Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
Not all wokeness wins. Look at PIE.
Some in the past on the left believed that adult-child relationships were OK and thought they should be legalised and that was the future. Never happened though. If anything we've become more aware of and opposed to the evils of paedophilia despite the actions of PIE and some quite prominent left wing Labour support of PIE.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
I am sure your parents felt the same about "darkies."
I am not quite sure how to respond to that without using unparliamentary language.
Both my parents are no longer with us, and both were liberally educated to the point of enlightenment on that issue.
I am genuinely bewildered how you made the leap from 'poshos on horseback' to racism.
By the way please don't respond, you tried to pick a fight with me a week or two ago and I clearly disappointed then, so you have tried your luck again.
My apologies to them. I was assuming that a propensity to stupid, ill informed but currently fashionable prejudice was heritable.
And, no, you indulged in some tiresome sniping at "pb Tories" and were disappointed to receive a response to it.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
Yes, I've been pondering this. Is 20% and a fairly young and fit population enough?
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
A good test of that is probably whether the poshos on horseback still offend if not chasing a fox - or chasing a fox but not accompanied by hounds.
If we're doing class war, it's the poshos with rifles on the moors who offend me, but that's because they act like they own the moors (to be fair to them, they probably do).
I have no problem with anyone in fancy dress on horseback, drinking from a stirrup cup, they can even drag hunt to their hearts content, so long as they don't finish the day feeding a live fox to their dogs.
Which doesn't happen. Like virtually all predators a hound kills a fox straight off by biting through its neck, because that's the safest way to do it. That information is undisputed, intuitively obvious and easily available by searching the internet or watching David bloody Attenborough. You just can't be bothered.
First the dog has to catch it.
The reason we stun animals getting slaughtered for meat is so they don't see it coming and don't suffer. They aren't chased for ages and then having their neck bit through.
and how do you think it catches it?
This is like your view that mobs tearing down statues is a peaceful process incapable of developing into personal violence. You have a truly heroic quasi-scholastic lack of concern as to whether your theories fit the actual facts.
I think it catches it by chasing a terrified creature running for its life trying to avoid being slaughtered.
I said I oppose personal violence not that no trouble makers who like violence would join in. It's quite possible to say I draw the line here.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
Theories like that don't explain how two-thirds of a thousand strong workforce in Germany could get it.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
Not all wokeness wins. Look at PIE.
Some in the past on the left believed that adult-child relationships were OK and thought they should be legalised and that was the future. Never happened though. If anything we've become more aware of and opposed to the evils of paedophilia despite the actions of PIE and some quite prominent left wing Labour support of PIE.
You did see the German case mentioned on PB earlier, I trust?
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
The real issue for the left on this is that some of the same old characters are involved.
The ones who want to get rid of Prevent for example - and there is that interesting story of how they got the Southern Poverty Law Centre to classify The Quilliam Foundation as Islaamaphobic.
I would also suggest that they need to make their peace with the fact that increasing numbers of BAME people are voting for non-left parties.
My remedy would be to focus hard on the economics. Develop policies which will make people on low and average incomes better off and hammer at that day in and day out. And do not be afraid of some "bash the rich" populism. Don't pretend there will not be losers. That's bullshit and everyone knows it is. So make a virtue of it. Emphasize the point - #times up for privilege and vested interests.
Then, on the social side, play it cool, calm & collected. Take the heat out of the Right's lurid scaremongering. Change the rules and the presentation. One example, transgender, reduce it to the prosaic practical issues. Get away from "Labour say there's no such thing as biological sex." Move the story to "Tories unclear on the definition and policing of same sex spaces."
Ditto on all aspects of the equality agenda, inc race. Don't get bogged down with "taking the knee" and rhetoric and symbolism. Focus on the bread and butter. On what equality and diversity means in practice. In terms of people's everyday lives. Because when you do this, what you find is that most of it is pretty much a no-brainer.
So the Labour plan should be class war up front, then pretend that the army of screaming nutjobs behind them holding Labour placards are nothing to do with them - despite being on the record as having bought into all the woke diktats? I predict that strategy will turn out to be suboptimal.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
Not all wokeness wins. Look at PIE.
Some in the past on the left believed that adult-child relationships were OK and thought they should be legalised and that was the future. Never happened though. If anything we've become more aware of and opposed to the evils of paedophilia despite the actions of PIE and some quite prominent left wing Labour support of PIE.
