People get found out. From the get go, it was obvious that Theresa May would get found out as her whole MO was not up to that required of a PM and indeed she was found out (not in 24-hr rolling news time but eventually, and entirely as predicted).
Boris is as we are seeing manifestly unsuited to the job of PM. He simply isn't interested enough, nor has the attention should anything of any particular moment occur. This was so obvious that I am amazed that people are amazed at it all.
Richard did you seriously think that a government led by Boris Johnson would not fuck up? Seriously? You thought he might be competent, in a zen, Daoist hands off let the government run itself kind of way?
Leaving aside Brexit - which admittedly is so ideologically toxic that it taints everything the government does or says - there might once have been a possible view that Boris would be an OK PM, doing a harmless front-man act whilst he left the grown-ups to run the country, in much in the way that he behaved as Mayor. But of course the grown-ups have nearly all been hounded out of the government and party.
I think part of the problem now though is not so much that he's lazy as that he likes to tell people what they want to hear. So he flips around depending on which complaint gets his attention. This crisis is one where that is particularly damaging, since what is needed above all is a methodical approach balancing all of the risks simultaneously.
Yes. - a proper crisis manager, as I pointed out in my thread header.
To be fair to you, you resigned from the party when Boris was elected leader.
I think things are going to get a whole load worse. The only possible things which might save us are (1) the virus disappearing of its own accord - very very unlikely; (2) an effective vaccine appearing soon. That’s just for Covid.
On Brexit, I see little hope. The government has deliberately adopted the most extreme version possible, completely contrary to the promises made by those on the Leave campaign. It is a total betrayal and one day I hope those responsible will get their just deserts.
I've removed my red on Trump. At 2.3 he might not be value yet but he is getting there. I hope I'm wrong, but I feel like the current unrest might help his chances. At the least it gets coronavirus off the news for a bit.
Has anyone seen anything on how US pollsters have updated their models after their miss in 2016?
I think the instinctive view that social unrest helps wannabe "Strongman" Trump is wrong. It's just another crisis for him to mishandle. Another high viz opportunity to demonstrate his almost comical incompetence. My advice to punters thinking of backing him for re-election is to hold off until the week before the election when you will be able to get at least 4/1. And then save your money and pass.
Net disapproval of Trump has grown markedly over the last few days so I think you're right. He seems to be turning into a caricature of Mussolini a century on, constrained only because of the greater checks on US presidential power. He'll be hoping that the violent element of the protests will grow but thankfully it seems to be ebbing in favour of responsible peaceful protest. What Trump is doing is firing up the Democratic base to new heights in a way that only he can. That's in marked contrast to 2016 when H Clinton was a wholly uninspiring figure.
Because of that it also seems quite possible that the polls will be favouring Trump too much by filtering out too many Democrat supporters deemed unlikely to vote based on past precedent. It's very clear still that Trump does markedly less badly in the "likely voter" polling than in the "registered voter" or "all" polling, and you wonder if that is because the likely voter models are now overly weighted towards Trump. We saw something similar happen in the UK in the way that the Labour vote share was too heavily downgraded through turnout adjustments in 2017 on the back of the 2015 election loss by the uninspiring Miliband.
The only caveat that I would place is that, unlike the UK, the US has significant elections between presidential general elections, so if the polling corrections for 2016 had been overdoing it then that might already have been picked up and adjusted for further. However, what we have seen this year alone is truly remarkable so whatever effect the events of 2020 will have on turnout won't be picked up prior to November.
Thanks. Good analysis. If you like you may join me and @Alistair and @Stocky as a full member of the TrumpToast club. We have a nice tranquil reading room and a cosy little bar officially exempt from lockdown.
I badly want to believe that but I can't. I'm very nervous about what Trump might do between now and November, particularly if he remains behind in the polls. I don't trust the gullible US electorate not to fall for some stupid stunt he will pull.
The really curious part is the complaint about Khan raising the congestion charge to pay for it. Would Bailey prefer the taxpayer to be indefinitely on the hook ?
