3. The UK Cabinet would benefit from reinforcements.
It is unreasonable and unlikely to expect sackings of prominent Ministers, and equally unlikely that many 'big beasts' will re-enter the cabinet at a time when Boris looks tottery. It just isn't going to happen. However, the public probably would be heartened to see some new blood to give the front line some support, and this would imply no u-turn or weakness on the part of the Government. If the Covid were to be separated from the main NHS, I would suggest that this is two jobs. Matt Hancock would probably want to see Covid through, so another Minister would be acting Health Secretary. There also needs to be more support in the Business department. The PM also needs support, from a right hand with excellent PR skills who can smooth over the rough patches and allow Boris to be Boris. Even Margaret Thatcher had a lot of help.
4. There has been a huge lack of a strong public health message - there now needs to be one.
Short of telling us all to lose weight (a message that's diluted by the message to stay at home), it has been a pity that there's been very little health advice, to give people a better chance should they become infected. This would at worst have been useful displacement activity to people who've been bored or panicking over this time. Nutrition is a particularly important part of this. The message that we need to be better nourished in key areas, not just for Corona outcomes, but for healthier and longer lives, has been absent. This is something that can now come to the fore, as we move into higher-risk activities. Spreading this message would particularly suits Boris, as he is on his own health journey at the moment. Boris's 'Happy Birthday' whilst hand washing was a good piece of advice and resonated. Other similar vignettes would be good. That would be using the negative of coronavirus for a very lasting and positive reason.
Every sympathy with this esp 4 (I have been puitting it into practice myself). But I wonder, with the exception of cycling, is Mr Johnson's regime the right one for this? He did oppose the sugar tax, for instance.
Let me Bandwagon Jump there to point out that this week is Diabetes Week, andfor any overweight peeps that some people manage to put Type II diabetes into remission via Diet and Exercise.
Review your diet for quality / quantity and get (and use) either a bike or a vigorous dog. No need to worry about kennels anymore - it's not as if you will be going on many holidays !
The consensus has been that we are facing an economic calamity. I have very much been a part of that and that is probably still my view but it is worth thinking about why the Treasury might think otherwise. The first reason is the tale of 2 lockdowns. Of the roughly 32m people working in this country about 5m work for the public sector. They have continued to receive their full wages throughout. Another 7-8m have been on furlough. Many of the these have received full wages, some only 80%. Some of these are actually doing second jobs (as is permitted) whilst on furlough. My daughter is working for a Tesco call centre at the moment dealing with home shopping. Most of those hastily recruited with her are on furlough from their main jobs and some of them will return to those jobs in due course. Right now they are getting paid twice. Several million more are self employed. If they have been earning under the cap then they have had grant assistance. Those who earn above the cap (like me) have lost out a lot more but all of the above along with pensioners have been severely restricted in their spending for 3 months now. No nights out, no restaurants, no foreign holidays, very few new clothes, very few new cars, no commuting, etc.
I think that a plausible case can be made for a significant pent up demand waiting to be unleashed starting Saturday. It exists in part as a result of government generosity in its schemes and that is unsustainable and will be wound down but it should not be under estimated. Will this be enough to save businesses hamstrung by social distancing, the pressure to have people WFH, the holiday and tourist industries, universities who have grown fat on overseas fees etc? Only in some cases. But it just might not be as bad as we think.
If that is the case the implications for the government going forward are going to be a lot more positive than is being assumed.
I hesitate to contribute an insensitive observation, but the Treasury has also shuffled off some long-term state pension liability.
Indeed and the care home bill will be somewhat lower going forward too. But the focus of my tentative suggestion is demand. In the short term I think that there will be quite a lot. It will be a question of whether that is enough to get us going again in the medium term.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
You are right. But in Johnson's Orbanite government such behaviour will be tolerated. The rules are no longer being applied to the people in charge. The Tory party is now the party of shysters.
Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.
p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
Haggis-themed.
Good one, positively Juvenal-esque. Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
Rory Stewart kicked out of the party, Jeremy Hunt fired, whilst the incompetents in government screw up the response to the pandemic.
For that alone Boris Johnson and plenty of Brexiteers deserve the whirlwind coming their way.
You forgot David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Dominic Grieve, Phil Hammond, Nick Boles, Sajid Javid... we could have had a really good Conservative government. Instead we've ended up with a government in which we seem to have just one good Cabinet minister and one OKish but over-promoted one (Sunak and Hancock), the rest varying from the poor to the disastrous. It's hardly surprising that the results are sub-optimal.
True, but I'm not hearing many of those saying anything distinctive of brave on the attacks of cultural Marxism we're currently suffering.
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
I completely agree. The £12k is really neither here nor there and it is a silly distraction to suggest that had an impact but to allow yourself to be lobbied, or even speak to a party when that decision is on your desk is just beyond stupid.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
It isn't the politics its the method. I am more than happy with statues being removed after discussion, debate, consensus and votes.
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
The battles are lined up for this weekend apparently.
Maybe the lockdown should be reintroduced in order to clear the streets and calm everyone down?
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
Excellent. A protective Corden should be thrown around it.
The leader of the council should lose their job. Only language morons understand.
Could well be. Or some kind of 'dark matter' immunity.
lockdownsceptics this morning looks at the data around the level of infections falling before the lockdown.
These countries had tiny outbreaks, so there would still be a good fraction of people to infect even if this so-called "dark matter" immunity was a thing.
Isn't that decline due to people reacting faster than the government in this area?
Its also possible that the virus is becoming slightly less harmful as it adapts to its human host. Killing the host is not optimal as a survival strategy.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
Well that is the best opening sentence I've seen on here for some time, I have to say.
Its also possible that the virus is becoming slightly less harmful as it adapts to its human host. Killing the host is not optimal as a survival strategy.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
The battles are lined up for this weekend apparently.
Maybe the lockdown should be reintroduced in order to clear the streets and calm everyone down?
At some point soon pb's Conservatives are going to blame the dead for dying so prolifically and painting the government in a poor light. Anything rather than look at why Britain has done so terribly by any sensible international comparison.
Could also be legitimate to have COVID-19 as immediate cause of death if the immediate cause of death is seen as an inherent feature of COVID-19, but most of those who died will have other contributing factors as mostly they are older or have underlying conditions. Those contributing factors don't mean they were close to death before infection.
