The fact that after 10 days of the biggest smear job and witch-hunt in British history the Tories still lead by 10 points with YouGov tells you all need to know - the public are not stupid!
"Never" in this case seems to mean "not in the last five years".
I guess it's still true for some definition of "we", but I think the expenses scandal was probably more significant, even if Populus didn't bother polling anyone on it.
The other strand of the Trump election plan. Biden = China. Biden = Antifa (terrorists). I expect an unprecedented level of BS about this from the GOP and their allies, especially their foreign allies on social media.
The media have tried to con the public into sharing their hatred of Cummings. Obviously had a short term impact but unsustainable over time.
I don't understand how Covid hasn't sent the entire readership of the Guardian into a nervous breakdown. Every headline has been" PANIC!!!! THEY'RE KILLING US!!!!!"
The US, Spanish, Mexican and French governments though still rated worse
"At least we're not as bad as the US."
Can any one single phrase sum up the times we live in as well as that? Both the poverty of ambition in defending a position that is remarkably poor, and the degree to which the US has fallen from a position of leadership to one of derision and contempt.
And yet the majority view in the country and especially amongst the ruling elite party here is that the US are our best potential allies over the next couple of decades.
The past is not the future, and a religious nationalistic, divided and poorly educated US is not a reliable close ally. It is not a good idea to put all our eggs into the US basket (case) at the moment.
The fact that after 10 days of the biggest smear job and witch-hunt in British history the Tories still lead by 10 points with YouGov tells you all need to know - the public are not stupid!
or that they are.
Or that they do not give a **** about politics.
I have never heard anyone defend Cummings over the last two weeks, but I have heard plenty deride him or poke fun at him or just just call him an idiot.
But do not think, under any circumstances, that they are going to be writing letters to the Editor demanding action. Also, do not imagine they will forget the sacrifices that they made, whilst Cummings did as he pleased.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
"has gripped the public in a way we’ve never seen before"
Phone hacking not on there? Or expenses? Or Cash for Honours? What a nonsense headline, never seen before my arse.
No one gave a fig about phone hacking. When I triumphantly revealed to my family that the mysterious affair, hinted at in the tabloids, was in fact between Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks they all blinked at me and said 'Who?' As for 'Cash for Honours': even a Blair-o-phobe like me can hardly remember it. The Covid-19 pandemic in contrast, and Cummings's fooling around during it, is on everyone's lips.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
"has gripped the public in a way we’ve never seen before"
Phone hacking not on there? Or expenses? Or Cash for Honours? What a nonsense headline, never seen before my arse.
Absolutely likely. Everyone (bar DC, no not that one) has been stuck at home with no soaps, no sport, no anything and are therefore following the news closely than they normally do plus unlike most of the other issues, lockdown touches everyone. No one cares, really, if Hugh Grant's phone is hacked. Everyone cares about when they can get out of the house.
Government lawyers have tried and failed to remove the name of Dominic Cummings from a sex discrimination claim being pursued by Sajid Javid’s former special adviser, the Guardian can disclose. The demand was rejected after barristers for Sonia Khan, the former chancellor’s media adviser who was marched by armed police from Downing Street, successfully argued that the behaviour of Boris Johnson’s chief aide was pivotal to the case.
"has gripped the public in a way we’ve never seen before"
Phone hacking not on there? Or expenses? Or Cash for Honours? What a nonsense headline, never seen before my arse.
No one gave a fig about phone hacking. When I triumphantly revealed to my family that the mysterious affair, hinted at in the tabloids, was in fact between Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks they all blinked at me and said 'Who?' As for 'Cash for Honours': even a Blair-o-phobe like me can hardly remember it. The Covid-19 pandemic in contrast, and Cummings's fooling around during it, is on everyone's lips.
Expenses was the biggest scandal of recent history. It went on for months and everybody to this day will be able to talk about the most outrageous claims like the duck house and moat cleaning.
With the greatest of respect to Mike the YouGov poll seems a complete answer to this thread. During this outrage, fury and incandescence there has been a 2% swing towards the government. Next.
Of course. This particular piece of bad news was craftily buried beneath prime ministerial assurances that the pandemic was over, lockdown was finished with, and we can all do whatever we like. Perhaps David L would like to come back when the death rate goes up again and the mood changes once more. Any credibility the Conservatives once had is now irretrievably lost to them.
I have been extremely critical of the government's approach to the relaxation of the lockdown and the chances we are now taking. But the irrational frothing about Cummings had very little to do with that.
Good, to the first part - it had not gone unnoticed. The importance of the Cummings saga lies not in the detail - all his stupid defence arguments are just candy floss. After all, who expected Cummings and Johnson to tell the truth about anything?
No, the real damage lies in the overall message: one set of rules for the likes of us, and a completely different set of rules for the top Tory boys.
The media have tried to con the public into sharing their hatred of Cummings. Obviously had a short term impact but unsustainable over time.
The vast majority have undoubtedly maintained a healthy disregard for his very existence.