You did see the German case mentioned on PB earlier, I trust?
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
There would have been very little mention of fox hunting in the past three decades, if it were something overseen by the farm manager and carried out by the workers like most other countryside pest control.
It was precisely because of the 'poshos on horseback in red tunics', that it became part of the nascent culture war in the late 1990s. The townies among the New Labour MPs wanted to make sure the country boys knew who was now in charge.
My tongue was firmly in my cheek!
Culture War? I used to see the late Lady Wachter struggle to mount her enormous horse for the North Ledbury Hunt in the car park of the Crown in Cradley, from my bedroom window. I had no problem with that.
Later, the fox would come bounding through my garden, leaping over the garden fence as it went, half an hour later the hounds would lose the scent in my garden and in their confusion trample the plants. So the fox got away! One nil to the fox! But no the huntsmen would maybe an hour or two later find a fox hole, dig the fox out and feed him/her to the dogs. Some sport!
If you have to, shoot the bloody fox!
Yes that is disgusting behaviour. Very unsportsmanlike.
What, messing up the flower beds?
It takes an age to mend a herbacious border.
No. It was strictly forbidden to dig up foxes.
My apologies for earlier. The lady in question was Lady Waechter not Lady Wachter. She was around 30 stone and apparently had a soft spot for foxes, according to the Worcester Evening News.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
In fairness to Boris, he effectively implied it was a giant overreaction in his TV interview today, but his argument was that a blunt instrument like lockdown was pretty much the only tool at governments' disposal in March when nobody knew anything about this bloody thing.
I think that's a fair point, actually. When you are fighting an unknown invisible enemy all you can do is tend to the overcautious.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
Thete is a distinction between Terry Dicks' views and wanting to take down statues of Churchill, Drake, Baden Powell, Washington, Columbus and Gandhi
There is a distinction between being woke and wanting to take down statues of Churchill, Drake, Baden Powell, Washington, Columbus and Gandhi
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
Theories like that don't explain how two-thirds of a thousand strong workforce in Germany could get it.
Another theory is the research that suggests 80% of cases are linked to particular super spreader events i.e. you need a certain type of person and a certain situation. Perhaps when 20% of people have had it, plus not having these large scale events means the probability of the right person in the right environment for a big transmission is very very low and the R for the rest is well below one.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
Thete is a distinction between Terry Dicks' views and wanting to take down statues of Churchill, Drake, Baden Powell, Washington, Columbus and Gandhi
There is a distinction between being woke and wanting to take down statues of Churchill, Drake, Baden Powell, Washington, Columbus and Gandhi
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
I am sure your parents felt the same about "darkies."
I am not quite sure how to respond to that without using unparliamentary language.
Both my parents are no longer with us, and both were liberally educated to the point of enlightenment on that issue.
I am genuinely bewildered how you made the leap from 'poshos on horseback' to racism.
By the way please don't respond, you tried to pick a fight with me a week or two ago and I clearly disappointed then, so you have tried your luck again.
My apologies to them. I was assuming that a propensity to stupid, ill informed but currently fashionable prejudice was heritable.
And, no, you indulged in some tiresome sniping at "pb Tories" and were disappointed to receive a response to it.
I, to my knowledge have never made any personally discourteous comments to you or your family. You are making a habit of being personally offensive towards me.
How do they explain the explosion of numbers on the west coast? Portland is running 10x what it was beforehand. All the big west coast ones has seen significant increases, after previously containing it...
It's a low number in absolute terms, and I can't find enough info to answer that. This suggests that in Oregon it's perhaps (like elsewhere) reopening rather than protests:
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
Thete is a distinction between Terry Dicks' views and wanting to take down statues of Churchill, Drake, Baden Powell, Washington, Columbus and Gandhi
There is a distinction between being woke and wanting to take down statues of Churchill, Drake, Baden Powell, Washington, Columbus and Gandhi
Not at the moment there isn't
Haha so you have been told to push the culture war guff. Interesting.
Well the good news is that we didn't borrow £62bn in April, we only borrowed £48.5bn. The bad news is that we borrowed another £55.2bn in May taking our debt/GDP ratio over 100% for the first time since 1963: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53104734
I mean, is there anyone who seriously thinks that the government's panic about getting us out of lockdown was materially influenced by Dom's stupidity? Really?
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
The real issue for the left on this is that some of the same old characters are involved.