I’m not sure how much some southerners who know nothing about the North East like @HYUFD realise how important Nissan is to region, not just to “Sunderland”. It funds college courses for young people across Wearside and Tyneside, it employs people from Amble to Barnard Castle, it provides for a vast supply chain and many ancillary services.
The effect on the job market and the unemployment rate in the North East, already one of England’s poorest regions, if Nissan was to close does not bear thinking about.
I’m not making any comment about “Brexit” in this comment. I’m just stating reality, Brexit or no Brexit.
To follow on from this comment, if as I expect we do end up on “WTO terms” and if Nissan does subsequently have to close (although even if this happens, I do not expect it to happen immediately), I hope the Government has learnt from what happened to the old pit villages and puts in place retraining, reeducation, and stimulus measures in order to prevent half the North East crumbling into dust again.
You’ll get a Garden Bridge in the middle of nowhere to gawp at - and will be expected to be grateful.
People get found out. From the get go, it was obvious that Theresa May would get found out as her whole MO was not up to that required of a PM and indeed she was found out (not in 24-hr rolling news time but eventually, and entirely as predicted).
Boris is as we are seeing manifestly unsuited to the job of PM. He simply isn't interested enough, nor has the attention should anything of any particular moment occur. This was so obvious that I am amazed that people are amazed at it all.
Richard did you seriously think that a government led by Boris Johnson would not fuck up? Seriously? You thought he might be competent, in a zen, Daoist hands off let the government run itself kind of way?
Leaving aside Brexit - which admittedly is so ideologically toxic that it taints everything the government does or says - there might once have been a possible view that Boris would be an OK PM, doing a harmless front-man act whilst he left the grown-ups to run the country, in much in the way that he behaved as Mayor. But of course the grown-ups have nearly all been hounded out of the government and party.
That's one of the differences between being Mayor and being PM. As Mayor, his team were hand-picked by him and were unambiguously subservient. None of them were going to try to become Mayor in his stead.
As PM, he's tried the same approach, but it doesn't work as well. Most of his cabinet have to be MPs, which limits the pool a lot. Worse than that, he has been loath to appoint realistic rivals. In some ways, that's rational- because lack of alternatives will make BoJo feel good and extend his tenure at the top.
It's rubbish governance, but who gives a stuff about that these days?
The really curious part is the complaint about Khan raising the congestion charge to pay for it. Would Bailey prefer the taxpayer to be indefinitely on the hook ?
Him being a Conservative I should imagine the complaint is that it should be people using public transport should pay for it and not cross-subsidy.
Bewildering. Might it have been that the absence of a meaningful instant test made it pretty useless? I do not understand why the precautionary principle was applied to those coming off cruise ships but not to those coming from hot spots in the Italian alps or Madrid.
Can we live in reality when discussing this please. How on earth were scientists on the 22nd January supposed to have taken the precautionary principle against Madrid, when the very first case of Covid19 in Spain was confirmed on the 31 January? The first case of community transmission in Spain was 26 February, five weeks after that report was written.
Fair enough on the dates but the principle is the same. They were discussing people coming from Wuhan. Had they agreed that they should be quarantined the same would have applied to the other hot spots as they developed. Pretty much everyone else in the world thought this was a good idea with differing levels of severity. In June we are still talking about it. It remains bewildering.
You (and many others) are rewriting history. There was no demand for stopping flights or quarantine in January at all. There was some demand in February. It only became a mainstream call about a week before it effectively happened in March with a 99% fall in passenger numbers.
It hasn't happened. In June it has not happened.
99% of passengers didnt arrive at all so have been stopped from transimitting it. Of the remaining 1% everyone has been in a lockdown which has widespread adherance so the number of people who are not effectively quarantined is trivial.
And we have more of it here than elsewhere. We should be encouraging air travel to get rid of the infectious and replace them with healthy types!
A huge part of the population should be free of the virus now as they have been at home for weeks hardly seeing anyone. It is the key workers that have been running the risk of continued infection.
So. No holidays for keyworkers. And extra taxes, for earning a living.