If that were the case you'd expect markedly more don't knows in the pie charts in the header. How much this continues to matter, depends on what happens next. It matters very little if Johnson otherwise does a good job, but it will become part of a narrative of weakness and incompetence if he majorly cocks up anything else.
The media have tried to con the public into sharing their hatred of Cummings. Obviously had a short term impact but unsustainable over time.
"tried to con the public?" Amusing irony. Have you thought about the person you are referring to? There is no con. He is a repulsive individual, which has been underlined by his behaviour before and since he effectively waved two fingers at the British public and the families of those who have lost loved ones. He hasn't received nearly enough opprobrium to be proportionate to his arrogance . There is, apparently 25% of people in this country who are so stupid and partisan that they cannot recognise when someone in the government they support steps way out of line. A sad indictment of our education system's ability to help people to think for themselves.
The US, Spanish, Mexican and French governments though still rated worse
"At least we're not as bad as the US."
Can any one single phrase sum up the times we live in as well as that? Both the poverty of ambition in defending a position that is remarkably poor, and the degree to which the US has fallen from a position of leadership to one of derision and contempt.
And yet the majority view in the country and especially amongst the ruling elite party here is that the US are our best potential allies over the next couple of decades.
The past is not the future, and a religious nationalistic, divided and poorly educated US is not a reliable close ally. It is not a good idea to put all our eggs into the US basket (case) at the moment.
When you look around, we aren;t exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to allies.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
With the greatest of respect to Mike the YouGov poll seems a complete answer to this thread. During this outrage, fury and incandescence there has been a 2% swing towards the government.
Next.
Hmmm.
Compared to polls before the Cummings saga started, the swing is 2% to Labour - and that's if the YouGov poll is correct and all the other polls follow.
Ultimately it's pointless to even think about minor changes so far from an election. What will worry the Tories is that they had leads in the mid 20s before Starmer took over, and now we've seen that drop to approx 5% in a few polls. Even 10% is a big drop.
People might have forgotten Cummings in 4 years, but given that we're facing an economic disaster as things unwind, and we're sailing closer to the wind in terms of a second peak than most of our neighbours, Boris would clearly prefer to still have that large buffer.
There will be many ups and downs between now and 2024, but the "honeymoon Tories" have already lost faith, and it's going to take a lot to gain that back.
Most governments would be perfectly happy with ratings of 43=45%, seven months after an election.
The US, Spanish, Mexican and French governments though still rated worse
"At least we're not as bad as the US."
Can any one single phrase sum up the times we live in as well as that? Both the poverty of ambition in defending a position that is remarkably poor, and the degree to which the US has fallen from a position of leadership to one of derision and contempt.
And yet the majority view in the country and especially amongst the ruling elite party here is that the US are our best potential allies over the next couple of decades.
The past is not the future, and a religious nationalistic, divided and poorly educated US is not a reliable close ally. It is not a good idea to put all our eggs into the US basket (case) at the moment.
When you look around, we aren;t exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to allies.
Agreed, in which case it is best to keep a low profile and wait for things to improve rather than picking fights with everyone.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
The fact that none of the supposedly 'competent' people has been able to lay a glove on them as they scaled the heights of political power in this country must be an endless source of cognitive dissonance for you...
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
If there is a GE this year, something so catastrophic will have happened, that I don't think it will be tight at all.
Were such an election to occur, I doubt that the Tories would end up more than 5% ahead - a Hung Parliament pretty likely.
Unless 41 Tory MPs died this year and the opposition won every by election, there is zero chance of an election this year with an 80 seat Tory majority
I agree with that. Maybe worth contemplating though that we could well now be as close to Polling Day as to the Tory Leadership campaign which made Theresa May PM. - ie beginning of July 2016. To me that still feels quite recent!
The media have tried to con the public into sharing their hatred of Cummings. Obviously had a short term impact but unsustainable over time.
"tried to con the public?" Amusing irony. Have you thought about the person you are referring to? There is no con. He is a repulsive individual, which has been underlined by his behaviour before and since he effectively waved two fingers at the British public and the families of those who have lost loved ones. He hasn't received nearly enough opprobrium to be proportionate to his arrogance . There is, apparently 25% of people in this country who are so stupid and partisan that they cannot recognise when someone in the government they support steps way out of line. A sad indictment of our education system's ability to help people to think for themselves.
How do you know he is 'repulsive "? That's just media talk. His only formal public presentation was last Monday. Was that repulsive?
It is noticeable how often scientific mavericks are speaking outside their area of expertise. The one pronouncing on immunological "dark matter" is a neurologist who specialises in image analysis.
Well it wouldn't be surprising to find some people are less susceptible than others, for one reason or another. But his claim that Germans have more immunity than other people would need a bit of evidence. It seems unlikely to me to be the main reason for fewer deaths in Germany (other countries with lower death rates are available!) than the UK.
I think Radio 4 More or Less had a look at this last week and came to the conclusion that plenty of early testing and relatively early lockdown were enough to explain the difference, which has been the obvious logical explanation all along.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
Well, name some bigger ones then.
