
0.6% x 93873/5683 = 9.9%. Allowing for the growth of the epidemic there could now be about 10% with antibodies in Scotland. Obviously 6 is a small number of positives so there is significant statistical uncertainty about this.
Two correcting factors can be allowed for. Due to seroconversion time antibody tests cannot detect the virus immediately after infection, so some cases would be missed by this type of test. Secondly, most people who donate blood do not do so when they have been sick, so this could also reduce the number of cases detected to below the prevalent level. Based on these test results the proportion of people in Scotland who have at some time been infected with SARS-CoV-2 could be around 10% or even more.
“I somehow can’t imagine Scottish health authorities supplying English care homes to be perfectly blunt.”
Sam Gompels, MD of Gompels HealthCare
BUT I doubt Sunak will ever be PM now Boris has survived his brush with Covid-19. If Theresa May had made Sunak Chancellor then he may well have beaten Boris to the top job last summer but she didn't so he didn't. If there is no scandal then Boris will hang around for the next decade, and if there is then Boris might take Sunak down with him and eventually Sunak will be added to the list of best prime ministers we never had.
The 460-bed site could be ready to take patients at the end of April, but only if hospitals in the North East are unable to cope.
Tania Snugg"
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-new-washington-nightingale-hospital-may-never-open-says-nhs-chief-11973159
In certain respects PHE effectively works as Public Health UK, in other respects it doesn't. Because of that split, and particularly because of its association with national government, it wouldn't seem unreasonable to many people if PHE released its own stockpile to access by the other nations... and indeed it will seem unreasonable, particularly to some of those who live outside England, if they didn't! If we had, say, very strong regional "Public Health Yorkshire", "Public Health London" type agencies, then it might seem less unfair for them to release their stockpiles only to local users (though it would still seem messy and uncoordinated, at least it wouldn't seem like Scotland, Wales and NI were being discriminated against).
This is purely a comment on the optics. What is actually a sensible way of dealing with the agencies' stockpiles, goodness only knows - I suspect if Scotland or Wales were at the heart of the outbreak and their stockpiles were running low, efforts would be being made to transfer more stuff to them. Obviously there's a moral hazard issue if smaller agencies didn't "need" to keep a stockpile because the other agencies would always bail them out, but I don't think this is the time or place to worry about moral hazard (cf the banking crisis).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8217275/Over-65s-obese-people-likely-hospitalised-coronavirus-cancer-patients.html
Perhaps we need to consider undevolving some things instead as well as devolving some extra things, when we eventually get around to a careful review of the Curate's Egg that is devolution.
But it will all need a long, careful process.
To @MattW - and with apologies for the delay.
I’ve never eaten them myself but the flowers and leaves of primroses can be eaten. Flower petals get put into salads. The same can be done with violas, for instance. Or nasturtiums.
The leaves are a bit tougher so you’d have to cook them. Or you can crystallise them.
Personally, early spring flowers are so welcome that I like looking at them rather than using them.
Aren't Sinn Fein in government in Northern Ireland?
NI Assembly election 2017 = 27.9% Sinn Fein
Republic general election 2020 = 24.5% Sinn Fein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election_in_Northern_Ireland
Nat outrage factory scores own goal showing up NHS Scotland.
Edit to point out that the CDU surge started early to mid march.
Austria - ruling OVP lead by 25 points
Spain - ruling Socialists lead by 8 points.
Denmark - ruling Social Democrats lead by 13 points.
Malta - ruling Labour Party lead by 35 points (to be fair that's down from a 40 point lead last month).
Poland - ruling Law & Justice Party lead by 25 points,
To be fair, the governing parties in Estonia and Slovenia not doing so well.
In most countries the incumbent Government is doing very well indeed currently irrespective of whether it's conservative, liberal or socialist.
If there are further spikes in Covid cases then it may become necessary to move seriously ill patients into the emergency hospitals to free up space for treatment to continue in the conventional ones, even if (as now seems possible) the NHS can cope without them using its existing capacity if it simply shoos enough non-Covid patients away.
Remember, at the moment a lot of resources are being diverted away from other treatments to fight Covid. If routine screening, elective surgery and so on keep being cancelled indefinitely then the negative effects of that on health outcomes could be enough to outweigh all the efforts to put a cap on the coronavirus, even before all the implications of the lockdown are also taken into consideration.
If as part of this deal there was first to be another immediate GE and the combined FF and FG seats then held up enough to sustain such a coalition, then fair enough. However, that's not on offer.
The alternative, if you don't like FPTP, is to move to variants of PR which allocate additional top up seats to the coalition of parties getting the most votes. Parties are then incentivised to form transparent coalitions prior to the GE, as they won't stand a chance of forming the next government if their coalition doesn't capture the top up bonus.
I'd advise submission in both of them.
I would have thought the priority, once the health crisis has eased, would be to get economic activity going again and then worry about the deficit and the public finances as it's as important to get the money coming in before we worry about the money going out.
Bringing the finances back under control (which presumably means a balanced budget) isn't going to be easy if economic activity remains in the doldrums. I presume it will then be back to the tired old argument of one person's spending cut or another person's tax increase.