The ones who want to get rid of Prevent for example - and there is that interesting story of how they got the Southern Poverty Law Centre to classify The Quilliam Foundation as Islaamaphobic.
I would also suggest that they need to make their peace with the fact that increasing numbers of BAME people are voting for non-left parties.
My remedy would be to focus hard on the economics. Develop policies which will make people on low and average incomes better off and hammer at that day in and day out. And do not be afraid of some "bash the rich" populism. Don't pretend there will not be losers. That's bullshit and everyone knows it is. So make a virtue of it. Emphasize the point - #times up for privilege and vested interests.
Then, on the social side, play it cool, calm & collected. Take the heat out of the Right's lurid scaremongering. Change the rules and the presentation. One example, transgender, reduce it to the prosaic practical issues. Get away from "Labour say there's no such thing as biological sex." Move the story to "Tories unclear on the definition and policing of same sex spaces."
Ditto on all aspects of the equality agenda, inc race. Don't get bogged down with "taking the knee" and rhetoric and symbolism. Focus on the bread and butter. On what equality and diversity means in practice. In terms of people's everyday lives. Because when you do this, what you find is that most of it is pretty much a no-brainer.
So the Labour plan should be class war up front, then pretend that the army of screaming nutjobs behind them holding Labour placards are nothing to do with them - despite being on the record as having bought into all the woke diktats? I predict that strategy will turn out to be suboptimal.
How do they explain the explosion of numbers on the west coast? Portland is running 10x what it was beforehand. All the big west coast ones has seen significant increases, after previously containing it...
It's a low number in absolute terms, and I can't find enough info to answer that. This suggests that in Oregon it's perhaps (like elsewhere) reopening rather than protests:
It ought to become a great deal clearer over the next week or so.
It isn't just Oregon though. Its all across the West Coast and Texas, Florida...it might be general opening up, but the timeline is definitely inline with the protests and significant ramp up.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
There would have been very little mention of fox hunting in the past three decades, if it were something overseen by the farm manager and carried out by the workers like most other countryside pest control.
It was precisely because of the 'poshos on horseback in red tunics', that it became part of the nascent culture war in the late 1990s. The townies among the New Labour MPs wanted to make sure the country boys knew who was now in charge.
My tongue was firmly in my cheek!
Culture War? I used to see the late Lady Wachter struggle to mount her enormous horse for the North Ledbury Hunt in the car park of the Crown in Cradley, from my bedroom window. I had no problem with that.
Later, the fox would come bounding through my garden, leaping over the garden fence as it went, half an hour later the hounds would lose the scent in my garden and in their confusion trample the plants. So the fox got away! One nil to the fox! But no the huntsmen would maybe an hour or two later find a fox hole, dig the fox out and feed him/her to the dogs. Some sport!
If you have to, shoot the bloody fox!
Yes that is disgusting behaviour. Very unsportsmanlike.
What, messing up the flower beds?
It takes an age to mend a herbacious border.
No. It was strictly forbidden to dig up foxes.
My apologies for earlier. The lady in question was Lady Waechter not Lady Wachter. She was around 30 stone and apparently had a soft spot for foxes, according to the Worcester Evening News.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My in
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
Not all wokeness wins. Look at PIE.
Some in the past on the left believed that adult-child relationships were OK and thought they should be legalised and that was the future. Never happened though. If anything we've become more aware of and opposed to the evils of paedophilia despite the actions of PIE and some quite prominent left wing Labour support of PIE.
You did see the German case mentioned on PB earlier, I trust?
Indeed! Same twisted logic!
I wouldn't be surprised if there were not similar cases in the UK.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
In fairness to Boris, he effectively implied it was a giant overreaction in his TV interview today, but his argument was that a blunt instrument like lockdown was pretty much the only tool at governments' disposal in March when nobody knew anything about this bloody thing.
I think that's a fair point, actually. When you are fighting an unknown invisible enemy all you can do is tend to the overcautious.
For once, I agree with Boris!
I still think that the public in general give governments a lot more credit for their reactions to an unprecedented global pandemic, than is reflected in commentary on the matter - most of which is operating with perfect hindsight.
There have been screw-ups, such as the UK contact tracing app, but the constant negativity from the media isn't necessarily reflected in the population.
I'm kinda wondering the same. Perhaps our current positives include contact-traced asymptomatics who would never have had a reason to be tested before (unless specific circumstances, eg family members of a positive).