Chanak, the return to the Gold Standard, Imperial Preference, Munich, WWII, the war in Korea, Suez, the Malayan insurgency, Profumo, the 1967 devaluation, the Troubles, both Miners' Strikes, the trial of Jeremy Thorpe, the Falklands, both Gulf Wars, Bosnia, Kosovo, the expenses scandal, Brexit, the Scottish Referendum etc.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
The fact that no one has been able to lay a glove on them as they scaled the heights of political power in this country must be an endless source of cognitive dissonance for you...
I guess as a leaver, you must have had to look up what cognitive dissonance was on Google. Corbyn didn't lay a glove on him, because Corbyn was shite. Johnson is just slightly less shite than Corbyn. The reason why Johnson and Cummybiscuit get on so well is because both of them are bullshitters. You are simply part of that group of people that are fooled all of the time, and they really love you for it.
The US, Spanish, Mexican and French governments though still rated worse
"At least we're not as bad as the US."
Can any one single phrase sum up the times we live in as well as that? Both the poverty of ambition in defending a position that is remarkably poor, and the degree to which the US has fallen from a position of leadership to one of derision and contempt.
And yet the majority view in the country and especially amongst the ruling elite party here is that the US are our best potential allies over the next couple of decades.
The past is not the future, and a religious nationalistic, divided and poorly educated US is not a reliable close ally. It is not a good idea to put all our eggs into the US basket (case) at the moment.
When you look around, we aren;t exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to allies.
Agreed, in which case it is best to keep a low profile and wait for things to improve rather than picking fights with everyone.
What fights are we picking?
Maybe the time is right for us to look after ourselves and not try to mould the world?
"has gripped the public in a way we’ve never seen before"
Phone hacking not on there? Or expenses? Or Cash for Honours? What a nonsense headline, never seen before my arse.
No one gave a fig about phone hacking. When I triumphantly revealed to my family that the mysterious affair, hinted at in the tabloids, was in fact between Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks they all blinked at me and said 'Who?' As for 'Cash for Honours': even a Blair-o-phobe like me can hardly remember it. The Covid-19 pandemic in contrast, and Cummings's fooling around during it, is on everyone's lips.
Expenses was the biggest scandal of recent history. It went on for months and everybody to this day will be able to talk about the most outrageous claims like the duck house and moat cleaning.
No, Cummings is far more significant than the expenses scandal. Yes, they both fomented a toxic 'One rule for them' mindset amongst the masses. The difference is that the latter wasn't hitched to everyone being confined to their homes for months and possibly staring economic ruin in the face - much less deadly.
Off topic: does anyone know where I would buy gravel like the following pic? I’ve been to 4 garden centres today and nobody has a clue. Probably caught COVID in the process.
Gravel is not always transported very far, though there are obvious exceptions - London etc. and the sort of poncy impoirted stuff one gets in garden centres in expensive plastic sacks.
If it's old gravel from an old drive a local origin is even more likely. The "gravel" on my house is distinctive stuff put down by the original builder in the 1960s and I think from the quarry in the hill I can see in the distance. You can find it on quite a few other house drives still in the street. Is that the case for you?
The other question is, is that real gravel in the sense of being very big sand, so to speak, from the usual riverine or fluvioglacial deposits, or is it artificially crushed rock? The stones look a bit waterworn.
If it seems to be common on local houses you could try emailing local university geol dept, or museum with a geological curator, if you have one around, or the British Geological Survey, and then try local gravel pits or qaurries!
I'm fairly convinced by now that a poll could show 98.8 per cent of people think DC did an unjustifiably bad thing and Boris would hang on to him.
The danger for him is if something else outrageous comes out in the next few months when his reserves of goodwill are still stuck in the red. "Cummings licks pensioner in Wiltshire" would definitely be a sub-optimal headline
Currently (and IMO correctly), Boris is calculating that an 80 majority and 4 years till election time gives him scope for indulgence towards someone he regards as indispensable.
Off topic: does anyone know where I would buy gravel like the following pic? I’ve been to 4 garden centres today and nobody has a clue. Probably caught COVID in the process.
Looks like black basalt? Could be wrong. If it is if you google black basalt gravel you'll find several online suppliers. Delivery may be too expensive unless you're ordering a lot.
Pretty sure I've seen it in homebase in the past, but may not be something they stock at the moment (just seem to have, understandably, whatever is fashionable at the time).
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
Well, name some bigger ones then.
Chanak, the return to the Gold Standard, Imperial Preference, Munich, WWII, the war in Korea, Suez, the Malayan insurgency, Profumo, the 1967 devaluation, the Troubles, both Miners' Strikes, the trial of Jeremy Thorpe, the Falklands, both Gulf Wars, Bosnia, Kosovo, the expenses scandal, Brexit, the Scottish Referendum etc.
Good list - what about the Lloyd George cash-for-honours?
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
David Cameron was the worst prime minister since Lord North (so far, at least).
