Boris up at 5pm - how many journos will bore the nation with a Cummings question ?
What colour will today's dead cat be?
I think Boris will talk about the global pandemic in a shallow attempt to distract us from talking about Dom.
What a cad.
Perhaps he could enlighten us on why he believes the UK has the highest death toll in the world behind Trump's USA. I would genuinely like to hear his theory.
I wonder if Nissan's decision had something to do with the UK's gigafactory plans.
There's a report in a property paper the government is looking for space to build this. It mentions Tesla but as I understand it they were choosing Germany
Wonder how long Alex Massie will keep his Spectator column? He must cause huge discomfort at the top, and among the readership.
The comments on that article were insane and drove me to cancel my subscription, for the second time in two years. Got a nice bottle of gin from them though this time around.
It's strange, I've been reading it since I was about 16 but its only in the last few years that I've found it uniformly unbearable.
The presence of Mary Wakefield on the back page is hardly a selling point either...
I feel the same way about the RSPB and The Economist. I used to adore both in my youth. But your description of “uniformly unbearable” now applies to both. Funny how tastes change. Or could it be that they have changed, and I have remained much the same?
.... I thought one of the most interesting bits of information was that excess deaths in London, as a percentage of the population, were not very much larger than for the UK as a whole, namely, about 0.11% compared with about 0.09%.
London is shown as having 130% more deaths than normal in the period, though, compared with 65% more for the UK as a whole, so on that measure it has been disproportionately badly hit. I think the figures you quote might be distorted by the different age distributions in each region (i.e. London has a younger population, so starts from a lower base in deaths per 1000).
Presumably. But I was thinking of the relevance of those figures to the idea that the decline in London is the result of a significant percentage of acquired immunity. It's very difficult to believe on those figures.
Why? It’s the change in rate over time that points to immunity, not the absolute level.
The (relatively few) antibody studies do suggest that the idea that significant proportions of the population have had the virus are probably false.
There is still however the possibility that significant parts of the population may have some natural immunity, or at least resistance, stemming either from genetics and/or from prior/recent exposure to other Coronaviruses including the common cold. That wouldn’t show up in COVID antibody research yet would explain why the infection rate plummeted so quickly after peaking at low penetration rates everywhere from China and Iran through Lombardy, London and New York.
There is another explanation for why infection rates plummeted in most places: there were lockdowns.
Sweden though, Sweden.
The Swedes went for herd immunity and failed. Stockholm's antibody show is lower than London, and yet deaths per million are around the same.
There's only really one answer to this conundrum. For a lot of people, the virus just ain't a thing.
Excess deaths per million in Sweden have been fewer than half of the number in the UK, according to the FT article I posted before.
The myth of an "iceberg" of undetected infections is being exploded by antibody testing.
Perhaps it's inevitable that people are now going to come up with a myth of widespread natural immunity, but it really is nonsense.
Do you believe Cummings story about the Castle expedition? I mean do you, personally, actually believe he was telling the truth?
Sort of.
In the full context of he felt like it was a good idea to drive to see if he was up to the pressures of driving then yes I do. I've done similar before. I think a half hour trip is a great idea before a cross country drive if you have any concerns and I've done that before.
On the out of context word of "eyesight" and an eyesight discussion alone? No.
Does that make sense?
Pure comedy gold. Again.
You, mr will no one think of the children, have in the past worried that your eyesight is not up to driving so you have shouted over to Mrs T: come on luv grab the kids we're going for a drive.
You've done that.
No, read again, not eyesight. I said not eyesight!
My specific word when I said about "eyesight" was "No."
Doing a half hour drive when I'm concerned about my stamina etc to do a five hour drive, yes I have done that.
Ah. Ok. How would you know from a half hour drive whether you had the stamina for a five hour drive?
You just know. Trust your instincts. EG do you feel up to continue driving or do you feel exhausted?
As I said when we first discussed this, it was a tip I got from an RAC guy when I was 18, inexperienced and at university and I've followed it since - if you're feeling a bit rusty then a half hour drive is good exercise for both you and your car.
Ummm... But wouldn't you want the half hour drive to end back at your own place? Otherwise you find yourself marooned half an hour (at least) from home and unfit to drive.
More seriously, even if this was a perfectly understandable...
...Given it was combined with a bit of a walk around Barnard Castle at the other end, then it certainly wasn't in line with the rules.
The weird thing is that you were allowed to travel for the purposes of your daily exercise provided the travel was proportionate which most forces interpreted as being no longer than you spent walking. If he had simply said that on his wife's birthday they decided to go for a nice socially distanced walk around the castle I don't think there would have been anything wrong with that. It was this ridiculous testing my eyesight story that has pissed people off because it was so obviously false.
It is hard to credit. Do you have any theory at all as to why he came out with that?
If you were making something up, there would be a hundred better excuses.
So, logically, the only conclusion must be that it was true. Otherwise why say it?
The inclusion of the is what rescues that. Nice one.
Wonder how long Alex Massie will keep his Spectator column? He must cause huge discomfort at the top, and among the readership.
Poor Alex - he must look at how tabloid simpleton Murray Foote landed on his feet with a cushy home sinecure while his commissions dry up - this lurch to the Nat may help his pension fund yet...
“Lurch to the Nat”? Huh?
It is the Brit Nat Farage, Cummings and Johnson that Massie holds disdain for.
Nissan's UK factory in Sunderland will stay open as the Japanese carmaker carries out a global restructuring amid the coronavirus pandemic.
It will close its factory in Barcelona with the loss of about 2,800 jobs after the firm plunged to a $6.2bn (£5bn) net loss in the last financial year.
Nissan's UK factory in Sunderland will stay open as the Japanese carmaker carries out a global restructuring amid the coronavirus pandemic.