All the other indicators are infections are still dropping.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
It seems you might be correct. The policies in this Loony Left video ft the height of 80s lefty London in the form of the ILEA and Brent/Haringey councils are nothing controversial in today's moderate Labour under Sir Keir, and Boris' Tories wouldn't criticise them
Well the good news is that we didn't borrow £62bn in April, we only borrowed £48.5bn. The bad news is that we borrowed another £55.2bn in May taking our debt/GDP ratio over 100% for the first time since 1963: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53104734
I mean, is there anyone who seriously thinks that the government's panic about getting us out of lockdown was materially influenced by Dom's stupidity? Really?
Indeed, we can't stay locked down forever or the printing presses will overheat.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
Theories like that don't explain how two-thirds of a thousand strong workforce in Germany could get it.
Another theory is the research that suggests 80% of cases are linked to particular super spreader events i.e. you need a certain type of person and a certain situation. Perhaps when 20% of people have had it, plus not having these large scale events means the probability of the right person in the right environment for a big transmission is very very low and the R for the rest is well below one.
Its a theory that I have been pushing for over a month. These meat plant cases are the latest super spreader incidents in the UK but there have been many of them. When you run out of super spreaders it struggles to go beyond the immediate family.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
A good test of that is probably whether the poshos on horseback still offend if not chasing a fox - or chasing a fox but not accompanied by hounds.
If we're doing class war, it's the poshos with rifles on the moors who offend me, but that's because they act like they own the moors (to be fair to them, they probably do).
I have no problem with anyone in fancy dress on horseback, drinking from a stirrup cup, they can even drag hunt to their hearts content, so long as they don't finish the day feeding a live fox to their dogs.
Which doesn't happen. Like virtually all predators a hound kills a fox straight off by biting through its neck, because that's the safest way to do it. That information is undisputed, intuitively obvious and easily available by searching the internet or watching David bloody Attenborough. You just can't be bothered.
First the dog has to catch it.
The reason we stun animals getting slaughtered for meat is so they don't see it coming and don't suffer. They aren't chased for ages and then having their neck bit through.
and how do you think it catches it?
This is like your view that mobs tearing down statues is a peaceful process incapable of developing into personal violence. You have a truly heroic quasi-scholastic lack of concern as to whether your theories fit the actual facts.
I think it catches it by chasing a terrified creature running for its life trying to avoid being slaughtered.
I said I oppose personal violence not that no trouble makers who like violence would join in. It's quite possible to say I draw the line here.
There is a lot of urban/suburban prejudice, ignorance and stupidity on display here. The prize goes to whoever thinks people go grouse shooting with rifles. Stick to things you know about folks.
The original point remains. If Philip Thompson were a conservative "liberal" or even a right wing libertarian he would not be in favour of banning hunting. It was, and still is an ethical and moral choice and it was, based on evidence that Topping has referred to, an illiberal Act of parliament that was not based on evidence but on the small minded hatred of what Labour MPs thought of those that participated in it. One thought: if any of you have genuine concern for animal welfare please explain why it is OK to allow rats to die through haemorrhage on warfarin? Is it because they generally don't appear in Disney. the fundamental problem is that most people who pronounce on hunting do so from a position of complete ignorance, and of course that included the prejudiced MPs such as Nick Palmer ex-MP.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
It seems you might be correct. The policies in this Loony Left video ft the height of 80s lefty London in the form of the ILEA and Brent/Haringey councils are the language of today's moderate Labour under Sir Keir
One of the big ironies about the woke brigade is that they are all in favour of open door immigration but the immigrants who come in tend to be more religious and naturally socially conservative (what % of immigrants are in favour of trans rights - 5% at best).
As this country becomes more diverse we could easily see it become more socially conservative than socially liberal as a consequence.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
Somebody also said it could be one of the reasons kids aren't affected as much, as they seem to have a dozen colds or so a year.
I agree, it would shown it as a huge overreaction. Also it would mean that countries like New Zealand have to make a choice: either they isolate themselves forever, or they accept the proportionate number of deaths.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
In fairness to Boris, he effectively implied it was a giant overreaction in his TV interview today, but his argument was that a blunt instrument like lockdown was pretty much the only tool at governments' disposal in March when nobody knew anything about this bloody thing.
I think that's a fair point, actually. When you are fighting an unknown invisible enemy all you can do is tend to the overcautious.
For once, I agree with Boris!