I’m not sure how much some southerners who know nothing about the North East like @HYUFD realise how important Nissan is to region, not just to “Sunderland”. It funds college courses for young people across Wearside and Tyneside, it employs people from Amble to Barnard Castle, it provides for a vast supply chain and many ancillary services.
The effect on the job market and the unemployment rate in the North East, already one of England’s poorest regions, if Nissan was to close does not bear thinking about.
I’m not making any comment about “Brexit” in this comment. I’m just stating reality, Brexit or no Brexit.
To follow on from this comment, if as I expect we do end up on “WTO terms” and if Nissan does subsequently have to close (although even if this happens, I do not expect it to happen immediately), I hope the Government has learnt from what happened to the old pit villages and puts in place retraining, reeducation, and stimulus measures in order to prevent half the North East crumbling into dust again.
You’ll get a Garden Bridge in the middle of nowhere to gawp at - and will be expected to be grateful.
I assume someone pointed out that he needs the States' authorisation before deploying the military!
The law is not something that tends to constrain people like Trump.
The national guard should have been deployed in New York City a few days ago. Riots don't go on forever so I expect these will peter out in the next couple of days anyway.
Maybe the government is doing the quarantine simply for want of anything else to do. If the financial and political costs are low, a politician will generally prefer to do X over doing nothing, because it both enables them later to say "I did X" and prevents opponents from saying "you should have done X".
In this case the fact that the government is intending to task the NHS with policing it tells us that it isn't intended as a serious proposition.
So I am left scratching my head trying to think what other internal logic there might be for their pressing ahead?
Perhaps they imagine it might help the domestic travel industry by steering most people toward summering in the UK this year? Although this would be quickly undermined if the second home lobby within the Tory Party starts seeking exemptions for nearby European countries.
Perhaps they fear the US will become such a blackspot that we'll be wanting to keep US travellers away, and starting with a general quarantine and then making lots of exemptions is less likely to provoke our supposed friend across the Atlantic than travel restrictions targeted specifically on the USA?
The really curious part is the complaint about Khan raising the congestion charge to pay for it. Would Bailey prefer the taxpayer to be indefinitely on the hook ?
All point scoring - remember most voters don't think things through beyond what they've been told.
I’m not sure how much some southerners who know nothing about the North East like @HYUFD realise how important Nissan is to region, not just to “Sunderland”. It funds college courses for young people across Wearside and Tyneside, it employs people from Amble to Barnard Castle, it provides for a vast supply chain and many ancillary services.
The effect on the job market and the unemployment rate in the North East, already one of England’s poorest regions, if Nissan was to close does not bear thinking about.
I’m not making any comment about “Brexit” in this comment. I’m just stating reality, Brexit or no Brexit.
To follow on from this comment, if as I expect we do end up on “WTO terms” and if Nissan does subsequently have to close (although even if this happens, I do not expect it to happen immediately), I hope the Government has learnt from what happened to the old pit villages and puts in place retraining, reeducation, and stimulus measures in order to prevent half the North East crumbling into dust again.
You’ll get a Garden Bridge in the middle of nowhere to gawp at - and will be expected to be grateful.
Au contraire, they'll be told that they'll get a Garden Bridge and after a couple of years of pr fluff, formal reviews and bullshitting it'll be shelved. They'll still be expected to be grateful tho'.
Maybe the government is doing the quarantine simply for want of anything else to do. If the financial and political costs are low, a politician will generally prefer to do X over doing nothing, because it both enables them later to say "I did X" and prevents opponents from saying "you should have done X".
In this case the fact that the government is intending to task the NHS with policing it tells us that it isn't intended as a serious proposition.
So I am left scratching my head trying to think what other internal logic there might be for their pressing ahead?
Perhaps they imagine it might help the domestic travel industry by steering most people toward summering in the UK this year? Although this would be quickly undermined if the second home lobby within the Tory Party starts seeking exemptions for nearby European countries.
Perhaps they fear the US will become such a blackspot that we'll be wanting to keep US travellers away, and starting with a general quarantine and then making lots of exemptions is less likely to provoke our supposed friend across the Atlantic than travel restrictions targeted specifically on the USA?