Also, as I've mentioned before, that's the theory, but the practice is unfortunately a lot more variable. I was involved in a study for people with terminal conditions and for many the terminal conditions did not make it on to the death certificate (because say, they died of an infection as immediate cause, but the terminal illness was still the underlying cause)
The official figure of "COVID-19 Deaths (confirmed by Public Health or NHS laboratory)" can be found here https://verify-it-c19data.co.uk/ But how accurate the official figures are is another matter.
Meant to say when you first linked to this a few days ago that this a really nice resource. Lots of detail and transparency lacking in most other places.
It's effective enough to keep your case rate constant, by the look of it. It doesn't vanish, it doesn't fizzle out, but it stays constant.
If that's true, the government has a fascinating, terrible moral choice facing it.
Suppose, crudely, each fortnight of lockdown in the UK reduces our case and death rate by 50 %. At some point, we have to flip to softer measures, and the case and death rate go constant.
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
I completely agree. The £12k is really neither here nor there and it is a silly distraction to suggest that had an impact but to allow yourself to be lobbied, or even speak to a party when that decision is on your desk is just beyond stupid.
Indeed yes, but what is most particularly concerning (to me) is why Jenrick 'capitulated' so rapidly when confronted with the JR. If he was so confident that he had followed the rules about pre-determination scrupulously when seated next to Desmond, why the screeching U turn?
I can only surmise that his officials at the Department advised him to uphold the refusal but he ignored them. Also did Desmond write to him after the dinner providing more 'details' - I bet he would have done and did Jenrick reply? And why avoid questions in the Commons this morning? It stinks.
Its also possible that the virus is becoming slightly less harmful as it adapts to its human host. Killing the host is not optimal as a survival strategy.
This is cases, not fatalities.
Yes, but if the symptoms become milder/more asymptomatic the number of recorded cases will fall.
Its also possible that the virus is becoming slightly less harmful as it adapts to its human host. Killing the host is not optimal as a survival strategy.
This is cases, not fatalities.
Yes, but if the symptoms become milder/more asymptomatic the number of recorded cases will fall.
I guess I was thinking at it from the other end. If a disease is too fatal it'll reduce its prevalence, so making it milder will increase it.
Trump winning WH2020 is at 2.41 at Betfair and drifting.
Is Trump's "unity" speech coming soon? It was promised for later this week. Or does his tweet praising nutcase Archbishop Vigano's letter in which the former nuncio decries the evil role of the "offspring of the serpent", the "deep state" and the freemasons suggest the speech won't happen now?
If a French president praised a letter like that (the equivalent in France would be "Dreyfus was a traitor, and the forces that supported him are still pulling the strings"), he'd be out of office within 24 hours.
Its also possible that the virus is becoming slightly less harmful as it adapts to its human host. Killing the host is not optimal as a survival strategy.
This is cases, not fatalities.
Yes, but if the symptoms become milder/more asymptomatic the number of recorded cases will fall.
I guess I was thinking at it from the other end. If a disease is too fatal it'll reduce its prevalence, so making it milder will increase it.
A possible scenario is that this becomes another flu like illness. A few days off work at worst for most of us (with many cases of our immune system just throwing it off) but potentially lethal to the elderly, frail and co-morbid. What we do about shielding etc in such a scenario is not straightforward.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
Excellent. A protective Corden should be thrown around it.
The leader of the council should lose their job. Only language morons understand.
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
I completely agree. The £12k is really neither here nor there and it is a silly distraction to suggest that had an impact but to allow yourself to be lobbied, or even speak to a party when that decision is on your desk is just beyond stupid.
Indeed yes, but what is most particularly concerning (to me) is why Jenrick 'capitulated' so rapidly when confronted with the JR. If he was so confident that he had followed the rules about pre-determination scrupulously when seated next to Desmond, why the screeching U turn?
I can only surmise that his officials at the Department advised him to uphold the refusal but he ignored them. Also did Desmond write to him after the dinner providing more 'details' - I bet he would have done and did Jenrick reply? And why avoid questions in the Commons this morning? It stinks.
My guess would be that the department took counsel's advice and got told that his decision was indefensible. Why the Minister was not told that before he reached that conclusion is rather more mysterious but he should go.
Its ironic that we are debating this stuff on the day a black woman was convicted f trafficking eleven African children to use as her personal slaves (BBC reports).
A case black lives matter seem to have curiously overlooked.
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
I completely agree. The £12k is really neither here nor there and it is a silly distraction to suggest that had an impact but to allow yourself to be lobbied, or even speak to a party when that decision is on your desk is just beyond stupid.
Is the £12k "a silly distraction"? It sounds a bit like 'cash for access'. "Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him"
5. We need to provide much more in the way of Corona-care at home, to prevent hospital admission if possible.
We are seeing our friends and relatives through video calling apps. Can we see our NHS doctors through a video calling app? Can we buggery. The NHS is an organisation that still makes appointments by letter. Calling 111 is fine, but this should be evolved into a system of having a video-conference appointment with a doctor, where a prima facie diagnosis can be made. Testing (also at home) should then be an option. Care, in the way of advice, monitoring and potentially a course of drugs, should then also be available at home. The NHS would then have a big head start if the case became more severe and a hospital admission was necessary.
General Practice has gone from 10% to 85% telephone and vide call appointments.
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
I completely agree. The £12k is really neither here nor there and it is a silly distraction to suggest that had an impact but to allow yourself to be lobbied, or even speak to a party when that decision is on your desk is just beyond stupid.
Is the £12k "a silly distraction"? It sounds a bit like 'cash for access'. "Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him"
The point is that the Minister is exercising a quasi judicial function. It didn't matter what anyone paid or didn't pay. He should not have talked to one interested party without the other being present and able to rebut what was said. I have little doubt that is why the legal advice was given that this decision was indefensible. It is a simple and blatant breach of the rules of natural justice. It is absolutely basic and it is incredible that he was not aware of this.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
It isn't the politics its the method. I am more than happy with statues being removed after discussion, debate, consensus and votes.
The mob cannot have its way. Ever.
That's a recipe for endless red tape and no change. Better to do like sometimes happens in a company where gung ho management consultants have been let loose. Make every statue reapply for its position. So it needs to make the case - assuming empty plinth - why it should be placed there.
Succeeds? OK, stays up.
Fails? Fired. Taken down and replaced with something different that CAN make a good case.