It will close its factory in Barcelona with the loss of about 2,800 jobs after the firm plunged to a $6.2bn (£5bn) net loss in the last financial year.
Downside: having a UK plant manufacturing cars for the UK market alone does nothing to help the UK's already terrible balance of payments.
Of course if does. It would be import substitution, something we need a hell of a lot of.
Australia - despite being a long boat ride away from anywhere with car manufacturing - recently lost its last domestic manufacturer.
The problem with autos is not the assembly, it's the supply chain.
Take automotive semiconductors: there are three main manufacturers in the world, and none of them are going to build a chip fabrication plant in the UK, just to serve the UK.
Automotive supply is a really international business, and you need a lot of critical mass.
Not only that, but parts will cross borders many times. You might see steel milled in Wales going to a subsupplier in Italy, who makes a part for a gearbox maker in France, which sends it to the Nissan plant in the UK, before the end car heads of Germany.
Now, we can alleviate the problem to a good extent by eliminating all tariffs on automotive components (although that would still have some small issues with supply chains not being able to run "just on time"), but the UK's published tariff schedule doesn't do that. And the reason it doesn't do that is because it wants to use the removal of tariffs as leverage in free trade negotiations.
If we don't have a decent FTA with the EU, I would expect that there will be less car making in the UK. That's not me being super negative, that's just a reflection on the fact that it's an incredibly difficult industry, and we're subscale.
.... I thought one of the most interesting bits of information was that excess deaths in London, as a percentage of the population, were not very much larger than for the UK as a whole, namely, about 0.11% compared with about 0.09%.
London is shown as having 130% more deaths than normal in the period, though, compared with 65% more for the UK as a whole, so on that measure it has been disproportionately badly hit. I think the figures you quote might be distorted by the different age distributions in each region (i.e. London has a younger population, so starts from a lower base in deaths per 1000).
Presumably. But I was thinking of the relevance of those figures to the idea that the decline in London is the result of a significant percentage of acquired immunity. It's very difficult to believe on those figures.
Why? It’s the change in rate over time that points to immunity, not the absolute level.
The (relatively few) antibody studies do suggest that the idea that significant proportions of the population have had the virus are probably false.
There is still however the possibility that significant parts of the population may have some natural immunity, or at least resistance, stemming either from genetics and/or from prior/recent exposure to other Coronaviruses including the common cold. That wouldn’t show up in COVID antibody research yet would explain why the infection rate plummeted so quickly after peaking at low penetration rates everywhere from China and Iran through Lombardy, London and New York.
There is another explanation for why infection rates plummeted in most places: there were lockdowns.
Sweden though, Sweden.
The Swedes went for herd immunity and failed. Stockholm's antibody show is lower than London, and yet deaths per million are around the same.
There's only really one answer to this conundrum. For a lot of people, the virus just ain't a thing.
Sweden has had a de facto lockdown - but it has been self imposed. Swedes socially distanced, went out less, worked from home more - and already have a massive advantage in living in a less densely populated way than much of Europe, and with a high proportion of single person households.
I wonder if Nissan's decision had something to do with the UK's gigafactory plans.
There's a report in a property paper the government is looking for space to build this. It mentions Tesla but as I understand it they were choosing Germany
Nissan won't want to throw away the Sunderland plant. It's their second most efficient plant in Europe. They have a lot of (physical) capital invested there and a well trained workforce.
But it's hard to see how it would be able to compete long-term if the UK has tariff barriers with most of the factories that supply it.
Wonder how long Alex Massie will keep his Spectator column? He must cause huge discomfort at the top, and among the readership.
In fairness, The Speccie has rarely baulked at publishing articles absolutely slagging off Boris. This one from Nick Cohen, previously of this parish, was a good effort.
Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages.
I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say that Johnson showed this morning that he is a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard, for there is a kind of bastardly integrity in showing the world who you really are, but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the tricks of the fraudster to advance his worthless career.
Braying charlatan is how Scots see most Tories. In case they’ve ever wondered. Which they probably haven’t.
That’s why Ruth Davidson was so valuable, and why BoZo was so daft to scare her off. She was one of precious few Tories not seen as a braying charlatan north of the border.
If we don't have a decent FTA with the EU, I would expect that there will be less car making in the UK. That's not me being super negative, that's just a reflection on the fact that it's an incredibly difficult industry, and we're subscale.
.... I thought one of the most interesting bits of information was that excess deaths in London, as a percentage of the population, were not very much larger than for the UK as a whole, namely, about 0.11% compared with about 0.09%.
London is shown as having 130% more deaths than normal in the period, though, compared with 65% more for the UK as a whole, so on that measure it has been disproportionately badly hit. I think the figures you quote might be distorted by the different age distributions in each region (i.e. London has a younger population, so starts from a lower base in deaths per 1000).
Presumably. But I was thinking of the relevance of those figures to the idea that the decline in London is the result of a significant percentage of acquired immunity. It's very difficult to believe on those figures.
Why? It’s the change in rate over time that points to immunity, not the absolute level.
The (relatively few) antibody studies do suggest that the idea that significant proportions of the population have had the virus are probably false.
There is still however the possibility that significant parts of the population may have some natural immunity, or at least resistance, stemming either from genetics and/or from prior/recent exposure to other Coronaviruses including the common cold. That wouldn’t show up in COVID antibody research yet would explain why the infection rate plummeted so quickly after peaking at low penetration rates everywhere from China and Iran through Lombardy, London and New York.
There is another explanation for why infection rates plummeted in most places: there were lockdowns.
Sweden though, Sweden.
The Swedes went for herd immunity and failed. Stockholm's antibody show is lower than London, and yet deaths per million are around the same.
There's only really one answer to this conundrum. For a lot of people, the virus just ain't a thing.