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
The US, Spanish, Mexican and French governments though still rated worse
"At least we're not as bad as the US."
Can any one single phrase sum up the times we live in as well as that? Both the poverty of ambition in defending a position that is remarkably poor, and the degree to which the US has fallen from a position of leadership to one of derision and contempt.
And yet the majority view in the country and especially amongst the ruling elite party here is that the US are our best potential allies over the next couple of decades.
The past is not the future, and a religious nationalistic, divided and poorly educated US is not a reliable close ally. It is not a good idea to put all our eggs into the US basket (case) at the moment.
When you look around, we aren;t exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to allies.
Agreed, in which case it is best to keep a low profile and wait for things to improve rather than picking fights with everyone.
What fights are we picking?
Maybe the time is right for us to look after ourselves and not try to mould the world?
EU, China and Russia seem our favourite ones at the moment, occassionally dipping our toes into the middle east.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
The fact that no one has been able to lay a glove on them as they scaled the heights of political power in this country must be an endless source of cognitive dissonance for you...
I guess as a leaver, you must have had to look up what cognitive dissonance was on Google. Corbyn didn't lay a glove on him, because Corbyn was shite. Johnson is just slightly less shite than Corbyn. The reason why Johnson and Cummybiscuit get on so well is because both of them are bullshitters. You are simply part of that group of people that are fooled all of the time, and they really love you for it.
Cummings is a wannabe rather than a bullshitter. He worships scientists but it is all tertiary stuff: he reads and admires the popular accounts of what they are up to, not the primary research or secondary reviews. Still, it's a start. He's not a leader, not a politician and not a scientist but he wants to combine all three.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
"has gripped the public in a way we’ve never seen before"
Phone hacking not on there? Or expenses? Or Cash for Honours? What a nonsense headline, never seen before my arse.
Of those I think the expenses one was much more damaging - phone hacking deeply upset those who were hacked, but those who guiltily enjoyed the fruits of the hacking, possibly less so. Cash for honours involved a few - but the expenses scandal involved many across all parties with some MPs going to prison - which however much some are upset over Cummings is unlikely to be an outcome.
I think OGH is wrong to posit much impact on Cummings directly - but I do think the trashing Johnson's reputation has undergone in "toughing this out" may have serious long term consequences. As OGH never tires of reminding us "look at the leader ratings". Johnson has had a significant slump - if it proves permanent the current Tory VI may well decay. Similarly SKS has picked up quite nicely - well ahead of the party so comprehensively trashed by his predecessor. But if that boost in SKS endures, sooner or later it too will feed through to Labour VI. In the short term none of this matters much. Unless Labour starts polling well ahead of the Tories whose back benchers may begin to wonder if Johnson is such an election winner after all.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
The fact that no one has been able to lay a glove on them as they scaled the heights of political power in this country must be an endless source of cognitive dissonance for you...
I guess as a leaver, you must have had to look up what cognitive dissonance was on Google. Corbyn didn't lay a glove on him, because Corbyn was shite. Johnson is just slightly less shite than Corbyn. The reason why Johnson and Cummybiscuit get on so well is because both of them are bullshitters. You are simply part of that group of people that are fooled all of the time, and they really love you for it.
Cummings is a wannabe rather than a bullshitter. He worships scientists but it is all tertiary stuff: he reads and admires the popular accounts of what they are up to, not the primary research or secondary reviews. Still, it's a start. He's not a leader, not a politician and not a scientist but he wants to combine all three.
There's something of that about BoJo as well. On many levels, for many years, he has wanted to be a Churchillian Prime Minister so badly...
... and now he is being Prime Minister really badly.
(If you'll excuse me, I need to answer the door. I think the writers of Week Ending want their joke back.)
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
Well, name some bigger ones then.
Hindenburg signing the Notverordnung to give his Chancellor emergency powers.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
The fact that no one has been able to lay a glove on them as they scaled the heights of political power in this country must be an endless source of cognitive dissonance for you...
I guess as a leaver, you must have had to look up what cognitive dissonance was on Google. Corbyn didn't lay a glove on him, because Corbyn was shite. Johnson is just slightly less shite than Corbyn. The reason why Johnson and Cummybiscuit get on so well is because both of them are bullshitters. You are simply part of that group of people that are fooled all of the time, and they really love you for it.
Then prepare to have your mind blown - I voted Remain. I simply consider our EU membership to be a second-order issue, unlike some who simply can't bear to let it go, for whatever reason.
Corbyn was indeed shite (although not so shite that May didn't almost lose to him), but aren't you forgetting everyone else? The entire Remain establishment: the Supreme Court, the BBC, the Speaker, the Lords, Cooper, Benn, Starmer, the Tory rebels, the former Prime Ministers, the Tory grandees, the Independents, the lawyers - Cherry, Jolyon, Gina Miller et al - and no doubt so many others that I've forgotten.
Boris and Cummings crushed them virtually without effort. Tell me, how in your mind did a pair of supposed incompetents politically annihilate such an army of supposedly competent luminaries?