Real debate leading to real change. Or not - since we cannot know until we do it.
Its ironic that we are debating this stuff on the day a black woman was convicted f trafficking eleven African children to use as her personal slaves (BBC reports).
A case black lives matter seem to have curiously overlooked.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
It isn't the politics its the method. I am more than happy with statues being removed after discussion, debate, consensus and votes.
The mob cannot have its way. Ever.
That's a recipe for endless red tape and no change. Better to do like sometimes happens in a company where gung ho management consultants have been let loose. Make every statue reapply for its position. So it needs to make the case - assuming empty plinth - why it should be placed there.
Succeeds? OK, stays up.
Fails? Fired. Taken down and replaced with something different that CAN make a good case.
Real debate leading to real change. Or not - since we cannot know until we do it.
OK fine. Let labour put that in their manifesto and implement it if elected.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
It isn't the politics its the method. I am more than happy with statues being removed after discussion, debate, consensus and votes.
The mob cannot have its way. Ever.
That's a recipe for endless red tape and no change. Better to do like sometimes happens in a company where gung ho management consultants have been let loose. Make every statue reapply for its position. So it needs to make the case - assuming empty plinth - why it should be placed there.
Succeeds? OK, stays up.
Fails? Fired. Taken down and replaced with something different that CAN make a good case.
Real debate leading to real change. Or not - since we cannot know until we do it.
Wonderful, blue-skies thinking. Let's apply this approach to taxation: every tax will have to re-apply for its position, and if it doesn't make a watertight case to be kept, it will be scrapped.
Its ironic that we are debating this stuff on the day a black woman was convicted f trafficking eleven African children to use as her personal slaves (BBC reports).
A case black lives matter seem to have curiously overlooked.
+1
Can you please not distract from the pressing business of punishing people who lived hundreds of years ago for thoughts and actions that were not illegal at the time? It is most insensitive of you.
Its ironic that we are debating this stuff on the day a black woman was convicted f trafficking eleven African children to use as her personal slaves (BBC reports).
A case black lives matter seem to have curiously overlooked.
But the saving grace is that you haven't.
Are there any other instances (modern or ancient) of black people being cruel to other black people that need to be ironically brought to people's attention?
Why should that be a surprise? What is going on is that they acted early, so contained the disease and could come out early, with the measures taken being effective. eg. In Denmark, the first confirmed death was on March 14th, but lockdown started before then on 13th March. Large mass gatherings were banned from 5th March.
Compare and contrast with the UK, where we didn't lock down until 3 weeks after the first confirmed death.
I have sympathy for both the scientists and the politicians.
Science isn't about "knowing the answer." It's about a body of knowledge and method based around correcting for getting it wrong. The adage "No scientific theory is ever proven - merely not disproven," is fundamental.
Science is built around tacking closer and closer to an unknown truth. Building a plausible hypothesis that meets the known data - and then trying to demolish it. If you fail to demolish it, you're probably pretty close (or poor at science). If you succeed, then the parts you've demolished and the way you've demolished them point towards the hidden truth.
The most important key to that is being willing to change tack, to being willing to go from one position to the next - not based on popularity, or instinct, or novelty but on the evidence. Evidence weighed carefully for bias (your own especially) and where you avoid (or try to avoid) poor or unrepresentative evidence, or false evidence from sheer random variation.
For me, the initial error was in underreacting based on an assumption that they were confident it was flu-like and lower in fatality rates than was the case. When they stood up on the 16th and threw the rudder over fully to change tack - that was following science. Not just the evidence they'd found, but the willingness to switch routes when they realised they were heading the wrong way.
The politicians gained even more plaudits from me because of the common conception that "U-turns are bad" (based on us, the public, wanting strong leaders who know what to do already and follow their instincts. A bad desire in times when the truth is so clouded).
Yes, they could have reacted quicker. Rory Stewart's stance - where he understood the issues of the science and the politics (unlike the scientists, who understood their own specialisations, and the politicians, who were more or less ignorant of the science) - was obviously correct. To take the precautionary principle seriously, and he also knew how far we could go to follow it.
Where they fell down (politicians especially) was their utter failure in protecting care homes. There is no excuse for that- it wasn't "following the science"; the scientists told them to protect the care homes. It was a failure of policy and execution. Totally in the hands of the politicians.
FPT - if Starmer's polling that well in Scotland then a Labour majority might be possible.
Scottish unionists might flip Tory to Labour to protect it, so he could get 20-25 seats in Scotland (Tories down to 2-3 again).
He'd still have to do a Cameron and swipe 100+ in England though. Seems insurmountable but the electorate is so volatile these days I could see it happening if he stays moderate and Boris totally botches the economic recovery.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
It isn't the politics its the method. I am more than happy with statues being removed after discussion, debate, consensus and votes.
The mob cannot have its way. Ever.
That's a recipe for endless red tape and no change. Better to do like sometimes happens in a company where gung ho management consultants have been let loose. Make every statue reapply for its position. So it needs to make the case - assuming empty plinth - why it should be placed there.
Succeeds? OK, stays up.
Fails? Fired. Taken down and replaced with something different that CAN make a good case.
Real debate leading to real change. Or not - since we cannot know until we do it.
Wonderful, blue-skies thinking. Let's apply this approach to taxation: every tax will have to re-apply for its position, and if it doesn't make a watertight case to be kept, it will be scrapped.
Deal?
Not a fair comparison, the idea has merit as far as statues go although I don’t know how many there are so it could be time consuming. Pity there are more pressing issues to be addressed at the moment but brilliant distraction tactics from the right to take the focus of the governments handling of the crisis.
FPT - if Starmer's polling that well in Scotland then a Labour majority might be possible.
Scottish unionists might flip Tory to Labour to protect it, so he could get 20-25 seats in Scotland (Tories down to 2-3 again).
He’d still have to do a Cameron and swipe 100+ in England though. Seems insurmountable but the electorate is so volatile these days I could see it happening if he stays moderate and Boris totally botches the economic recovery.
Those Boris Johnson figures are fairly standard for Tory leaders among Scottish voters, and are actually slightly better than the worst May and Cameron depths.
However, that Starmer +34 is truly outstanding! I cannot remember the last time a Unionist leader had such good Scottish ratings. Certainly not the over-hyped Ruth Davidson. You’d probably have to go back to Gordon Brown, Henry McLeish or Charlie Kennedy. And unlike Starmer, they were all Scots!