I still think that the public in general give governments a lot more credit for their reactions to an unprecedented global pandemic, than is reflected in commentary on the matter - most of which is operating with perfect hindsight.
There have been screw-ups, such as the UK contact tracing app, but the constant negativity from the media isn't necessarily reflected in the population.
It seems you might be correct. The policies in this Loony Left video ft the height of 80s lefty London in the form of the ILEA and Brent/Haringey councils are nothing controversial in today's moderate Labour under Sir Keir, and Boris' Tories wouldn't criticise them
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
Theories like that don't explain how two-thirds of a thousand strong workforce in Germany could get it.
Another theory is the research that suggests 80% of cases are linked to particular super spreader events i.e. you need a certain type of person and a certain situation. Perhaps when 20% of people have had it, plus not having these large scale events means the probability of the right person in the right environment for a big transmission is very very low and the R for the rest is well below one.
Its a theory that I have been pushing for over a month. These meat plant cases are the latest super spreader incidents in the UK but there have been many of them. When you run out of super spreaders it struggles to go beyond the immediate family.
The meat processing factory do seem to be really bad for this. Just this week, 3 places in the UK, plus outbreaks in Germany and China. In SK, the club outbreak led to a guy at a meat processing plant the super spreading it on.
And in America, i think at the end of May, half of all hotspots were these facilities. Rural America, large proportion of cases can be linked to them.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
The real issue for the left on this is that some of the same old characters are involved.
The ones who want to get rid of Prevent for example - and there is that interesting story of how they got the Southern Poverty Law Centre to classify The Quilliam Foundation as Islaamaphobic.
I would also suggest that they need to make their peace with the fact that increasing numbers of BAME people are voting for non-left parties.
My remedy would be to focus hard on the economics. Develop policies which will make people on low and average incomes better off and hammer at that day in and day out. And do not be afraid of some "bash the rich" populism. Don't pretend there will not be losers. That's bullshit and everyone knows it is. So make a virtue of it. Emphasize the point - #times up for privilege and vested interests.
Then, on the social side, play it cool, calm & collected. Take the heat out of the Right's lurid scaremongering. Change the rules and the presentation. One example, transgender, reduce it to the prosaic practical issues. Get away from "Labour say there's no such thing as biological sex." Move the story to "Tories unclear on the definition and policing of same sex spaces."
Ditto on all aspects of the equality agenda, inc race. Don't get bogged down with "taking the knee" and rhetoric and symbolism. Focus on the bread and butter. On what equality and diversity means in practice. In terms of people's everyday lives. Because when you do this, what you find is that most of it is pretty much a no-brainer.
So the Labour plan should be class war up front, then pretend that the army of screaming nutjobs behind them holding Labour placards are nothing to do with them - despite being on the record as having bought into all the woke diktats? I predict that strategy will turn out to be suboptimal.
Class war? That is simply an emotive and false term for an economic policy which actually favours the less well off as opposed to smoke and mirrors bullshit about 'levelling up'.
As for 'woke diktats', this is more invented (by the right) than real, therefore the best policy is to disengage and let the right talk to themselves about it. Which they mainly do now, let's face it.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
A good test of that is probably whether the poshos on horseback still offend if not chasing a fox - or chasing a fox but not accompanied by hounds.
If we're doing class war, it's the poshos with rifles on the moors who offend me, but that's because they act like they own the moors (to be fair to them, they probably do).
I have no problem with anyone in fancy dress on horseback, drinking from a stirrup cup, they can even drag hunt to their hearts content, so long as they don't finish the day feeding a live fox to their dogs.
Which doesn't happen. Like virtually all predators a hound kills a fox straight off by biting through its neck, because that's the safest way to do it. That information is undisputed, intuitively obvious and easily available by searching the internet or watching David bloody Attenborough. You just can't be bothered.
First the dog has to catch it.
The reason we stun animals getting slaughtered for meat is so they don't see it coming and don't suffer. They aren't chased for ages and then having their neck bit through.
and how do you think it catches it?
This is like your view that mobs tearing down statues is a peaceful process incapable of developing into personal violence. You have a truly heroic quasi-scholastic lack of concern as to whether your theories fit the actual facts.
I think it catches it by chasing a terrified creature running for its life trying to avoid being slaughtered.
I said I oppose personal violence not that no trouble makers who like violence would join in. It's quite possible to say I draw the line here.