Sweden has had a de facto lockdown - but it has been self imposed. Swedes socially distanced, went out less, worked from home more - and already have a massive advantage in living in a less densely populated way than much of Europe, and with a high proportion of single person households.
And yet in spite of having a massive advantage in terms of population density they have ended up with a far worse death rate than their neighbour Denmark - over 4 times worse.
The Swedish experiment is most definitely a failure.
Do you believe Cummings story about the Castle expedition? I mean do you, personally, actually believe he was telling the truth?
Sort of.
In the full context of he felt like it was a good idea to drive to see if he was up to the pressures of driving then yes I do. I've done similar before. I think a half hour trip is a great idea before a cross country drive if you have any concerns and I've done that before.
On the out of context word of "eyesight" and an eyesight discussion alone? No.
Does that make sense?
Pure comedy gold. Again.
You, mr will no one think of the children, have in the past worried that your eyesight is not up to driving so you have shouted over to Mrs T: come on luv grab the kids we're going for a drive.
You've done that.
No, read again, not eyesight. I said not eyesight!
My specific word when I said about "eyesight" was "No."
Doing a half hour drive when I'm concerned about my stamina etc to do a five hour drive, yes I have done that.
Trying to think of other areas of human activity where a bloke might try something for a short time to check if he has the stamina to do it for much longer.
Not much springs to mind. Painting a ceiling maybe?
Literally anything.
There's a reason eg if someone is returning from injury in professional football they're generally put on as a substitute first for 20 to 30 minutes before being expected to do the full 90 minutes.
Bit different, that. The footballing example would be more a fitness test. You take a fitness test and if you pass you get picked for the upcoming match. So, was Cummings' drive to BC and back a sort of "fitness test" which he passed and thus earned his place in the team for the "match", being the big drive to London?
Yes, I think that works. It's bollox, of course, but it might have worked in court with a good barrister.
It's not different it's the exact same concept. A small test before an endurance event.
At the start of lockdown Sturgeon’s SNP had poll leads of up to 14% – now the latest two surveys have that up at 25%.
At this rate independence might happen quite soon.
On the face of it the polling trends look worrying for the Conservatives and good for the SNP which is seeing a lot of progress in getting the gap larger.
For the SNP the really positive thing has been the improvement in the leader ratings.
The big question is how will this now go? Can BoJo/Dom stop any further erosion or is Sturgeon’s big ratings progress going to be translated into even better voting intention numbers? We don’t know, which is why the Unionist media commission so few Scottish polls.
Yep, some Scottish Tories get it (though it could be said the ones visibly crapping themselves and spouting ever more virulent guff also get it).
I think you're assuming that the wickedness of England becoming personified in Boris and Cummings and the wonderfulness of Scotland becoming personified in Nicola Sturgeon are a good thing for the course of Scottish nationalism. Neither is necessarily true.
All this stereotyping really does Unionism more harm than good. You just love attacking straw men. It’ll end in tears.
Also the assumption it's all about ****ing England. If it were, we'd be having Bannockburn parades down the Royal Mile every June (cf. Unionists and the Boyne). Instead, we put that well-known Independista Neil Oliver in charge there! (mind, he is also a battlefield archaeologist and has done a lot to promote conflict archaeology). (edited)
You can call it an assumption if you wish, but I have lived here for around 10 years now. I'd call it a conclusion.
Ah, I see, I 'assume', you 'conclude'.
I'd certainly conclude that characterising posting about a SCon columnist referring to postive polls re. Sturgeon as 'assuming that the wickedness of England becoming personified in Boris and Cummings and the wonderfulness of Scotland becoming personified in Nicola Sturgeon' is an act of imagination rather than analysis.
Incidentally Mrs BJ who has had a cough for over a year and now has lost her taste and smell got us 2 tests packs yesterday. Took it last night and it was collected this morning.
I didnt realise till last night each pack contains one swab which you rub on your tonsils and then stick the same end up your nose.
Not sure how it can, as someone was arguing last week provide separate data about the accuracy of the throat and nose swab. Now i have done it seems even stranger to count 2 tests as its a single, one ended swab.
At the start of lockdown Sturgeon’s SNP had poll leads of up to 14% – now the latest two surveys have that up at 25%.
At this rate independence might happen quite soon.
On the face of it the polling trends look worrying for the Conservatives and good for the SNP which is seeing a lot of progress in getting the gap larger.
For the SNP the really positive thing has been the improvement in the leader ratings.
The big question is how will this now go? Can BoJo/Dom stop any further erosion or is Sturgeon’s big ratings progress going to be translated into even better voting intention numbers? We don’t know, which is why the Unionist media commission so few Scottish polls.
The main concern for the SNP of course is Starmer's high rating with Scots if that leads to SNP voters returning to Scottish Labour.
Independence of course is off the menu for the rest of this parliament, the Tory manifesto ruled out indyref2 for a generation and the actions of China today in effectively banning any Hong Kong autonomy and Spain in Catalonia means Boris looks relatively reasonable when he bans indyref2
Ah yes, Beijing and Madrid, those great beacons of liberty and democracy so admired by The Herd.
As for Starmer, I’m a big fan and always have been. As I’ve said many times before, if we are to successfully dissolve the Union to the mutual benefit of all the peoples of these islands, then we need mature, competent, compassionate and intelligent leaders of all the principal parties. Starmer is the best leader Labour have had in decades, and I warmly welcome him.
I’m not sure that I’d call his +5 to +10 among Scots voters “high ratings”, but that is a mere quibble. Some SNP voters might lend a vote to Starmer, but come IndyRef2 they’ll still be Yes.