It is quite simple. They know the vast majority support the policy (and will do however much logic is given as to why its ineffective). They know the policy achieves very little. So they spend more energy announcing it than implementing it.
The really curious part is the complaint about Khan raising the congestion charge to pay for it. Would Bailey prefer the taxpayer to be indefinitely on the hook ?
Especially since that increase was the specific condition imposed on London by the Tory government before it was willing to offer anything to cover TfL's massive losses while no-one was travelling and they were expected to run the trains and buses empty.
Bewildering. Might it have been that the absence of a meaningful instant test made it pretty useless? I do not understand why the precautionary principle was applied to those coming off cruise ships but not to those coming from hot spots in the Italian alps or Madrid.
Can we live in reality when discussing this please. How on earth were scientists on the 22nd January supposed to have taken the precautionary principle against Madrid, when the very first case of Covid19 in Spain was confirmed on the 31 January? The first case of community transmission in Spain was 26 February, five weeks after that report was written.
Fair enough on the dates but the principle is the same. They were discussing people coming from Wuhan. Had they agreed that they should be quarantined the same would have applied to the other hot spots as they developed. Pretty much everyone else in the world thought this was a good idea with differing levels of severity. In June we are still talking about it. It remains bewildering.
You (and many others) are rewriting history. There was no demand for stopping flights or quarantine in January at all. There was some demand in February. It only became a mainstream call about a week before it effectively happened in March with a 99% fall in passenger numbers.
People get found out. From the get go, it was obvious that Theresa May would get found out as her whole MO was not up to that required of a PM and indeed she was found out (not in 24-hr rolling news time but eventually, and entirely as predicted).
Boris is as we are seeing manifestly unsuited to the job of PM. He simply isn't interested enough, nor has the attention should anything of any particular moment occur. This was so obvious that I am amazed that people are amazed at it all.
Richard did you seriously think that a government led by Boris Johnson would not fuck up? Seriously? You thought he might be competent, in a zen, Daoist hands off let the government run itself kind of way?
Leaving aside Brexit - which admittedly is so ideologically toxic that it taints everything the government does or says - there might once have been a possible view that Boris would be an OK PM, doing a harmless front-man act whilst he left the grown-ups to run the country, in much in the way that he behaved as Mayor. But of course the grown-ups have nearly all been hounded out of the government and party.
I think part of the problem now though is not so much that he's lazy as that he likes to tell people what they want to hear. So he flips around depending on which complaint gets his attention. This crisis is one where that is particularly damaging, since what is needed above all is a methodical approach balancing all of the risks simultaneously.
As Frank Kitson noted so acutely, the next conflict will be an unforeseen one. To think that Boris could have got away with a trouble-free five years I must say stretches belief in the extreme because if nothing else, he had Brexit and we know exactly how he would be able to cope with that (and yes by employing the technique of agreeing with the person he last saw) - not at all.
Bewildering. Might it have been that the absence of a meaningful instant test made it pretty useless? I do not understand why the precautionary principle was applied to those coming off cruise ships but not to those coming from hot spots in the Italian alps or Madrid.
Can we live in reality when discussing this please. How on earth were scientists on the 22nd January supposed to have taken the precautionary principle against Madrid, when the very first case of Covid19 in Spain was confirmed on the 31 January? The first case of community transmission in Spain was 26 February, five weeks after that report was written.
Fair enough on the dates but the principle is the same. They were discussing people coming from Wuhan. Had they agreed that they should be quarantined the same would have applied to the other hot spots as they developed. Pretty much everyone else in the world thought this was a good idea with differing levels of severity. In June we are still talking about it. It remains bewildering.
You (and many others) are rewriting history. There was no demand for stopping flights or quarantine in January at all. There was some demand in February. It only became a mainstream call about a week before it effectively happened in March with a 99% fall in passenger numbers.
It hasn't happened. In June it has not happened.
99% of passengers didnt arrive at all so have been stopped from transimitting it. Of the remaining 1% everyone has been in a lockdown which has widespread adherance so the number of people who are not effectively quarantined is trivial.