Is Starmer the most popular Englishman in Scotland since... who?
Yes, Starmer's polling well in Scotland, but Sturgeon’s polling even better.
Yes, some Scottish unionists will flip Tory to Labour to protect it, but nowhere near enough to get 20-25 seats in Scotland. And the Union might not make it to 2024 anyway.
Yes, he could still do a Cameron and swipe 100+ in England because the electorate is so volatile these days.
Yes, I too could see it happening if he stays moderate and Boris totally botches the economic recovery.
So, you agree with me except for the Scottish bit?
There are over 25 Scottish seats in Labour's top 150 targets. In an environment where there' a change in sentiment UK-wide and the chance of a change of UK Government I'd expect a level of split-ticket voting by some SNP supporters who want to kick the Tories out, and some Unionist tactical voting.
“So, you agree with me except for the Scottish bit?”
Yes, and I even kind of agree with your Scottish analysis too.
Split-ticket voting *will* happen (it always does). And Unionist tactical voting (it always does). But it’s a matter of how much.
Even if Starmer soars like an eagle for the next four years (tricky), I would say that the SLab ceiling is about 5-10 seats. So nowhere near your 20-25 seats.
The 25th seat is Paisley and Renfrewshire North with an SNP MAJ of 11,902. Are you honestly telling us that Starmer is going to single-handedly win that for SLab? Remember, SLab themselves are a total deadweight.
I would be very surprised if Labour gained more than a dozen seats in Scotland but a 2017 type result for Slab is possibly feasible for the reasons justin124 has recently stated. I think Starmer's main appeal (if it actually bears out) will be among traditional middle aged SLab core voters around Lothians/Fife/Glasgow/Lanarkshire etc who are more ambivalent about the EU and LD/Tory unionists in Edinburgh who like Ruth Davidson but think the Tories at Westminster are currently shambolic (i.e. the sort of voter who is voting for Murray so Edinburgh North and Leith could be a longshot maybe).
On the other hand I would expect Sturgeon (or whoever replaces her) to remain popular with 18-40 year old voters and that will probably remain a problem for Lab.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.
p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
Haggis-themed.
Good one, positively Juvenal-esque. Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
It isn't the politics its the method. I am more than happy with statues being removed after discussion, debate, consensus and votes.
The mob cannot have its way. Ever.
That's a recipe for endless red tape and no change. Better to do like sometimes happens in a company where gung ho management consultants have been let loose. Make every statue reapply for its position. So it needs to make the case - assuming empty plinth - why it should be placed there.
Succeeds? OK, stays up.
Fails? Fired. Taken down and replaced with something different that CAN make a good case.
Real debate leading to real change. Or not - since we cannot know until we do it.
Interesting. My view is almost the precise opposite.
What are the obligations for companies under modern anti-slavery legislation? Do they not have to have some kind of routines or policies in place? I’d be grateful if anyone could outline the key requirements, or point me in the right direction.
And do all companies in practice actively apply the routines?
Very few.
Tremendous. Big thanks!
But why do so few of the relevant companies actually bother publishing this statement, or bother updating every year? (And what is your source for “very few”?)
As far as I can make out, the failure to publish a statement, or the failure to update annually, has pretty much zero consequences. That seems very unwise to me. We are just building up massive problems in the future.
Wires crossed. I was trying to say "there are very few obligations on UK businesses under the Modern Slavery Act (MSA)": essentially, big companies just have to tell us what they're doing and most businesses are too small to be affected.
AFAIK, just about all co's affected by the Act HAVE filed - and updated - their statement.
And, as someone who advises businesses on their supply chain for a living, I'd say that failure to adjust a firm's operating policies now has potentially devastating effects. Just about every UK company >36mn involved in clothing is now under constant investigation by corporate shareholders and "consumer" activists for behaviour that might be contrary to the spirit of the MSA, even in areas (like arguably low wages) that aren't covered by the MSA.
While this is a pain, there's no doubt in my view that the MSA has stimulated this scrutiny and that such scrutiny is probably more effective than legal sanctions in upping the overall level of ethics (at least about how supply-chain employees are treated) among firms buying from developing countries.
Doesn't of course do anything about the commercial pressures Western buyers put on their developing-country suppliers - and it's arguable that pressure not to look vulnerable to "fashionable" ethical criticism (like on carbon use, or gender equal opportunities) undermines developing country suppliers' ability to pay living wages.
Thank you for correcting me! I was very concerned when I thought everyone had just ignored the Act.
Its ironic that we are debating this stuff on the day a black woman was convicted f trafficking eleven African children to use as her personal slaves (BBC reports).
A case black lives matter seem to have curiously overlooked.
But the saving grace is that you haven't.
Are there any other instances (modern or ancient) of black people being cruel to other black people that need to be ironically brought to people's attention?
Sure there are shedloads, they were involved with British in the trade and seemingly still doing it. Woke liberals do not want to see or hear such things in their blinkered world. Maybe fit them better to complain about modern slavery rather than whinging on about 200-300 years ago.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
I would add that I think the Tories will win big over this, they just need to hold their nerve and keep their anger in check, and keep aloof from the likely Tommy Robinson/Nigel Farage protests. Boris could do with talking a bit more, if he is really ill then he should take more time off.
I have sympathy for both the scientists and the politicians.
Science isn't about "knowing the answer." It's about a body of knowledge and method based around correcting for getting it wrong. The adage "No scientific theory is ever proven - merely not disproven," is fundamental.
Science is built around tacking closer and closer to an unknown truth. Building a plausible hypothesis that meets the known data - and then trying to demolish it. If you fail to demolish it, you're probably pretty close (or poor at science). If you succeed, then the parts you've demolished and the way you've demolished them point towards the hidden truth.
The most important key to that is being willing to change tack, to being willing to go from one position to the next - not based on popularity, or instinct, or novelty but on the evidence. Evidence weighed carefully for bias (your own especially) and where you avoid (or try to avoid) poor or unrepresentative evidence, or false evidence from sheer random variation.
For me, the initial error was in underreacting based on an assumption that they were confident it was flu-like and lower in fatality rates than was the case. When they stood up on the 16th and threw the rudder over fully to change tack - that was following science. Not just the evidence they'd found, but the willingness to switch routes when they realised they were heading the wrong way.