It isn't so much that Starmer needs people who voted Yes in 2014 to vote No in any Indyref2, but those who voted No in 2014 but are tempted by indy following Brexit and Boris, to vote No again. And my suspicion is such swing voters like Starmer and would be favourable towards a Labour government led by him. To win Indyref what the SNP needs is a bogeyman, and Boris is ideal for that role. Problem is it's much less likely he'll grant you that second independence referendum than a Labour government (especially a Labour government reliant on the SNP to get through its programme) would. The 'SNP indyref2 paradox' is that you need a Labour government in power to grant you indyref2, but you need a Conservative one in charge in to win it.
Very astute. Food for thought.
But I have huge faith in BoZo the Clown. That man is pure gold. God knows what he’ll achieve before he’s finally kicked out, but the SNP haven’t had a better recruiting sergeant since Maggie herself.
.... I thought one of the most interesting bits of information was that excess deaths in London, as a percentage of the population, were not very much larger than for the UK as a whole, namely, about 0.11% compared with about 0.09%.
London is shown as having 130% more deaths than normal in the period, though, compared with 65% more for the UK as a whole, so on that measure it has been disproportionately badly hit. I think the figures you quote might be distorted by the different age distributions in each region (i.e. London has a younger population, so starts from a lower base in deaths per 1000).
Presumably. But I was thinking of the relevance of those figures to the idea that the decline in London is the result of a significant percentage of acquired immunity. It's very difficult to believe on those figures.
Why? It’s the change in rate over time that points to immunity, not the absolute level.
The (relatively few) antibody studies do suggest that the idea that significant proportions of the population have had the virus are probably false.
There is still however the possibility that significant parts of the population may have some natural immunity, or at least resistance, stemming either from genetics and/or from prior/recent exposure to other Coronaviruses including the common cold. That wouldn’t show up in COVID antibody research yet would explain why the infection rate plummeted so quickly after peaking at low penetration rates everywhere from China and Iran through Lombardy, London and New York.
There is another explanation for why infection rates plummeted in most places: there were lockdowns.
Sweden though, Sweden.
The Swedes went for herd immunity and failed. Stockholm's antibody show is lower than London, and yet deaths per million are around the same.
There's only really one answer to this conundrum. For a lot of people, the virus just ain't a thing.
Excess deaths per million in Sweden have been fewer than half of the number in the UK, according to the FT article I posted before.
The myth of an "iceberg" of undetected infections is being exploded by antibody testing.
Perhaps it's inevitable that people are now going to come up with a myth of widespread natural immunity, but it really is nonsense.
But they have had death rates 4 times that of Denmark in spite of having a population density just 1/5th of Denmark's. Comparing it with the UK which has a population density of 10 times that of Sweden, or more importantly England with a population density 18 times greater and then trying to say how well they have done with only 50% of the death rate really isn't sensible.
We are looking for: - England risk level to be reduced from 4 to 3 - Social gathering provisions similar to what Sturgeon announced earlier to be applied, let's go for max group of 10 to keep ahead of SNP! - Constructive intention to reopen open air hospitality eg pubs before 4 July
Ave it uses the SNP as his benchmark. We live in interesting times. I wonder what Mark Senior is making of all this from his lofty vantage point.
I wonder if Nissan's decision had something to do with the UK's gigafactory plans.
There's a report in a property paper the government is looking for space to build this. It mentions Tesla but as I understand it they were choosing Germany
Nissan won't want to throw away the Sunderland plant. It's their second most efficient plant in Europe. They have a lot of (physical) capital invested there and a well trained workforce.
But it's hard to see how it would be able to compete long-term if the UK has tariff barriers with most of the factories that supply it.
You make that part of Sunderland a freeport, probably solved.
Wonder how long Alex Massie will keep his Spectator column? He must cause huge discomfort at the top, and among the readership.
In fairness, The Speccie has rarely baulked at publishing articles absolutely slagging off Boris. This one from Nick Cohen, previously of this parish, was a good effort.
Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages.
I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say that Johnson showed this morning that he is a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard, for there is a kind of bastardly integrity in showing the world who you really are, but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the tricks of the fraudster to advance his worthless career.
Braying charlatan is how Scots see most Tories. In case they’ve ever wondered. Which they probably haven’t.
That’s why Ruth Davidson was so valuable, and why BoZo was so daft to scare her off. She was one of precious few Tories not seen as a braying charlatan north of the border.
I wonder if Nissan's decision had something to do with the UK's gigafactory plans.
There's a report in a property paper the government is looking for space to build this. It mentions Tesla but as I understand it they were choosing Germany
I wonder if Nissan's decision had something to do with the UK's gigafactory plans.
There's a report in a property paper the government is looking for space to build this. It mentions Tesla but as I understand it they were choosing Germany
Nissan won't want to throw away the Sunderland plant. It's their second most efficient plant in Europe. They have a lot of (physical) capital invested there and a well trained workforce.
But it's hard to see how it would be able to compete long-term if the UK has tariff barriers with most of the factories that supply it.
In the medium term their business (if it still exists) will have transitioned entirely to electric vehicles. Plants for which are probably just as easy (possibly easier) to build from scratch.
Wonder how long Alex Massie will keep his Spectator column? He must cause huge discomfort at the top, and among the readership.
In fairness, The Speccie has rarely baulked at publishing articles absolutely slagging off Boris. This one from Nick Cohen, previously of this parish, was a good effort.
Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages.
I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say that Johnson showed this morning that he is a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard, for there is a kind of bastardly integrity in showing the world who you really are, but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the tricks of the fraudster to advance his worthless career.
Braying charlatan is how Scots see most Tories. In case they’ve ever wondered. Which they probably haven’t.
That’s why Ruth Davidson was so valuable, and why BoZo was so daft to scare her off. She was one of precious few Tories not seen as a braying charlatan north of the border.
Funny I remember you decrying Ruth 24/7 on here..
Correct. She was horrendously over-rated. By the media, by her party, and not least by all the dafties on here.
Ruthie’s flaws were legion, not least her love of the u-turn, which the adoring media usually failed to highlight.