And we have more of it here than elsewhere. We should be encouraging air travel to get rid of the infectious and replace them with healthy types!
A huge part of the population should be free of the virus now as they have been at home for weeks hardly seeing anyone. It is the key workers that have been running the risk of continued infection.
So. No holidays for keyworkers. And extra taxes, for earning a living.
It would be great to see a breakdown of who is still getting the virus now? Im guessing its key workers, hospital patients and those in care homes with very little transmission beyond that.
Bewildering. Might it have been that the absence of a meaningful instant test made it pretty useless? I do not understand why the precautionary principle was applied to those coming off cruise ships but not to those coming from hot spots in the Italian alps or Madrid.
Can we live in reality when discussing this please. How on earth were scientists on the 22nd January supposed to have taken the precautionary principle against Madrid, when the very first case of Covid19 in Spain was confirmed on the 31 January? The first case of community transmission in Spain was 26 February, five weeks after that report was written.
Fair enough on the dates but the principle is the same. They were discussing people coming from Wuhan. Had they agreed that they should be quarantined the same would have applied to the other hot spots as they developed. Pretty much everyone else in the world thought this was a good idea with differing levels of severity. In June we are still talking about it. It remains bewildering.
You (and many others) are rewriting history. There was no demand for stopping flights or quarantine in January at all. There was some demand in February. It only became a mainstream call about a week before it effectively happened in March with a 99% fall in passenger numbers.
Maybe the government is doing the quarantine simply for want of anything else to do. If the financial and political costs are low, a politician will generally prefer to do X over doing nothing, because it both enables them later to say "I did X" and prevents opponents from saying "you should have done X".
In this case the fact that the government is intending to task the NHS with policing it tells us that it isn't intended as a serious proposition.
So I am left scratching my head trying to think what other internal logic there might be for their pressing ahead?
Perhaps they imagine it might help the domestic travel industry by steering most people toward summering in the UK this year? Although this would be quickly undermined if the second home lobby within the Tory Party starts seeking exemptions for nearby European countries.
Perhaps they fear the US will become such a blackspot that we'll be wanting to keep US travellers away, and starting with a general quarantine and then making lots of exemptions is less likely to provoke our supposed friend across the Atlantic than travel restrictions targeted specifically on the USA?
It is quite simple. They know the vast majority support the policy (and will do however much logic is given as to why its ineffective). They know the policy achieves very little. So they spend more energy announcing it than implementing it.
Yes, like Trump's early China ban, which he kept banging on about once he finally realised he had been caught napping (or being plain wrong), which was neither early nor banned travel from China.
Maybe the government is doing the quarantine simply for want of anything else to do. If the financial and political costs are low, a politician will generally prefer to do X over doing nothing, because it both enables them later to say "I did X" and prevents opponents from saying "you should have done X".
In this case the fact that the government is intending to task the NHS with policing it tells us that it isn't intended as a serious proposition.
So I am left scratching my head trying to think what other internal logic there might be for their pressing ahead?
Perhaps they imagine it might help the domestic travel industry by steering most people toward summering in the UK this year? Although this would be quickly undermined if the second home lobby within the Tory Party starts seeking exemptions for nearby European countries.
Perhaps they fear the US will become such a blackspot that we'll be wanting to keep US travellers away, and starting with a general quarantine and then making lots of exemptions is less likely to provoke our supposed friend across the Atlantic than travel restrictions targeted specifically on the USA?
I think it's a sop to public opinion. The idea of foreigners bringing disease here is somehow worse than spreading it ourselves. It's a variation of the "stealing our jobs" mentality.
I assume someone pointed out that he needs the States' authorisation before deploying the military!
The law is not something that tends to constrain people like Trump.
The national guard should have been deployed in New York City a few days ago. Riots don't go on forever so I expect these will peter out in the next couple of days anyway.
I wonder if the main reason he didn't deploy the military was in case some said 'No' and the consequences of that were pointed out to him.
That's all very good - but why, in mid-March, when the rest of the planet was imposing quarantines and travel bans were the governmentS of the UK countrieS not asking SAGE "why them and not us"? ....