There is a lot of urban/suburban prejudice, ignorance and stupidity on display here. The prize goes to whoever thinks people go grouse shooting with rifles. Stick to things you know about folks.
The original point remains. If Philip Thompson were a conservative "liberal" or even a right wing libertarian he would not be in favour of banning hunting. It was, and still is an ethical and moral choice and it was, based on evidence that Topping has referred to, an illiberal Act of parliament that was not based on evidence but on the small minded hatred of what Labour MPs thought of those that participated in it. One thought: if any of you have genuine concern for animal welfare please explain why it is OK to allow rats to die through haemorrhage on warfarin? Is it because they generally don't appear in Disney. the fundamental problem is that most people who pronounce on hunting do so from a position of complete ignorance, and of course that included the prejudiced MPs such as Nick Palmer ex-MP.
Rats don't appear in Disney? The "little chef" in Ratatouille begs to differ.
Plus a lot of people associate rats and mice together and I think its safe to say that Disney might have a rather famous mouse or two.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
In fairness to Boris, he effectively implied it was a giant overreaction in his TV interview today, but his argument was that a blunt instrument like lockdown was pretty much the only tool at governments' disposal in March when nobody knew anything about this bloody thing.
I think that's a fair point, actually. When you are fighting an unknown invisible enemy all you can do is tend to the overcautious.
For once, I agree with Boris!
I still think that the public in general give governments a lot more credit for their reactions to an unprecedented global pandemic, than is reflected in commentary on the matter - most of which is operating with perfect hindsight.
There have been screw-ups, such as the UK contact tracing app, but the constant negativity from the media isn't necessarily reflected in the population.
I mean it turns out they were trialing both versions at the same time, and found while the home-grown one had issue with iPhones, the other one had issues differentiating between how close an encounter was.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
A good test of that is probably whether the poshos on horseback still offend if not chasing a fox - or chasing a fox but not accompanied by hounds.
If we're doing class war, it's the poshos with rifles on the moors who offend me, but that's because they act like they own the moors (to be fair to them, they probably do).
I have no problem with anyone in fancy dress on horseback, drinking from a stirrup cup, they can even drag hunt to their hearts content, so long as they don't finish the day feeding a live fox to their dogs.
Which doesn't happen. Like virtually all predators a hound kills a fox straight off by biting through its neck, because that's the safest way to do it. That information is undisputed, intuitively obvious and easily available by searching the internet or watching David bloody Attenborough. You just can't be bothered.
First the dog has to catch it.
The reason we stun animals getting slaughtered for meat is so they don't see it coming and don't suffer. They aren't chased for ages and then having their neck bit through.
and how do you think it catches it?
This is like your view that mobs tearing down statues is a peaceful process incapable of developing into personal violence. You have a truly heroic quasi-scholastic lack of concern as to whether your theories fit the actual facts.
I think it catches it by chasing a terrified creature running for its life trying to avoid being slaughtered.
I said I oppose personal violence not that no trouble makers who like violence would join in. It's quite possible to say I draw the line here.
There is a lot of urban/suburban prejudice, ignorance and stupidity on display here. The prize goes to whoever thinks people go grouse shooting with rifles. Stick to things you know about folks.
The original point remains. If Philip Thompson were a conservative "liberal" or even a right wing libertarian he would not be in favour of banning hunting. It was, and still is an ethical and moral choice and it was, based on evidence that Topping has referred to, an illiberal Act of parliament that was not based on evidence but on the small minded hatred of what Labour MPs thought of those that participated in it. One thought: if any of you have genuine concern for animal welfare please explain why it is OK to allow rats to die through haemorrhage on warfarin? Is it because they generally don't appear in Disney. the fundamental problem is that most people who pronounce on hunting do so from a position of complete ignorance, and of course that included the prejudiced MPs such as Nick Palmer ex-MP.
Rats don't appear in Disney? The "little chef" in Ratatouille begs to differ.
Plus a lot of people associate rats and mice together and I think its safe to say that Disney might have a rather famous mouse or two.
How do they explain the explosion of numbers on the west coast? Portland is running 10x what it was beforehand. All the big west coast ones has seen significant increases, after previously containing it...
It's a low number in absolute terms, and I can't find enough info to answer that. This suggests that in Oregon it's perhaps (like elsewhere) reopening rather than protests:
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
Theories like that don't explain how two-thirds of a thousand strong workforce in Germany could get it.