But one thing she definitely was not was a braying charlatan. That was a huge advantage for the tainted Tory brand.
What a moron he is. Wanting to waste large amounts of taxpayers money on a prosecution that can only ever be for political ends. Has he missed the fact that every single prosecution made under the Lockdown legislation has been thrown out as unsafe?
Yep Cummings should have gone. But trying to push for a prosecution just to inflict political embarrassment on an opponent shows exactly what a tosser Chada is.
Wonder how long Alex Massie will keep his Spectator column? He must cause huge discomfort at the top, and among the readership.
In fairness, The Speccie has rarely baulked at publishing articles absolutely slagging off Boris. This one from Nick Cohen, previously of this parish, was a good effort.
Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages.
I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say that Johnson showed this morning that he is a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard, for there is a kind of bastardly integrity in showing the world who you really are, but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the tricks of the fraudster to advance his worthless career.
Braying charlatan is how Scots see most Tories. In case they’ve ever wondered. Which they probably haven’t.
That’s why Ruth Davidson was so valuable, and why BoZo was so daft to scare her off. She was one of precious few Tories not seen as a braying charlatan north of the border.
The Tories won more MPs in Scotland under Jackson Carlaw last year than they did under Ruth Davidson in 2015.
They are also still polling higher for Holyrood next year than the 22% Ruth Davidson got in 2016.
She had a great result in 2017 but that was it really
And PB tories have turned into a gaggle of fuckwitted turkeys singing "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" and applauding their own cleverness.
Would it be wildly laughable to suggest that the UK Government is actually doing a pretty decent job?
The civil servants, the politicians, and even the Dominic Cummings'. I'd imagine that all stripes of Government might do much the same, but nonetheless this is good work in tricky times.
Nissan's UK factory in Sunderland will stay open as the Japanese carmaker carries out a global restructuring amid the coronavirus pandemic.
It will close its factory in Barcelona with the loss of about 2,800 jobs after the firm plunged to a $6.2bn (£5bn) net loss in the last financial year.
Nissan's UK factory in Sunderland will stay open as the Japanese carmaker carries out a global restructuring amid the coronavirus pandemic.
It will close its factory in Barcelona with the loss of about 2,800 jobs after the firm plunged to a $6.2bn (£5bn) net loss in the last financial year.
Downside: having a UK plant manufacturing cars for the UK market alone does nothing to help the UK's already terrible balance of payments.
Of course if does. It would be import substitution, something we need a hell of a lot of.
Australia - despite being a long boat ride away from anywhere with car manufacturing - recently lost its last domestic manufacturer.
The problem with autos is not the assembly, it's the supply chain.
Take automotive semiconductors: there are three main manufacturers in the world, and none of them are going to build a chip fabrication plant in the UK, just to serve the UK.
Automotive supply is a really international business, and you need a lot of critical mass.
Not only that, but parts will cross borders many times. You might see steel milled in Wales going to a subsupplier in Italy, who makes a part for a gearbox maker in France, which sends it to the Nissan plant in the UK, before the end car heads of Germany.
Now, we can alleviate the problem to a good extent by eliminating all tariffs on automotive components (although that would still have some small issues with supply chains not being able to run "just on time"), but the UK's published tariff schedule doesn't do that. And the reason it doesn't do that is because it wants to use the removal of tariffs as leverage in free trade negotiations.
If we don't have a decent FTA with the EU, I would expect that there will be less car making in the UK. That's not me being super negative, that's just a reflection on the fact that it's an incredibly difficult industry, and we're subscale.
What a moron he is. Wanting to waste large amounts of taxpayers money on a prosecution that can only ever be for political ends. Has he missed the fact that every single prosecution made under the Lockdown legislation has been thrown out as unsafe?
Yep Cummings should have gone. But trying to push for a prosecution just to inflict political embarrassment on an opponent shows exactly what a tosser Chada is.
"The police should not be there to decide one way or another whether he actually breached the rules"
The police do this all the time when they issue fixed penalty notices.
We are looking for: - England risk level to be reduced from 4 to 3 - Social gathering provisions similar to what Sturgeon announced earlier to be applied, let's go for max group of 10 to keep ahead of SNP! - Constructive intention to reopen open air hospitality eg pubs before 4 July
Ave it uses the SNP as his benchmark. We live in interesting times. I wonder what Mark Senior is making of all this from his lofty vantage point.
I prefer not to do so but Scotland does appear to be ahead on the number ie 8 v 6 - I would like Boris to have gone at least as far
Wonder how long Alex Massie will keep his Spectator column? He must cause huge discomfort at the top, and among the readership.
In fairness, The Speccie has rarely baulked at publishing articles absolutely slagging off Boris. This one from Nick Cohen, previously of this parish, was a good effort.
Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages.
I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say that Johnson showed this morning that he is a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard, for there is a kind of bastardly integrity in showing the world who you really are, but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the tricks of the fraudster to advance his worthless career.
Braying charlatan is how Scots see most Tories. In case they’ve ever wondered. Which they probably haven’t.
That’s why Ruth Davidson was so valuable, and why BoZo was so daft to scare her off. She was one of precious few Tories not seen as a braying charlatan north of the border.
The Tories won more MPs in Scotland under Jackson Carlaw last year than they did under Ruth Davidson in 2015.
They are also still polling higher for Holyrood next year than the 22% Ruth Davidson got in 2016.
She had a great result in 2017 but that was it really
The one great result you Tories have had in the last half century in Scotland was under Ruth Davidson.
But if you want to believe that Jackson Carlaw is the man to break the pattern, feel free! 😆
Would it be wildly laughable to suggest that the UK Government is actually doing a pretty decent job?
The civil servants, the politicians, and even the Dominic Cummings'. I'd imagine that all stripes of Government might do much the same, but nonetheless this is good work in tricky times.