Unless your assessment happens to be completely and utterly wrong, of course
If there is a GE this year, something so catastrophic will have happened, that I don't think it will be tight at all.
Were such an election to occur, I doubt that the Tories would end up more than 5% ahead - a Hung Parliament pretty likely.
Unless 41 Tory MPs died this year and the opposition won every by election, there is zero chance of an election this year with an 80 seat Tory majority
I agree with that. Maybe worth contemplating though that we could well now be as close to Polling Day as to the Tory Leadership campaign which made Theresa May PM. - ie beginning of July 2016. To me that still feels quite recent!
Indeed closer (GE May 2024?).
On the previous point, JRM forcing open the Aye lobby to 350 people with an over-representation of overweight 50+ blokes could be seen as testing the science..
Surely a graph of the number of deaths by the day of death has to be a better monitor. Has to be.
Yes, but its not accurate until too long after. As today, still updating from March for some deaths (no idea why). I'm not sure the public would understand why the government only gives data from 7 days ago (what are they hiding?). The rolling average is useful for this. I wonder how many people still believe that the number announced died with in the last 24 hours?
It is noticeable how often scientific mavericks are speaking outside their area of expertise. The one pronouncing on immunological "dark matter" is a neurologist who specialises in image analysis.
Well it wouldn't be surprising to find some people are less susceptible than others, for one reason or another. But his claim that Germans have more immunity than other people would need a bit of evidence. It seems unlikely to me to be the main reason for fewer deaths in Germany (other countries with lower death rates are available!) than the UK.
I think Radio 4 More or Less had a look at this last week and came to the conclusion that plenty of early testing and relatively early lockdown were enough to explain the difference, which has been the obvious logical explanation all along.
Not sure about that. His evidence is in the figures and modelling the known factors. At the very least it's a hypothesis ("there could be an unknown factor here") which can't be refuted simply by saying 'I can't think what that factor might be'.
Maybe the More or Less analysis is correct, or maybe Karl Friston is right. I don't know, but I incline to the view that Friston might be right. Germany (and also Austria) are such massive outliers, despite very close links with Northern Italy, that it doesn't seem very plausible that purely by better testing they'd have found enough asymptomatic cases very early on (before Italy even knew it had a problem) to account for all the differences.
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of you think the most important thing is the 80 seat majority, as though winning an election is the be all and end all. A fucking idiot with zero leadership skills could have beaten Corbyn at that point in time, and guess what, one did.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
You're just an extreme eurofanatic. You have no good words to say about anyone who doesn't meet your European purity test.
The Cummings story was the biggest PR disaster in political terms of recent times I can recall.
Cummings should have resigned but he seems to get his pleasure winding people up, no more so than Nigel Foremain, Scott and others on here.
Boris lost my support over it and I cannot excuse either Cummings or Boris and expect 2021 will see Boris move on, spend time with Carrie and his son, and earn millions in journalism
However, for those of us who prefer grown up debate from insult hurling, I would just say this weekend ,and going forward, are going to be really important moments in covid 19.It is a dangerous moment in the covid story and if, and it is a big if, the deaths continue to fall and test and tracing becomes successful then HMG will gain popularity, irrespective of the Cummings debacle
Listening to Burley in her high handed way attacking the decision to hold formula one at Silverstone and granting the drivers special status to enter the Country, showed just how she and many others in the media care little for the economic future and just want to be negative and do not add to the debate in a way that is serious. Silverstone could have closed if the race had not been allowed and HMG has shown in this case the innovation and quickness of thought to take the correct action to defend the sport and British racing. (and for clarification I am not a great fan of formula 1)
Likewise this afternoon there was a piece with Rishi Sunak from an open market and he was upbeat and full of optimism. And Jon Craig's response on Sky. 'He does look optimistic ' said with such a long and disapproving face you could not make it up
For me we have to move forward, always with social distancing and hand washing and at least attempt to open the economy. The schools that had opened had done terrific work to let it happen and full marks to the heads and teachers for a can do attitude in marked contrast with the teaching unions
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
In 1990, Trump told Playboy magazine: “The Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
My Dad's family is English My great grandfather is Irish My mum's side of the family still lived in Guatemala City when I was growing up My mum grew up in Belize
Can all be simultaenously true.
As to where Dunt grew up, either he's lieing or he moved around loads as a kid. Though Southampton and Winchester are not contradictory to Hampshire.
In 1990, Trump told Playboy magazine: “The Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
You realise Trump and this senator are two different people, right?
In 1990, Trump told Playboy magazine: “The Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
You realise Trump and this senator are two different people, right?
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in summer (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
I believe there was a Chinese paper that looked at outbreaks and from 318 cases, only 1 was from outdoors.
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
There seems to be lots of evidence now that outdoor transmission is very weak / low risk.
Were it not, we'd have seen a spike by now because the rules were widely ignored down here during April.