Another theory is the research that suggests 80% of cases are linked to particular super spreader events i.e. you need a certain type of person and a certain situation. Perhaps when 20% of people have had it, plus not having these large scale events means the probability of the right person in the right environment for a big transmission is very very low and the R for the rest is well below one.
Its a theory that I have been pushing for over a month. These meat plant cases are the latest super spreader incidents in the UK but there have been many of them. When you run out of super spreaders it struggles to go beyond the immediate family.
The meat processing factory do seem to be really bad for this. Just this week, 3 places in the UK, plus outbreaks in Germany and China. In SK, the club outbreak led to a guy at a meat processing plant the super spreading it on.
And in America, i think at the end of May, half of all hotspots were these facilities. Rural America, large proportion of cases can be linked to them.
We still have a depressing amount to learn about this thing. If only for the next time we really need to make the effort.
How do they explain the explosion of numbers on the west coast? Portland is running 10x what it was beforehand. All the big west coast ones has seen significant increases, after previously containing it...
It's a low number in absolute terms, and I can't find enough info to answer that. This suggests that in Oregon it's perhaps (like elsewhere) reopening rather than protests:
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
Foxhunting is posh dogfighting. Anyone who takes part in or who supports or condones either of these "sports" is a f***ing barbarian. There are many hobbies and scenes that don't involve cruelty to animals.
Of course it's a class issue. The only reason it wasn't banned in 1835 along with its equally barbaric lower-class equivalent was class.
How do they explain the explosion of numbers on the west coast? Portland is running 10x what it was beforehand. All the big west coast ones has seen significant increases, after previously containing it...
It's a low number in absolute terms, and I can't find enough info to answer that. This suggests that in Oregon it's perhaps (like elsewhere) reopening rather than protests:
How do they explain the explosion of numbers on the west coast? Portland is running 10x what it was beforehand. All the big west coast ones has seen significant increases, after previously containing it...
It's a low number in absolute terms, and I can't find enough info to answer that. This suggests that in Oregon it's perhaps (like elsewhere) reopening rather than protests:
Fifty-two percent of the public say they do not belong to any religion, compared with 31% in 1983 when the BSA survey began tracking religious belief. The number of people identifying as Christian has fallen from 66% to 38% over the same period.
Well the good news is that we didn't borrow £62bn in April, we only borrowed £48.5bn. The bad news is that we borrowed another £55.2bn in May taking our debt/GDP ratio over 100% for the first time since 1963: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53104734
I mean, is there anyone who seriously thinks that the government's panic about getting us out of lockdown was materially influenced by Dom's stupidity? Really?
Indeed, we can't stay locked down forever or the printing presses will overheat.
Not been an economist. What would stop the B of E printing money ?
How do they explain the explosion of numbers on the west coast? Portland is running 10x what it was beforehand. All the big west coast ones has seen significant increases, after previously containing it...
It's a low number in absolute terms, and I can't find enough info to answer that. This suggests that in Oregon it's perhaps (like elsewhere) reopening rather than protests:
Religion is going out of fashion. Fifty-two percent of the public say they do not belong to any religion, compared with 31% in 1983 when the BSA survey began tracking religious belief. The number of people identifying as Christian has fallen from 66% to 38% over the same period.
The worrying things I've not seen anyone mention about the major meat factory transmission of the virus, with two-thirds testing positive in that German one and other outbreaks too, is that these are factories one should really hope should have top notch cleaning and hygiene rules at the best of times.
It makes me worry about the hygiene of a premise if two-thirds of a thousand strong staff can get the same virus.
Well the good news is that we didn't borrow £62bn in April, we only borrowed £48.5bn. The bad news is that we borrowed another £55.2bn in May taking our debt/GDP ratio over 100% for the first time since 1963: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53104734
I mean, is there anyone who seriously thinks that the government's panic about getting us out of lockdown was materially influenced by Dom's stupidity? Really?
Indeed, we can't stay locked down forever or the printing presses will overheat.
Not been an economist. What would stop the B of E printing money ?
We still have a depressing amount to learn about this thing. If only for the next time we really need to make the effort.
Guessing if the virus is found mostly in droplets, whether in the air or on surfaces, then a meat factory is always going to be a dangerous combo: indoors + cold + damp.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
Can anybody see the Dominic Cummings spike either?
Amazing how little any of the events everybody obsessed over at the time has changed things at all.
Indeed.