There is a lot of noise and fury from their critics I would agree. But there are some areas where they genuinely dropped a major bollock and it has had a very large impact on deaths. Asa such I think that looking at the basic numbers, it is probably justified to say they have performed badly overall whilst in some areas they have done well.
Too many people have died unnecessarily to be able to say the criticism is just normal political point scoring.
Wonder how long Alex Massie will keep his Spectator column? He must cause huge discomfort at the top, and among the readership.
In fairness, The Speccie has rarely baulked at publishing articles absolutely slagging off Boris. This one from Nick Cohen, previously of this parish, was a good effort.
Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages.
I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say that Johnson showed this morning that he is a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard, for there is a kind of bastardly integrity in showing the world who you really are, but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the tricks of the fraudster to advance his worthless career.
Braying charlatan is how Scots see most Tories. In case they’ve ever wondered. Which they probably haven’t.
That’s why Ruth Davidson was so valuable, and why BoZo was so daft to scare her off. She was one of precious few Tories not seen as a braying charlatan north of the border.
The Tories won more MPs in Scotland under Jackson Carlaw last year than they did under Ruth Davidson in 2015.
They are also still polling higher for Holyrood next year than the 22% Ruth Davidson got in 2016.
She had a great result in 2017 but that was it really
The one great result you Tories have had in the last half century in Scotland was under Ruth Davidson.
But if you want to believe that Jackson Carlaw is the man to break the pattern, feel free! 😆
Thatcher got 22 Tory MPs in Scotland in 1979 and 21 MPs in Scotland in 1983, May and Davidson only got 13 Scottish Tory MPs in 2017
I wonder if Nissan's decision had something to do with the UK's gigafactory plans.
There's a report in a property paper the government is looking for space to build this. It mentions Tesla but as I understand it they were choosing Germany
Chosen. They've already broken ground on it.
On their first European factory.
Each factory Tesla is building will have a capacity of a few hundred thousand.
Tesla has a policy of trying to manufacture in the region/country they are selling in - the Chinese factory is only selling in China at the moment, though it may be used to supply other countries in South East Asia.
Those 2 items mean that Tesla will need multiple factories in Europe to be a full scale car producer.
Do you believe Cummings story about the Castle expedition? I mean do you, personally, actually believe he was telling the truth?
Sort of.
In the full context of he felt like it was a good idea to drive to see if he was up to the pressures of driving then yes I do. I've done similar before. I think a half hour trip is a great idea before a cross country drive if you have any concerns and I've done that before.
On the out of context word of "eyesight" and an eyesight discussion alone? No.
Does that make sense?
Pure comedy gold. Again.
You, mr will no one think of the children, have in the past worried that your eyesight is not up to driving so you have shouted over to Mrs T: come on luv grab the kids we're going for a drive.
You've done that.
No, read again, not eyesight. I said not eyesight!
My specific word when I said about "eyesight" was "No."
Doing a half hour drive when I'm concerned about my stamina etc to do a five hour drive, yes I have done that.
Ah. Ok. How would you know from a half hour drive whether you had the stamina for a five hour drive?
You just know. Trust your instincts. EG do you feel up to continue driving or do you feel exhausted?
As I said when we first discussed this, it was a tip I got from an RAC guy when I was 18, inexperienced and at university and I've followed it since - if you're feeling a bit rusty then a half hour drive is good exercise for both you and your car.
Ummm... But wouldn't you want the half hour drive to end back at your own place? Otherwise you find yourself marooned half an hour (at least) from home and unfit to drive.
More seriously, even if this was a perfectly understandable...
...Given it was combined with a bit of a walk around Barnard Castle at the other end, then it certainly wasn't in line with the rules.
The weird thing is that you were allowed to travel for the purposes of your daily exercise provided the travel was proportionate which most forces interpreted as being no longer than you spent walking. If he had simply said that on his wife's birthday they decided to go for a nice socially distanced walk around the castle I don't think there would have been anything wrong with that. It was this ridiculous testing my eyesight story that has pissed people off because it was so obviously false.
It is hard to credit. Do you have any theory at all as to why he came out with that?
Unfortunately I am not a psychiatrist and I gave up wondering why the hell my clients said the absurd things that they did a long time ago.
Evening all, just delurking momentarily but hugely enjoying the discourse on here as ever. In response to this, I think the first thing to discount is the idea that he just made this "dog ate my homework" excuse off the cuff, or that he was so stupid to believe that the public would swallow it. Two things we know about Cummings is that he wargames everything, and whatever you may think of him as a person, he's definitely not stupid. The other key point is the one DavidL made is absolutely correct, at the time he made the trip there was nothing stopping him driving there and back for a walk.
So why the story? To me there are two very obvious parallels. This was firstly an unnecessary thing to do that on the surface - rather like the proroguing of Parliament. Secondly, it was an obvious lie or bending of the truth but one that could never be completely proven to be so - rather like the £350m on the bus. And as with both of those examples, I am certain that his reason for doing so was to trigger the "other side" - in this instance the press and the opposition, with the aim of getting both to completely overreach and reveal themselves in the case of the press to be unreasonable zealots, and in the case of the labour party to enable their apparent hypocrisy with regard to the likes of Stephen Kinnock to be revealed.
I would say that Cummings will feel that the press have played their role to perfection, and the tweet from the civil service will have been a nice bonus. The labour party, on the other hand, have played this very wisely, and Keir Starmer is certainly impressing with his political judgement - very welcome news for all of us.
I'm not in any way praising Cummings (if it were me I'd have stepped down for sure) but it is his modus operandi, and I hardly need to remind people on here how catastrophic a blunder both the bus and the proroguing were seen as being at the time, nor how successfully they eventually turned out.