The politicians gained even more plaudits from me because of the common conception that "U-turns are bad" (based on us, the public, wanting strong leaders who know what to do already and follow their instincts. A bad desire in times when the truth is so clouded).
Yes, they could have reacted quicker. Rory Stewart's stance - where he understood the issues of the science and the politics (unlike the scientists, who understood their own specialisations, and the politicians, who were more or less ignorant of the science) - was obviously correct. To take the precautionary principle seriously, and he also knew how far we could go to follow it.
Where they fell down (politicians especially) was their utter failure in protecting care homes. There is no excuse for that- it wasn't "following the science"; the scientists told them to protect the care homes. It was a failure of policy and execution. Totally in the hands of the politicians.
A very fair post, except possibly the last bit. I suspect it was the policy that was wrong and very much the fault of the politicians, but if there were problems with the execution of policy, then that is more on civil servants et al.
Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.
p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
Haggis-themed.
Good one, positively Juvenal-esque. Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
I completely agree. The £12k is really neither here nor there and it is a silly distraction to suggest that had an impact but to allow yourself to be lobbied, or even speak to a party when that decision is on your desk is just beyond stupid.
Indeed yes, but what is most particularly concerning (to me) is why Jenrick 'capitulated' so rapidly when confronted with the JR. If he was so confident that he had followed the rules about pre-determination scrupulously when seated next to Desmond, why the screeching U turn?
I can only surmise that his officials at the Department advised him to uphold the refusal but he ignored them. Also did Desmond write to him after the dinner providing more 'details' - I bet he would have done and did Jenrick reply? And why avoid questions in the Commons this morning? It stinks.
My guess would be that the department took counsel's advice and got told that his decision was indefensible. Why the Minister was not told that before he reached that conclusion is rather more mysterious but he should go.
It is blatantly obvious what happened, if we did it jail would beckon.
I think the mechanism and process of social media is what needs regulating, not the content (or at least not beyond the general law already).
If you just focus on the content it turbofuels conspiracy theories you can't control and makes it worse.
People should be free to show the rest of us that they are idiots.
I agree but I think that the pernicious effects of social media are such that they’ve now become a problem for society more broadly, and thus the mechanisms may need regulating a bit more.
I haven’t worked out how yet. It’s not an easy one.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
It isn't the politics its the method. I am more than happy with statues being removed after discussion, debate, consensus and votes.
The mob cannot have its way. Ever.
That's a recipe for endless red tape and no change. Better to do like sometimes happens in a company where gung ho management consultants have been let loose. Make every statue reapply for its position. So it needs to make the case - assuming empty plinth - why it should be placed there.
Succeeds? OK, stays up.
Fails? Fired. Taken down and replaced with something different that CAN make a good case.
Real debate leading to real change. Or not - since we cannot know until we do it.
Wonderful, blue-skies thinking. Let's apply this approach to taxation: every tax will have to re-apply for its position, and if it doesn't make a watertight case to be kept, it will be scrapped.
Deal?
Thank you. And in fact this process - even if purely hypothetical - can indeed be productive for lots of areas.
Taxation? Yes. But you have changed a key bit, haven't you. If a tax fails to make its case to the satisfaction of the "jury" it IS scrapped, yes, but it is replaced by a bigger and better one.
Why should that be a surprise? What is going on is that they acted early, so contained the disease and could come out early, with the measures taken being effective. eg. In Denmark, the first confirmed death was on March 14th, but lockdown started before then on 13th March. Large mass gatherings were banned from 5th March.
Compare and contrast with the UK, where we didn't lock down until 3 weeks after the first confirmed death.
The question isn't why their cases went down, but why they haven't gone back up.
That is what concerned Sage with a premature lockdown: that the virus would resurge postlockdown.
I wonder if perhaps the virus is less virulent than had been assumed which is why we are not seeing the second wave.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
You’re crediting Boris with far too much thinking.
I bet it comes down to just one thing: he can’t be arsed.
I think the mechanism and process of social media is what needs regulating, not the content (or at least not beyond the general law already).
If you just focus on the content it turbofuels conspiracy theories you can't control and makes it worse.
People should be free to show the rest of us that they are idiots.
I agree but I think that the pernicious effects of social media are such that they’ve now become a problem for society more broadly, and thus the mechanisms may need regulating a bit more.
I haven’t worked out how yet. It’s not an easy one.
If you figure out an answer, then I'd be curious to hear it. I'm stumped and don't have any suggestions that wouldn't make the matter worse.
I have sympathy for both the scientists and the politicians.
Science isn't about "knowing the answer." It's about a body of knowledge and method based around correcting for getting it wrong. The adage "No scientific theory is ever proven - merely not disproven," is fundamental.
Science is built around tacking closer and closer to an unknown truth. Building a plausible hypothesis that meets the known data - and then trying to demolish it. If you fail to demolish it, you're probably pretty close (or poor at science). If you succeed, then the parts you've demolished and the way you've demolished them point towards the hidden truth.
The most important key to that is being willing to change tack, to being willing to go from one position to the next - not based on popularity, or instinct, or novelty but on the evidence. Evidence weighed carefully for bias (your own especially) and where you avoid (or try to avoid) poor or unrepresentative evidence, or false evidence from sheer random variation.
For me, the initial error was in underreacting based on an assumption that they were confident it was flu-like and lower in fatality rates than was the case. When they stood up on the 16th and threw the rudder over fully to change tack - that was following science. Not just the evidence they'd found, but the willingness to switch routes when they realised they were heading the wrong way.
The politicians gained even more plaudits from me because of the common conception that "U-turns are bad" (based on us, the public, wanting strong leaders who know what to do already and follow their instincts. A bad desire in times when the truth is so clouded).
Yes, they could have reacted quicker. Rory Stewart's stance - where he understood the issues of the science and the politics (unlike the scientists, who understood their own specialisations, and the politicians, who were more or less ignorant of the science) - was obviously correct. To take the precautionary principle seriously, and he also knew how far we could go to follow it.
Where they fell down (politicians especially) was their utter failure in protecting care homes. There is no excuse for that- it wasn't "following the science"; the scientists told them to protect the care homes. It was a failure of policy and execution. Totally in the hands of the politicians.
A very fair post, except possibly the last bit. I suspect it was the policy that was wrong and very much the fault of the politicians, but if there were problems with the execution of policy, then that is more on civil servants et al.