It also glosses over the point that it was perfectly possible to have arrived at different conclusions from the scientific evidence much earlier.
Sunderland voted Labour at the last general election but the UK voted Tory on a Tory manifesto commitment to leave the EU, single market and customs union.
If the EU will not do a FTA that respects that there will be no extension of the transition period
You understand literally nothing. People have been told that Brexit will make their lives better. They don't know properly what the EU does what the Customs Union does what a FTA is. The government don't know what the WTO is or how Dover Calais works and keep insisting that GATT24 is something the head of the WTO confirms is not.
People in the North East voted for Brexit. Many then voted Tory to Get Brexit Done. They were promised a better future and the voted to ensure that better future arrives. If Nissan and the supporting businesses close that makes for a worse future. The opposite of what they voted for. They aren't going to thank the Tories for not only destroying their communities (again) and knackering the lives of their family but also destroying the Hope that was Brexit. They aren't going to blame the EU. They are going to blame you.
I know you don't know or care about up here. How we live. What matters to people. So I have a request. Please please please come up here and knock on doors in your Tory rosette and tell people to their face what you post on here. You personally through your dogmatic zealotry and profound stupidity will demolish the Tories in the North East.
Every door you knock on. Every door slammed in your face. Every expletive hurled at you. You'll probably be threatened with violence and dogs when you tell the people whose lives you have destroyed that its to their benefit. Please. Come up here and knock on doors.
People in the North East have historically voted Labour.
In the 2016 EU referendum most of them voted Leave, I voted Remain.
In the 2019 general election many of them switched from voting Labour to voting Tory to deliver Brexit and also to end free movement and leave the single market and customs union as the Tories manifesto promised.
The Tories are simply doing what they promised to do and what most Tory voters want.
If those in the North East did not want that they should not have voted Leave and they should not have voted Tory
Comments
To be fair to you, you resigned from the party when Boris was elected leader.
I think things are going to get a whole load worse. The only possible things which might save us are (1) the virus disappearing of its own accord - very very unlikely; (2) an effective vaccine appearing soon. That’s just for Covid.
On Brexit, I see little hope. The government has deliberately adopted the most extreme version possible, completely contrary to the promises made by those on the Leave campaign. It is a total betrayal and one day I hope those responsible will get their just deserts.
As PM, he's tried the same approach, but it doesn't work as well. Most of his cabinet have to be MPs, which limits the pool a lot. Worse than that, he has been loath to appoint realistic rivals. In some ways, that's rational- because lack of alternatives will make BoJo feel good and extend his tenure at the top.
It's rubbish governance, but who gives a stuff about that these days?
So. No holidays for keyworkers. And extra taxes, for earning a living.
In this case the fact that the government is intending to task the NHS with policing it tells us that it isn't intended as a serious proposition.
So I am left scratching my head trying to think what other internal logic there might be for their pressing ahead?
Perhaps they imagine it might help the domestic travel industry by steering most people toward summering in the UK this year? Although this would be quickly undermined if the second home lobby within the Tory Party starts seeking exemptions for nearby European countries.
Perhaps they fear the US will become such a blackspot that we'll be wanting to keep US travellers away, and starting with a general quarantine and then making lots of exemptions is less likely to provoke our supposed friend across the Atlantic than travel restrictions targeted specifically on the USA?
In this story about how Australia responded (much more proactively and effectively) to the pandemic, it specifically references their having had access to the Imperial modelling:
https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/tough-decisions-tears-and-agility-behind-australia-s-covid-19-success-20200529-p54xp1
In the 2016 EU referendum most of them voted Leave, I voted Remain.
In the 2019 general election many of them switched from voting Labour to voting Tory to deliver Brexit and also to end free movement and leave the single market and customs union as the Tories manifesto promised.
The Tories are simply doing what they promised to do and what most Tory voters want.
If those in the North East did not want that they should not have voted Leave and they should not have voted Tory
Do keep up
https://www.space.com/weakening-magnetic-field-satellites.html
Anyone on the look out for asteroids?