I've seen it reported (a bit like radio audience numbers I suppose) that the triple lock might be under threat. Not one of the Coalition's finest hours perhaps though it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
The political angle is that the asymmetry between Public Health England and its counterpart matters - in reality, it's unlikely that the stockpiles in Scotland or Wales or NI would have enough surplus to bail England out if England were worst hit, but England's stockpile ought to be an order of magnitude bigger than the rest of them combined and would be relevant if the others were in trouble. Moreover, the English stockpile is effectively under the control of UK central government, whereas the others are under the devolved administrations. It's really not a good look for the UK government to be seen to be denying vital PPE to sectors in desperate need in the devolved nations, regardless of whether those users "ought", in your view, to be looking at the devolved stockpile first. Neither is it a good look for the devolved and Westminster governments to be rowing about who's cocked up or blocking what.
What would be really interesting from a political point of view, though I cross my fingers it never comes to this, is if England were hardest-hit, stocks were running low, and Westminster was facing the issue of "should we demand some of the Scottish and Welsh inventories be released for English use to at least alleviate the disaster?" As per @TimT that would almost certainly be the optimal solution in terms of health outcomes. But the optics of that would look absolutely awful. That's a suggestion Westminster should really be seeking to avoid.
I suggest the different administrations should get their thinking hats on and (maybe quietly) come together to agree on a resource pooling strategy.
Can I request a similar map based pineapple on pizza opinions, please?
Let me explain:
SF are NOT in the NI government because of Westminster elections.
ASSEMBLY elections decide how many seats the NI parties get in the NI ASSEMBLY.
The most RECENT assembly elections were in 2017. SF got 27.9% of first preferences.
This would be especially fitting when, ten years after an economic crisis during which the young were pummelled whilst the old were largely insulated from its fallout by the gold-plating of state pensions, we now arrive in an even worse situation in which the livelihoods and future prospects of the young are (once again) thrown on the bonfire, this time in the course of the country's efforts to fight a disease that preys disproportionately upon the old.
Call me a dreadful cynic but I'll believe it when I see it.
A synchronised printing of money globally is clearly the solution. It's hard to know what the risks are though. It'd be a one time deal and it'd risk an inflation spike in the tens of percent. Alternatively no-one would notice.
https://twitter.com/nevali/status/1250052025112543234?s=21
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1249719140832739328
"Every member of staff at Labour HQ who had any knowledge or involvement in the allegations was asked to do the same – in what I’m told is in requirement with the EHRC request of full disclosure.
The research for the report granted the writers access to staff members' emails and they looked at approximately 100,000 while compiling the report."
One source told me that by chance they “found much more than they bargained for.”
Every member of staff at Labour HQ who had any knowledge or involvement in the allegations was asked to do the same – in what I’m told is in requirement with the EHRC request of full disclosure.
The research for the report granted the writers access to staff members' emails and they looked at approximately 100,000 while compiling the report.
One source told me that by chance they “found much more than they bargained for.”
In one case a senior Labour staffer had sent themselves their entire WhatsApp conversation history – which included group chats of colleagues at Labour HQ discussing their opinions about Corbyn and Labour’s performance at the 2017 general election.
Some of the conversations included “abusive and inappropriate language about the leader, MPs, Labour members and about other staff”, the report claims.
He has to argue it was for the greater good and he has to do it really soon. In doing so he'll be disposing of Momentum.
The questions are when and how Sunak will try to put the public finances back into order - one could argue we ran with QE long after it was necessary and thus kept interest rates artificially low prolonging the lives of zombie companies which would otherwise have failed - and whether the politics will override the economics.
"To pay for [social care in old age], Burnham tells me we should tap the wealth of the older generation, so everyone contributes 15% of their assets on retirement, usually through equity release on their property: the state pays for those without assets. Every family keeps 85%, so no family risks losing everything after paying for years of care: with risk fairly shared, inheritances are secured, with better free care for all. Who owns care homes is secondary once all staff are NHS/care employees. Gordon Brown so liked the plan he sent Burnham a framed front page of the 1948 NHS act on his 40th birthday, writing that he would be “the new Bevan”. It didn’t work out that way – or not yet."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/14/coronavirus-social-care-crisis-andy-burnham-nhs#maincontent
I'm just pointing and laughing at the goons whining about Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP because of a story broken by the Times based on statements by an English company. The bleating about anti English racism is the icing on the cake.
Some staffers let AS people off if they were on the right of the party, wanted the Tories to win and adopted abusive and racist language as part of their roles.
They should be expelled
https://twitter.com/nevali/status/1250117525498667011?s=21
Which side is Cleavon Little, I’ll leave up to you.
As I understand it, what Nate Silver is saying is that if Democrats performed as consistently in towns as Republicans did in rural areas, they'd win Texas and Florida. But they don't, so they don't.
He's just hidden that point under an incomprehensible metric.
Why oh why did AB side with YC and L4%K and come out for austerity lite in 2015 leaders election.
He would have beaten Corbyn if he hadnt and would have been LOTO in 2015 and maybe PM in 2017
What we have failed to copy from China is how they used their temporary hospitals.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30744-3/fulltext
The Chinese realised very early that a lot of transmission was happening within households, so even mild cases were admitted to these lightly staffed and equipped hospitals. There was some treatment and monitoring, but the main purpose was to test and quarantine, with discharges only with consecutive negative swabs.
This is broadly how I would ease the lock down, by having massively expanded testing and compulsory admission to Nightingale quarantine hospitals.