They - politicians and health managers, rather than scientists - were so focused on keeping hospital capacity (which they believed would be the key constraint) free for the expected tsunami of coronacases that they shunted as many patients as possible back to care homes without considering or checking whether they were already infected.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
All very laudable if that really is his thinking, but I doubt it. As CR has said he can't be arsed. Much as he can't be arsed about anything that doesn't do something for his ego.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
I would add that I think the Tories will win big over this, they just need to hold their nerve and keep their anger in check, and keep aloof from the likely Tommy Robinson/Nigel Farage protests. Boris could do with talking a bit more, if he is really ill then he should take more time off.
One thing that does worry me (and I absolutely 100% want Baden-Powell to stay up) is that if it’s defeated it’s now rather likely you’ll get Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage visiting there to pay homage in a way they would never have done before. Ever. If it does come down they’ll go there to martyr themselves near it.
That’s what happens in a culture war: it brings out the idiots on both sides and the moderate gets squeezed out.
Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.
p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
Haggis-themed.
Good one, positively Juvenal-esque. Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
not if you understandthe Scots language though
I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke
What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
Cummings may have thought about these things, but Boris hasn't.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
You’re crediting Boris with far too much thinking.
I bet it comes down to just one thing: he can’t be arsed.
You believe he could get to where he has without thinking?
His problem is that he has good judgement but doesn't make decisions quickly enough.
Its ironic that we are debating this stuff on the day a black woman was convicted f trafficking eleven African children to use as her personal slaves (BBC reports).
A case black lives matter seem to have curiously overlooked.
But the saving grace is that you haven't.
Are there any other instances (modern or ancient) of black people being cruel to other black people that need to be ironically brought to people's attention?
Sure there are shedloads, they were involved with British in the trade and seemingly still doing it. Woke liberals do not want to see or hear such things in their blinkered world. Maybe fit them better to complain about modern slavery rather than whinging on about 200-300 years ago.
This is something that escapes me.
In the past trade unions did amazing work fighting for better conditions for workers in Britain's factories, mines, docks, railways etc.
Why aren't they criticised for not doing the same now?
Why aren't Britain's sweatshops picketed, workers recruited, representatives appointed etc. regardless of race or creed?
Unions seem to have completely lost their bearings.
I think the mechanism and process of social media is what needs regulating, not the content (or at least not beyond the general law already).
If you just focus on the content it turbofuels conspiracy theories you can't control and makes it worse.
People should be free to show the rest of us that they are idiots.
I agree but I think that the pernicious effects of social media are such that they’ve now become a problem for society more broadly, and thus the mechanisms may need regulating a bit more.
I haven’t worked out how yet. It’s not an easy one.
If you figure out an answer, then I'd be curious to hear it. I'm stumped and don't have any suggestions that wouldn't make the matter worse.
A fair post. It might be that there isn’t a way of course. Or, at least, one that can’t be solved by regulation.
As a Tory Councillor (and one who sat on a Planning Committee for 11 glorious years), I'm sorry but Robert Jenrick has to go. Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him at a fundraising dinner, lobbied hard about his application. Although Jenrick says he couldn't talk about it (quite right too) a few days later he overrules the Planning Inspector (whom he himself - legally at least - appointed) who concurred with the Council that the application be refused. That is an extremely rare occurrence.
But then it all gets much much darker. Faced by a judicial review, Jenrick at once revokes the permission he's just granted so that all correspondence relating to it does not have to be published. And today he decides not to appear in the Commons to answer questions about his own personal actions.
It is simply not good enough. A Councillor in a similar position would very possibly face prosecution. He just walks away as if nothing had happened. A disgrace - he should be fired.
I completely agree. The £12k is really neither here nor there and it is a silly distraction to suggest that had an impact but to allow yourself to be lobbied, or even speak to a party when that decision is on your desk is just beyond stupid.
I'm seeing quite a lot of criticism of the Government on here by PB Tories.
Could it be all PB Tories aren't the same?
Impossible.
Perhaps they are running on later (or earlier) versions of ToryBot ™ ?
If TM stands for Theresa May, perhaps.
Richard Nabavi has been running an old version of ToryBot TM that hasn't been updated for some time.
What could be more conservative than refusing to update your operating system because it works just fine, damn it, I know what everything does, and I like it just the way it is...
I'm seeing quite a lot of criticism of the Government on here by PB Tories.
Could it be all PB Tories aren't the same?
Impossible.
Perhaps they are running on later (or earlier) versions of ToryBot ™ ?
If TM stands for Theresa May, perhaps.
Richard Nabavi has been running an old version of ToryBot TM that hasn't been updated for some time.
Read your manifesto-ette just now. Excellent. Don't agree with every point but some thinking needs to be done. Of course the irony is that with a stronger and more interested leader, this is a role that DCummings could have played in the expectation that 2/7th of what he came up with was binned. Perhaps it is also what Cummings wanted with his misfit approach.
All good, except that we have a wounded puppy for a PM who is steamrollered rather than leading. Both before he caught the virus and certainly now that he has had it.
The only issue I would say about your list is about splitting health into Covid and NHS. I think the fights over essentially or at least largely the same resources would be very tricky with two departments. Some kind of oversight (committee?) would be sensible to manage the claims of each policy stack.
5. We need to provide much more in the way of Corona-care at home, to prevent hospital admission if possible.
We are seeing our friends and relatives through video calling apps. Can we see our NHS doctors through a video calling app? Can we buggery. The NHS is an organisation that still makes appointments by letter. Calling 111 is fine, but this should be evolved into a system of having a video-conference appointment with a doctor, where a prima facie diagnosis can be made. Testing (also at home) should then be an option. Care, in the way of advice, monitoring and potentially a course of drugs, should then also be available at home. The NHS would then have a big head start if the case became more severe and a hospital admission was necessary.
General Practice has gone from 10% to 85% telephone and video call appointments.
Good to hear. It does not seem to be part of a recognised coronavirus care system in the way it should.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Poole is not very woke. The Bournemouth Echo comments and poll are a landslide victory for keeping it. Unforunately you cannot protect every statue 24/7, though thankfully the Victorians and Edwardians built things properly. I suspect a few more will fall but outside of the Corbynistas I'd say there is little appetite for erasing the past.
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
It isn't the politics its the method. I am more than happy with statues being removed after discussion, debate, consensus and votes.