Just had a pretty horrible experience at the local park. Two men were letting their rather nasty looking dogs run around in the part of the park set aside for children, which is clearly marked "no dogs". My wife politely asked if they were unaware of the rules and asked if they could move to the park reserved for dogs. She and I were met with a barge of threats and bad language. The kids started crying and we went home. Made me think of the people defending Mr Cummings for breaking the rules, for whom winning is everything and any idea of decency or fairness is for wimps and losers. What a nasty little country we are becoming, and what a message our rulers are sending.
Do you believe Cummings story about the Castle expedition? I mean do you, personally, actually believe he was telling the truth?
Sort of.
In the full context of he felt like it was a good idea to drive to see if he was up to the pressures of driving then yes I do. I've done similar before. I think a half hour trip is a great idea before a cross country drive if you have any concerns and I've done that before.
On the out of context word of "eyesight" and an eyesight discussion alone? No.
Does that make sense?
Pure comedy gold. Again.
You, mr will no one think of the children, have in the past worried that your eyesight is not up to driving so you have shouted over to Mrs T: come on luv grab the kids we're going for a drive.
You've done that.
No, read again, not eyesight. I said not eyesight!
My specific word when I said about "eyesight" was "No."
Doing a half hour drive when I'm concerned about my stamina etc to do a five hour drive, yes I have done that.
Trying to think of other areas of human activity where a bloke might try something for a short time to check if he has the stamina to do it for much longer.
Not much springs to mind. Painting a ceiling maybe?
Literally anything.
There's a reason eg if someone is returning from injury in professional football they're generally put on as a substitute first for 20 to 30 minutes before being expected to do the full 90 minutes.
Bit different, that. The footballing example would be more a fitness test. You take a fitness test and if you pass you get picked for the upcoming match. So, was Cummings' drive to BC and back a sort of "fitness test" which he passed and thus earned his place in the team for the "match", being the big drive to London?
Yes, I think that works. It's bollox, of course, but it might have worked in court with a good barrister.
It's not different it's the exact same concept. A small test before an endurance event.
The fitness test before a match works better than the example of a sub. Because the sub is part of the match. Hence my post.
Would it be wildly laughable to suggest that the UK Government is actually doing a pretty decent job?
The civil servants, the politicians, and even the Dominic Cummings'. I'd imagine that all stripes of Government might do much the same, but nonetheless this is good work in tricky times.
What sort of numbers would signify the UK Government doing a mediocre job, or a really poor one?
Would it be wildly laughable to suggest that the UK Government is actually doing a pretty decent job?
The civil servants, the politicians, and even the Dominic Cummings'. I'd imagine that all stripes of Government might do much the same, but nonetheless this is good work in tricky times.
What sort of numbers would signify the UK Government doing a mediocre job, or a really poor one?
Just had a pretty horrible experience at the local park. Two men were letting their rather nasty looking dogs run around in the part of the park set aside for children, which is clearly marked "no dogs". My wife politely asked if they were unaware of the rules and asked if they could move to the park reserved for dogs. She and I were met with a barge of threats and bad language. The kids started crying and we went home. Made me think of the people defending Mr Cummings for breaking the rules, for whom winning is everything and any idea of decency or fairness is for wimps and losers. What a nasty little country we are becoming, and what a message our rulers are sending.
This is brilliant, its Cumming's fault that your wife met some idiots down the park.
Would it be wildly laughable to suggest that the UK Government is actually doing a pretty decent job?
The civil servants, the politicians, and even the Dominic Cummings'. I'd imagine that all stripes of Government might do much the same, but nonetheless this is good work in tricky times.
There is a lot of noise and fury from their critics I would agree. But there are some areas where they genuinely dropped a major bollock and it has had a very large impact on deaths. Asa such I think that looking at the basic numbers, it is probably justified to say they have performed badly overall whilst in some areas they have done well.
Too many people have died unnecessarily to be able to say the criticism is just normal political point scoring.
So if they worked for you..... (Which oddly of course they do in part)
Would you sack them, or would you ask them to pull their socks up?
So far as I can see it's the latter, and if they worked for me I'd be simply falling over myself with praise that they had coped.
Just had a pretty horrible experience at the local park. Two men were letting their rather nasty looking dogs run around in the part of the park set aside for children, which is clearly marked "no dogs". My wife politely asked if they were unaware of the rules and asked if they could move to the park reserved for dogs. She and I were met with a barge of threats and bad language. The kids started crying and we went home. Made me think of the people defending Mr Cummings for breaking the rules, for whom winning is everything and any idea of decency or fairness is for wimps and losers. What a nasty little country we are becoming, and what a message our rulers are sending.
You're being silly making a comparison between those disgusting thugs in the park and the Cummings affair.
Just had a pretty horrible experience at the local park. Two men were letting their rather nasty looking dogs run around in the part of the park set aside for children, which is clearly marked "no dogs". My wife politely asked if they were unaware of the rules and asked if they could move to the park reserved for dogs. She and I were met with a barge of threats and bad language. The kids started crying and we went home. Made me think of the people defending Mr Cummings for breaking the rules, for whom winning is everything and any idea of decency or fairness is for wimps and losers. What a nasty little country we are becoming, and what a message our rulers are sending.
Now idiotic dog-owners are Cummings' fault too...
I take it all back - the PM's adviser has indeed spread a highly contagious disease around our country after all ... Cummings Derangement Syndrome.
Comments
There's a report in a property paper the government is looking for space to build this. It mentions Tesla but as I understand it they were choosing Germany
The myth of an "iceberg" of undetected infections is being exploded by antibody testing.
Perhaps it's inevitable that people are now going to come up with a myth of widespread natural immunity, but it really is nonsense.
They must think the Cummings virus has passed sufficiently to be seen next to the PM.