Implies that pub beer gardens and similar outdoor hospitality should be allowed to open.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
The fact that no one has been able to lay a glove on them as they scaled the heights of political power in this country must be an endless source of cognitive dissonance for you...
I guess as a leaver, you must have had to look up what cognitive dissonance was on Google. Corbyn didn't lay a glove on him, because Corbyn was shite. Johnson is just slightly less shite than Corbyn. The reason why Johnson and Cummybiscuit get on so well is because both of them are bullshitters. You are simply part of that group of people that are fooled all of the time, and they really love you for it.
Cummings is a wannabe rather than a bullshitter. He worships scientists but it is all tertiary stuff: he reads and admires the popular accounts of what they are up to, not the primary research or secondary reviews. Still, it's a start. He's not a leader, not a politician and not a scientist but he wants to combine all three.
There's something of that about BoJo as well. On many levels, for many years, he has wanted to be a Churchillian Prime Minister so badly...
... and now he is being Prime Minister really badly.
(If you'll excuse me, I need to answer the door. I think the writers of Week Ending want their joke back.)
I've posted before the video where Boris is plugging his Churchill book and Chris Evans takes him up on what none of the "proper" political journalists mentioned, the book's design to conflate the two men. (Chris Evans is a broadcasting genius, or he would be if only he'd gone to a public school and Oxbridge.)
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
There seems to be lots of evidence now that outdoor transmission is very weak / low risk.
Well the US are currently testing this theory on a very large scale.
So it seems that all the old folk that voted to Leave and for Boris have died of Covid. I'm off to Betfair to get a price on Labour winning in 2024 and us rejoining the EU by 2025.
That poll is already suggesting Boris made the right decision. Some critics misjudged how much folk cared about Cummings and how it would affect future voting. Sure it was the only story in the news but people were getting ludicrously carried away. Less than a week ago Stark Dawning claimed it was the biggest news story of the last 100 years!!!
I think I said it was the biggest political story of the last hundred years. Literally everyone in the country has been impacted by Covid-19 to a highly significant degree. Cummings's antics are relevant to everyone in a way that the behaviour of politicians never are.
I mean "the biggest political story of the past 100 years". Where to start with that? A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
That last sentence is probably right. After all we have the biggest incompetent as PM in my entire lifetime, and probably the last couple of centuries. The likelihood is that there will be much bigger stories of arrogance and incompetence while we have "Boris and Dom" at the helm.
The fact that no one has been able to lay a glove on them as they scaled the heights of political power in this country must be an endless source of cognitive dissonance for you...
I guess as a leaver, you must have had to look up what cognitive dissonance was on Google. Corbyn didn't lay a glove on him, because Corbyn was shite. Johnson is just slightly less shite than Corbyn. The reason why Johnson and Cummybiscuit get on so well is because both of them are bullshitters. You are simply part of that group of people that are fooled all of the time, and they really love you for it.
Cummings is a wannabe rather than a bullshitter. He worships scientists but it is all tertiary stuff: he reads and admires the popular accounts of what they are up to, not the primary research or secondary reviews. Still, it's a start. He's not a leader, not a politician and not a scientist but he wants to combine all three.
There's something of that about BoJo as well. On many levels, for many years, he has wanted to be a Churchillian Prime Minister so badly...
... and now he is being Prime Minister really badly.
(If you'll excuse me, I need to answer the door. I think the writers of Week Ending want their joke back.)
I've posted before the video where Boris is plugging his Churchill book and Chris Evans takes him up on what none of the "proper" political journalists mentioned, the book's design to conflate the two men. (Chris Evans is a broadcasting genius, or he would be if only he'd gone to a public school and Oxbridge.)
How did Mr Johnson handle that conflation when it came to Churchill's miserable, sickly last term in office?
Is this relevant to anything? Cummings is clearly unpopular (no surprise) but I can't see it has any bearing whatsoever on the next general election.
That will be fought almost exclusively on what's left of the economy and a berk driving to a castle will be forgotten by 99% of voters
That might be true, however the focus will be on the berk driving the country.
Correct, I read that some on here think Boris won't be around for long, hard to disagree.
The next few years are going to be painful, I can't think of anybody that I would like to see in charge - do you have any suggestions?
It is to the Tory party’s shame that Hunt was always the better choice.
Not in the circumstances. Hunt was a far worse choice.
You really think Hunt would have got a better (from our perspective) deal like Boris got?
You really think Hunt would have got an 80 seat majority.
Hunt isn't bad, certainly better than May but the time was not right for Hunt. And if Hunt had been elected then you'd have been saying how bad he is.
That is where you extreme right wing (and some less extreme) fanbois of Johnson get it so wrong. So many of !
No we were led by a fucking idiot with zero leadership skills and the result was she threw away Cameron's majority.
Here we go again. Obsession with winning elections without the thought as to what to do with the winnings. TMay was quite poor, but trust me, as someone who has spent most of my adult career assessing leadership capability, she has much more leadership ability than Johnson. I would not put Johnson in executive leadership of a Parish Council! If I had to order leadership ability, by observable objective measure of all the PMs in my recollection (I can just about remember Wilson), Thatcher would clearly be top and Johnson would be in very poor last place with TMay and Brown tied on quite a few more points above him.