The mob cannot have its way. Ever.
That's a recipe for endless red tape and no change. Better to do like sometimes happens in a company where gung ho management consultants have been let loose. Make every statue reapply for its position. So it needs to make the case - assuming empty plinth - why it should be placed there.
Succeeds? OK, stays up.
Fails? Fired. Taken down and replaced with something different that CAN make a good case.
Real debate leading to real change. Or not - since we cannot know until we do it.
OK fine. Let labour put that in their manifesto and implement it if elected.
He still should have gone but Cummings was probably as good a conduit between the scientists and the politicians as anyone.
As I said in my post to @Luckyguy1983, with a strong PM, Cummings could have been hugely positive for the country. Everyone needs blue sky thinking but not if there is no control. Which there wasn't and isn't.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
Cummings may have thought about these things, but Boris hasn't.
I thought the police had been defunded pretty effectively over the last decade anyway ?
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
Cummings may have thought about these things, but Boris hasn't.
I guarantee that Boris is thinking about this, probably nothing but this.
Update from Poole (I've been around the statue this morning) - not being taken away today, council getting flack from all angles. The public overwhelmingly backing it staying.
Deputy leader of the council is the ward councillor. I suspect he realises the reputational damage this is doing.
We are not far away from pitched battles between statue defenders and statue removers.
The government should declare that NO statues are going down until we have had a proper debate about this very important matter and some votes on it.
Any statues that are taken down will be replaced immediately.
At risk statues will have extra CCTV installed.
Boris can't be arsed.
Nah. Hes not rushing in for good reasons.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
I think you're right. We had an election only 6 months ago but the far-left are behaving as if they have a right for their agenda to be enacted anyway. Conservatives aren't that bothered about statues if it helps to illustrate how the far-left are thinking atm.
As I've been saying, Starmer's blank sheet of paper on policy isn't working for Labour. His "told you so" moments are incredibly hollow and his letter writing looks like gloating where there is no cause for it.
Does that mean that the 75% of your posts of the last month relating to that irrelevance can be safely ignored? I guess folk can make their own minds up about the remaining 25%.
I was talking to Ishmael. I'm afraid I don't know much about haggis-themed poetry.
p.s. I did notice you picked up on my mention of Visigoths, so at least you got something out of them...
Haggis-themed.
Good one, positively Juvenal-esque. Or a word not dissimilar anyway.
Er, one of the best-known and most frequently recited poems of the most famous Scottish poet deals luxuriously with precisely that topic. Don't blame me, blame Burns!
Golly, it appears that you do know something about haggis-themed poetry. I'm afraid my knowledge of a neigbouring culture yields nothing on the Yorkshire pudding front, my bad.
Ha! It might amuse you to know that shortly before the lockdown I bought a book of Lermontov's poetry with facing translations. It turns out that the Russian isn't that difficult - the problem is that a good chunk of the translations are written in Scots, and some of that is perfectly incomprehensible...
not if you understandthe Scots language though
I know, Malcolm, that was kind of the joke
What kind of Scots is it, by the way, as a matter of interest? If it is Doric then I can sympathise with you - it's very unfamiliar to the English ear.
Hold on, let me give you a sample:
Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa, Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa, Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa, Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.
The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another'
FPT - if Starmer's polling that well in Scotland then a Labour majority might be possible.
Scottish unionists might flip Tory to Labour to protect it, so he could get 20-25 seats in Scotland (Tories down to 2-3 again).
He'd still have to do a Cameron and swipe 100+ in England though. Seems insurmountable but the electorate is so volatile these days I could see it happening if he stays moderate and Boris totally botches the economic recovery.
LOL, fantasy politics, cuckoo.
Do you ever justify the shite you write on here? At least your co-nationalists do give justification to their views. You are just like one of those Corbynista yobs that shouts and yells. Anyway I bet you like a bit of fantasy. Most nationalism is fantasy; a bit of dressing up; a bit of pretending inconvenient history isn't truth (e.g that Scots weren't a major driving force in Empire), a bit of pretending that your own nationality is in some way exceptional. Go on Mr. Angry, show us what a real nationalist is all about eh? Instead of shouting abuse, do try and give us a real intellectual angle on how you see nationalism (an immoral political philosophy of yesteryear thankfully) has a place in the modern world? Can you do it without being a stereotypical yobbish nationalist? No, thought not.
An interesting piece of the US statues debate I was unaware of - the US has statues of two of its greatest traitors in the Capitol;
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/502175-pelosi-calls-for-removal-of-confederate-statues-in-capitol-complex ...“Among these 11 are Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, President and Vice President of the Confederate States of America, respectively, both of whom were charged with treason against the United States," Pelosi wrote, citing Stephens's remarks that the foundations of the Confederacy are laid "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
The Capitol’s Statuary Hall consists of 100 statues; each state commissions two to be displayed in the Capitol....
Bit like our having Philby and Blunt memorialised in the Members' Lobby - but with added racist overtones.
Comments
Review your diet for quality / quantity and get (and use) either a bike or a vigorous dog. No need to worry about kennels anymore - it's not as if you will be going on many holidays !
As a Conservative leaning voter and student of history its straightforward for me. For some liberals it probably creates a dilemma.
As opposed to, say, Chris Patten.
Don't make 'em like they used to?
The mob cannot have its way. Ever.
lockdownsceptics this morning looks at the data around the level of infections falling before the lockdown.
The leader of the council should lose their job. Only language morons understand.
Isn't that decline due to people reacting faster than the government in this area?
Kate Hoey tweets that Dorset Police did not advise the removal of the Baden Powell statue.
someone is telling porkies.
Could it be all PB Tories aren't the same?
If that's true, the government has a fascinating, terrible moral choice facing it.
Suppose, crudely, each fortnight of lockdown in the UK reduces our case and death rate by 50 %. At some point, we have to flip to softer measures, and the case and death rate go constant.
When do you flick the switch?
I can only surmise that his officials at the Department advised him to uphold the refusal but he ignored them. Also did Desmond write to him after the dinner providing more 'details' - I bet he would have done and did Jenrick reply? And why avoid questions in the Commons this morning? It stinks.
https://twitter.com/dorsetpolice/status/1271043774450479104?s=19
Is Trump's "unity" speech coming soon? It was promised for later this week. Or does his tweet praising nutcase Archbishop Vigano's letter in which the former nuncio decries the evil role of the "offspring of the serpent", the "deep state" and the freemasons suggest the speech won't happen now?