It is the Brit Nat Farage, Cummings and Johnson that Massie holds disdain for.
He is lurching away from the Nat.
The problem with autos is not the assembly, it's the supply chain.
Take automotive semiconductors: there are three main manufacturers in the world, and none of them are going to build a chip fabrication plant in the UK, just to serve the UK.
Automotive supply is a really international business, and you need a lot of critical mass.
Not only that, but parts will cross borders many times. You might see steel milled in Wales going to a subsupplier in Italy, who makes a part for a gearbox maker in France, which sends it to the Nissan plant in the UK, before the end car heads of Germany.
Now, we can alleviate the problem to a good extent by eliminating all tariffs on automotive components (although that would still have some small issues with supply chains not being able to run "just on time"), but the UK's published tariff schedule doesn't do that. And the reason it doesn't do that is because it wants to use the removal of tariffs as leverage in free trade negotiations.
If we don't have a decent FTA with the EU, I would expect that there will be less car making in the UK. That's not me being super negative, that's just a reflection on the fact that it's an incredibly difficult industry, and we're subscale.
But it's hard to see how it would be able to compete long-term if the UK has tariff barriers with most of the factories that supply it.
Braying charlatan is how Scots see most Tories. In case they’ve ever wondered. Which they probably haven’t.
That’s why Ruth Davidson was so valuable, and why BoZo was so daft to scare her off. She was one of precious few Tories not seen as a braying charlatan north of the border.
Even though, on this occasion, you are correct...
The Swedish experiment is most definitely a failure.
LOL.
Translation: as much as I can throw at the media to divert attention.
I'd certainly conclude that characterising posting about a SCon columnist referring to postive polls re. Sturgeon as 'assuming that the wickedness of England becoming personified in Boris and Cummings and the wonderfulness of Scotland becoming personified in Nicola Sturgeon' is an act of imagination rather than analysis.
I didnt realise till last night each pack contains one swab which you rub on your tonsils and then stick the same end up your nose.
Not sure how it can, as someone was arguing last week provide separate data about the accuracy of the throat and nose swab. Now i have done it seems even stranger to count 2 tests as its a single, one ended swab.
Am i missing something.
But I have huge faith in BoZo the Clown. That man is pure gold. God knows what he’ll achieve before he’s finally kicked out, but the SNP haven’t had a better recruiting sergeant since Maggie herself.
People also can meet in gardens.
From June 15th secondary schools to reopen for exam prep and non essential shops to reopen too
Not inside homes.
PP/Betfair: 5/1 go, 1/10 stay
Ladbrokes: 4/1 go, 1/7 stay
Starsports: 11/2 go, 1/10 stay
Or at least that's the plan I've heard.
They've already broken ground on it.
Is this one of those occasions where instinct is used?
Ruthie’s flaws were legion, not least her love of the u-turn, which the adoring media usually failed to highlight.
But one thing she definitely was not was a braying charlatan. That was a huge advantage for the tainted Tory brand.
Can't work out why tracking suspected infected people as they move about the length of the country has fallen out of fashion.
Yep Cummings should have gone. But trying to push for a prosecution just to inflict political embarrassment on an opponent shows exactly what a tosser Chada is.
They are also still polling higher for Holyrood next year than the 22% Ruth Davidson got in 2016.
She had a great result in 2017 but that was it really
The civil servants, the politicians, and even the Dominic Cummings'. I'd imagine that all stripes of Government might do much the same, but nonetheless this is good work in tricky times.
The police do this all the time when they issue fixed penalty notices.
Progress but it's very slow!
But if you want to believe that Jackson Carlaw is the man to break the pattern, feel free! 😆
If R goes shooting up now they are all in total shit.
Banana republic time.
"Always wrong, never learn" is the acid test.
Too many people have died unnecessarily to be able to say the criticism is just normal political point scoring.
That explains the Swiss sex workers earlier.
I'd still want a discount.
Each factory Tesla is building will have a capacity of a few hundred thousand.
Tesla has a policy of trying to manufacture in the region/country they are selling in - the Chinese factory is only selling in China at the moment, though it may be used to supply other countries in South East Asia.
Those 2 items mean that Tesla will need multiple factories in Europe to be a full scale car producer.
So why the story? To me there are two very obvious parallels. This was firstly an unnecessary thing to do that on the surface - rather like the proroguing of Parliament. Secondly, it was an obvious lie or bending of the truth but one that could never be completely proven to be so - rather like the £350m on the bus. And as with both of those examples, I am certain that his reason for doing so was to trigger the "other side" - in this instance the press and the opposition, with the aim of getting both to completely overreach and reveal themselves in the case of the press to be unreasonable zealots, and in the case of the labour party to enable their apparent hypocrisy with regard to the likes of Stephen Kinnock to be revealed.
I would say that Cummings will feel that the press have played their role to perfection, and the tweet from the civil service will have been a nice bonus. The labour party, on the other hand, have played this very wisely, and Keir Starmer is certainly impressing with his political judgement - very welcome news for all of us.
I'm not in any way praising Cummings (if it were me I'd have stepped down for sure) but it is his modus operandi, and I hardly need to remind people on here how catastrophic a blunder both the bus and the proroguing were seen as being at the time, nor how successfully they eventually turned out.
Journos misjudging the mood once more.
Made me think of the people defending Mr Cummings for breaking the rules, for whom winning is everything and any idea of decency or fairness is for wimps and losers. What a nasty little country we are becoming, and what a message our rulers are sending.
Sometimes wonder why I bother.
Would you sack them, or would you ask them to pull their socks up?
So far as I can see it's the latter, and if they worked for me I'd be simply falling over myself with praise that they had coped.
Now idiotic dog-owners are Cummings' fault too...
I take it all back - the PM's adviser has indeed spread a highly contagious disease around our country after all ... Cummings Derangement Syndrome.