Every PM is the worst Prime Minister ever, when they are in office.
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
It is too early to be definitive - yes - but there is evidence accumulating that his undoubted ability as a winner of elections is not replicated in the area of leading a country or running a government.
My Dad's family is English My great grandfather is Irish My mum's side of the family still lived in Guatemala City when I was growing up My mum grew up in Belize
Can all be simultaenously true.
As to where Dunt grew up, either he's lieing or he moved around loads as a kid. Though Southampton and Winchester are not contradictory to Hampshire.
Tbf the Southampton Winchester thing can also be true. When asked where I grew up I say between Liverpool and Manchester. Why? Because it's pre-empting the question I almost always get if I say Wigan.
Tall Tom Cotton has been getting a lot of coverage: first it was stand up to China, now it's smash the rioter "terrorists". Should something happen to Trump...
Encouraging. The 6-day death rate has looked to be plateauing recently, which is a bit concerning, but the hospital data hints that this should resume its decrease again.
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
Yes, good data again today.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Or simply that outdoor transmission is not very important, or possibly that Covid-19 is like flu and doesn't spread so easily in warmer weather (as was originally thought might turn out to be the case).
There seems to be lots of evidence now that outdoor transmission is very weak / low risk.
Were it not, we'd have seen a spike by now because the rules were widely ignored down here during April.
Implies that pub beer gardens and similar outdoor hospitality should be allowed to open.
Tall Tom Cotton has been getting a lot of coverage: first it was stand up to China, now it's smash the rioter "terrorists". Should something happen to Trump...
Comments
Phone hacking not on there? Or expenses? Or Cash for Honours? What a nonsense headline, never seen before my arse.
Man's like a bad smell.
I guess it's still true for some definition of "we", but I think the expenses scandal was probably more significant, even if Populus didn't bother polling anyone on it.
https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-05-30/new-coronavirus-infections-rise-in-spain-with-271-detected-in-the-last-24-hours.html?rel=lom
The trouble with a soft (and softening) lockdown is that it takes longer to work.
The past is not the future, and a religious nationalistic, divided and poorly educated US is not a reliable close ally. It is not a good idea to put all our eggs into the US basket (case) at the moment.
I have never heard anyone defend Cummings over the last two weeks, but I have heard plenty deride him or poke fun at him or just just call him an idiot.
But do not think, under any circumstances, that they are going to be writing letters to the Editor demanding action. Also, do not imagine they will forget the sacrifices that they made, whilst Cummings did as he pleased.
Margaret Thatcher would have told you that you cannot exercise power without winning it, but winning power without the ability to exercise it is totally pointless. Johnson does not know how to exercise power because he is a lazy lump with zero attention to detail. He is the worst PM in my lifetime by a long way. Clearly you have not noticed that he does not have a deal, and he is guiding the good ship UK onto the economic rocks of "no deal". That is not having a deal, it is just economic stupidity and irresponsibility of the first order. Why is it likely? Not because Johnson really thinks it is a good thing, but because he has so little experience of anything that he could not negotiate a discount at SCS!
A ludicrous assertion. It probably wont even be the biggest political story of the year.
No, the real damage lies in the overall message: one set of rules for the likes of us, and a completely different set of rules for the top Tory boys.
"Hello. I would like to ask you a question - do you approve of our glorious governments handling of the COVID crisis?
Or would you like me to mark your social credit score and that of your family to the nth degree as minus several million?"
I think Radio 4 More or Less had a look at this last week and came to the conclusion that plenty of early testing and relatively early lockdown were enough to explain the difference, which has been the obvious logical explanation all along.
https://twitter.com/AmerIndependent/status/1267456868143771650
Maybe the time is right for us to look after ourselves and not try to mould the world?
If it's old gravel from an old drive a local origin is even more likely. The "gravel" on my house is distinctive stuff put down by the original builder in the 1960s and I think from the quarry in the hill I can see in the distance. You can find it on quite a few other house drives still in the street. Is that the case for you?
The other question is, is that real gravel in the sense of being very big sand, so to speak, from the usual riverine or fluvioglacial deposits, or is it artificially crushed rock? The stones look a bit waterworn.
If it seems to be common on local houses you could try emailing local university geol dept, or museum with a geological curator, if you have one around, or the British Geological Survey, and then try local gravel pits or qaurries!
The danger for him is if something else outrageous comes out in the next few months when his reserves of goodwill are still stuck in the red. "Cummings licks pensioner in Wiltshire" would definitely be a sub-optimal headline
Currently (and IMO correctly), Boris is calculating that an 80 majority and 4 years till election time gives him scope for indulgence towards someone he regards as indispensable.
Pretty sure I've seen it in homebase in the past, but may not be something they stock at the moment (just seem to have, understandably, whatever is fashionable at the time).
It's way too early to judge what Johnson is like.