If a French president praised a letter like that (the equivalent in France would be "Dreyfus was a traitor, and the forces that supported him are still pulling the strings"), he'd be out of office within 24 hours.
What we do about shielding etc in such a scenario is not straightforward.
working to destroy your heritage.
That might be going too far.
A case black lives matter seem to have curiously overlooked.
"Richard Desmond paid £12000 to sit next to him"
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-take-control-of-unpaid-work-to-strengthen-community-sentences?utm_source=5cde6292-d46c-421a-a5ea-3cfa8b576ac6&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_content=immediate
Succeeds? OK, stays up.
Fails? Fired. Taken down and replaced with something different that CAN make a good case.
Real debate leading to real change. Or not - since we cannot know until we do it.
It took us thirty years to get brexit
Black lives matter can wait for four.
Deal?
(6 months ago tomorrow, blimey!)
Are there any other instances (modern or ancient) of black people being cruel to other black people that need to be ironically brought to people's attention?
Forecasting the US elections
The Economist is analysing polling, economic and demographic data to predict America’s elections in 2020
https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president
eg. In Denmark, the first confirmed death was on March 14th, but lockdown started before then on 13th March. Large mass gatherings were banned from 5th March.
Compare and contrast with the UK, where we didn't lock down until 3 weeks after the first confirmed death.
https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1270097851457007616
Science isn't about "knowing the answer." It's about a body of knowledge and method based around correcting for getting it wrong. The adage "No scientific theory is ever proven - merely not disproven," is fundamental.
Science is built around tacking closer and closer to an unknown truth. Building a plausible hypothesis that meets the known data - and then trying to demolish it. If you fail to demolish it, you're probably pretty close (or poor at science). If you succeed, then the parts you've demolished and the way you've demolished them point towards the hidden truth.
The most important key to that is being willing to change tack, to being willing to go from one position to the next - not based on popularity, or instinct, or novelty but on the evidence. Evidence weighed carefully for bias (your own especially) and where you avoid (or try to avoid) poor or unrepresentative evidence, or false evidence from sheer random variation.
For me, the initial error was in underreacting based on an assumption that they were confident it was flu-like and lower in fatality rates than was the case. When they stood up on the 16th and threw the rudder over fully to change tack - that was following science. Not just the evidence they'd found, but the willingness to switch routes when they realised they were heading the wrong way.
The politicians gained even more plaudits from me because of the common conception that "U-turns are bad" (based on us, the public, wanting strong leaders who know what to do already and follow their instincts. A bad desire in times when the truth is so clouded).
Yes, they could have reacted quicker. Rory Stewart's stance - where he understood the issues of the science and the politics (unlike the scientists, who understood their own specialisations, and the politicians, who were more or less ignorant of the science) - was obviously correct. To take the precautionary principle seriously, and he also knew how far we could go to follow it.
Where they fell down (politicians especially) was their utter failure in protecting care homes. There is no excuse for that- it wasn't "following the science"; the scientists told them to protect the care homes. It was a failure of policy and execution. Totally in the hands of the politicians.
If you just focus on the content it turbofuels conspiracy theories you can't control and makes it worse.
The calculation runs something like this. The protests are the dying howl of Corbynism. Lost the general election, lost the leadership election, go around smashing statutes of Churchill and Baden Powell and demand that the police are defunded.
The public did not take the problems in universities seriously until now. People were too blinded by their liberal sympathies to realise what the left had become. Now it is all plain to see.
The last thing you want to do is give the protestors what they want: a culture war or even better, a race war. You can just let it stew for a while and use the public resentment and interest to tackle longstanding and poorly understood problems.
Statues are nothing in the long game.
https://www.cityam.com/unilever-to-unify-anglo-dutch-structure-under-uk-listing/
I haven’t worked out how yet. It’s not an easy one.
Taxation? Yes. But you have changed a key bit, haven't you. If a tax fails to make its case to the satisfaction of the "jury" it IS scrapped, yes, but it is replaced by a bigger and better one.
Gone off the idea now, I suppose?
That is what concerned Sage with a premature lockdown: that the virus would resurge postlockdown.
I wonder if perhaps the virus is less virulent than had been assumed which is why we are not seeing the second wave.
I bet it comes down to just one thing: he can’t be arsed.
Richard Nabavi has been running an old version of ToryBot TM that hasn't been updated for some time.
That’s what happens in a culture war: it brings out the idiots on both sides and the moderate gets squeezed out.
His problem is that he has good judgement but doesn't make decisions quickly enough.
In the past trade unions did amazing work fighting for better conditions for workers in Britain's factories, mines, docks, railways etc.
Why aren't they criticised for not doing the same now?
Why aren't Britain's sweatshops picketed, workers recruited, representatives appointed etc. regardless of race or creed?
Unions seem to have completely lost their bearings.
I’d just like to explore it more.
All good, except that we have a wounded puppy for a PM who is steamrollered rather than leading. Both before he caught the virus and certainly now that he has had it.
The only issue I would say about your list is about splitting health into Covid and NHS. I think the fights over essentially or at least largely the same resources would be very tricky with two departments. Some kind of oversight (committee?) would be sensible to manage the claims of each policy stack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4
1964.
Aiblins ayont the Caucasus wa,
Ah'll frae yer Pashas derne awa,
Frae thae gleg een that aye see aa,
Thae lugs that miss naethin ava.
The last line's easily guessable, but at first glance the rest appears, to quote a famous phrase, 'as if one madman had translated another'
Go on Mr. Angry, show us what a real nationalist is all about eh? Instead of shouting abuse, do try and give us a real intellectual angle on how you see nationalism (an immoral political philosophy of yesteryear thankfully) has a place in the modern world? Can you do it without being a stereotypical yobbish nationalist? No, thought not.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/502175-pelosi-calls-for-removal-of-confederate-statues-in-capitol-complex
...“Among these 11 are Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, President and Vice President of the Confederate States of America, respectively, both of whom were charged with treason against the United States," Pelosi wrote, citing Stephens's remarks that the foundations of the Confederacy are laid "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
The Capitol’s Statuary Hall consists of 100 statues; each state commissions two to be displayed in the Capitol....
Bit like our having Philby and Blunt memorialised in the Members' Lobby - but with added racist overtones.