I think OGH is wrong to posit much impact on Cummings directly - but I do think the trashing Johnson's reputation has undergone in "toughing this out" may have serious long term consequences. As OGH never tires of reminding us "look at the leader ratings". Johnson has had a significant slump - if it proves permanent the current Tory VI may well decay. Similarly SKS has picked up quite nicely - well ahead of the party so comprehensively trashed by his predecessor. But if that boost in SKS endures, sooner or later it too will feed through to Labour VI. In the short term none of this matters much. Unless Labour starts polling well ahead of the Tories whose back benchers may begin to wonder if Johnson is such an election winner after all.
Still a high rate of correlation, although Italy does look rather different.
... and now he is being Prime Minister really badly.
(If you'll excuse me, I need to answer the door. I think the writers of Week Ending want their joke back.)
Corbyn was indeed shite (although not so shite that May didn't almost lose to him), but aren't you forgetting everyone else? The entire Remain establishment: the Supreme Court, the BBC, the Speaker, the Lords, Cooper, Benn, Starmer, the Tory rebels, the former Prime Ministers, the Tory grandees, the Independents, the lawyers - Cherry, Jolyon, Gina Miller et al - and no doubt so many others that I've forgotten.
Boris and Cummings crushed them virtually without effort. Tell me, how in your mind did a pair of supposed incompetents politically annihilate such an army of supposedly competent luminaries?
Unless your assessment happens to be completely and utterly wrong, of course
On the previous point, JRM forcing open the Aye lobby to 350 people with an over-representation of overweight 50+ blokes could be seen as testing the science..
Does he know?
https://twitter.com/NoirMJ/status/1267422641826168832
Maybe the More or Less analysis is correct, or maybe Karl Friston is right. I don't know, but I incline to the view that Friston might be right. Germany (and also Austria) are such massive outliers, despite very close links with Northern Italy, that it doesn't seem very plausible that purely by better testing they'd have found enough asymptomatic cases very early on (before Italy even knew it had a problem) to account for all the differences.
Sadly, I doubt it.
I can recall.
Cummings should have resigned but he seems to get his pleasure winding people up, no more so than Nigel Foremain, Scott and others on here.
Boris lost my support over it and I cannot excuse either Cummings or Boris and expect 2021 will see Boris move on, spend time with Carrie and his son, and earn millions in journalism
However, for those of us who prefer grown up debate from insult hurling, I would just say this weekend ,and going forward, are going to be really important moments in covid 19.It is a dangerous moment in the covid story and if, and it is a big if, the deaths continue to fall and test and tracing becomes successful then HMG will gain popularity, irrespective of the Cummings debacle
Listening to Burley in her high handed way attacking the decision to hold formula one at Silverstone and granting the drivers special status to enter the Country, showed just how she and many others in the media care little for the economic future and just want to be negative and do not add to the debate in a way that is serious. Silverstone could have closed if the race had not been allowed and HMG has shown in this case the innovation and quickness of thought to take the correct action to defend the sport and British racing. (and for clarification I am not a great fan of formula 1)
Likewise this afternoon there was a piece with Rishi Sunak from an open market and he was upbeat and full of optimism. And Jon Craig's response on Sky. 'He does look optimistic ' said with such a long and disapproving face you could not make it up
For me we have to move forward, always with social distancing and hand washing and at least attempt to open the economy. The schools that had opened had done terrific work to let it happen and full marks to the heads and teachers for a can do attitude in marked contrast with the teaching unions
Some indications that the hospital admissions could be plateauing a bit now, though. Would like to see that dropping further; fingers crossed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/11/donald-trump-tiananmen-square-china-playboy-interview
In 1990, Trump told Playboy magazine: “The Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
Edited extra bit: ah, happened yesterday.
https://twitter.com/andrewbensonf1/status/1267196886152249345
My great grandfather is Irish
My mum's side of the family still lived in Guatemala City when I was growing up
My mum grew up in Belize
Can all be simultaenously true.
As to where Dunt grew up, either he's lieing or he moved around loads as a kid. Though Southampton and Winchester are not contradictory to Hampshire.
For me, the interesting this is the 'dog that did not bark'.
If you look at the threads in the April warm spell, when lockdown breaking was rife (particularly in London where it was very warm and lots of people don't have gardens) there are lots of very confident predictions that we'd see a new spike.
But there has been no such spike. Mostly young, slim and fit young Londoners fraternising and canoodling in parks hasn't caused an uptick.
Suggests some form of risk segmentation would work.
Were it not, we'd have seen a spike by now because the rules were widely ignored down here during April.
Implies that pub beer gardens and similar outdoor hospitality should be allowed to open.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-ebola-congo/congo-declares-new-ebola-epidemic-1000-km-from-eastern-outbreak-idUKKBN2382Q4
https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1267472539929972736
When asked where I grew up I say between Liverpool and Manchester. Why?
Because it's pre-empting the question I almost always get if I say Wigan.
I don't think they shot anyone either, though one person was killed by the National Guard.