An entire pack of silent canines stretching back to the warm Easter weekend around 9 April.
DC may or may not have infected people at the time, but it's the effect weeks later when the news gets out and people start ignoring the guidelines that's important.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
Not all wokeness wins. Look at PIE.
Some in the past on the left believed that adult-child relationships were OK and thought they should be legalised and that was the future. Never happened though. If anything we've become more aware of and opposed to the evils of paedophilia despite the actions of PIE and some quite prominent left wing Labour support of PIE.
I think we're in definition delta territory. That argument to me is more an extreme libertarian one. Just so you know, when I use the term woke I am referring to a willingness to oppose (in others and in yourself) prejudice against women and minorities. Just that. There's no vast overarching world view informing it. I don't spend all day thinking about it and I try to assess issues relating to this area case by case. So on that basis it's a compliment in my book and I'm not interested in attacking or defending any other definition of it.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
Foxhunting is posh dogfighting. Anyone who takes part in or who supports or condones either of these "sports" is a f***ing barbarian. There are many hobbies and scenes that don't involve cruelty to animals.
Of course it's a class issue. The only reason it wasn't banned in 1835 along with its equally barbaric lower-class equivalent was class.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
Not all wokeness wins. Look at PIE.
Some in the past on the left believed that adult-child relationships were OK and thought they should be legalised and that was the future. Never happened though. If anything we've become more aware of and opposed to the evils of paedophilia despite the actions of PIE and some quite prominent left wing Labour support of PIE.
I think we're in definition delta territory. That argument to me is more an extreme libertarian one. Just so you know, when I use the term woke I am referring to a willingness to oppose (in others and in yourself) prejudice against women and minorities. Just that. There's no vast overarching world view informing it. I don't spend all day thinking about it and I try to assess issues relating to this area case by case. So on that basis it's a compliment in my book and I'm not interested in attacking or defending any other definition of it.
That is liberalism, not wokeism. The former is something to be greatly admired, The latter most definitely isn't.
The worrying things I've not seen anyone mention about the major meat factory transmission of the virus, with two-thirds testing positive in that German one and other outbreaks too, is that these are factories one should really hope should have top notch cleaning and hygiene rules at the best of times.
It makes me worry about the hygiene of a premise if two-thirds of a thousand strong staff can get the same virus.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
It seems you might be correct. The policies in this Loony Left video ft the height of 80s lefty London in the form of the ILEA and Brent/Haringey councils are nothing controversial in today's moderate Labour under Sir Keir, and Boris' Tories wouldn't criticise them
I can't do the 16 mins to watch so I don't know if this genuinely supports my point or takes the piss - you being well capable of either. But I'm going to go with my instincts here that it's the first. So nice one and thanks.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
It seems you might be correct. The policies in this Loony Left video ft the height of 80s lefty London in the form of the ILEA and Brent/Haringey councils are the language of today's moderate Labour under Sir Keir
One of the big ironies about the woke brigade is that they are all in favour of open door immigration but the immigrants who come in tend to be more religious and naturally socially conservative (what % of immigrants are in favour of trans rights - 5% at best).
As this country becomes more diverse we could easily see it become more socially conservative than socially liberal as a consequence.
Now defined as -
Those willing to challenge (in themselves and in others) prejudice against women and minorities.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
Not all wokeness wins. Look at PIE.
Some in the past on the left believed that adult-child relationships were OK and thought they should be legalised and that was the future. Never happened though. If anything we've become more aware of and opposed to the evils of paedophilia despite the actions of PIE and some quite prominent left wing Labour support of PIE.
I think we're in definition delta territory. That argument to me is more an extreme libertarian one. Just so you know, when I use the term woke I am referring to a willingness to oppose (in others and in yourself) prejudice against women and minorities. Just that. There's no vast overarching world view informing it. I don't spend all day thinking about it and I try to assess issues relating to this area case by case. So on that basis it's a compliment in my book and I'm not interested in attacking or defending any other definition of it.
That is liberalism, not wokeism. The former is something to be greatly admired, The latter most definitely isn't.
Well the good news is that we didn't borrow £62bn in April, we only borrowed £48.5bn. The bad news is that we borrowed another £55.2bn in May taking our debt/GDP ratio over 100% for the first time since 1963: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53104734
I mean, is there anyone who seriously thinks that the government's panic about getting us out of lockdown was materially influenced by Dom's stupidity? Really?
Indeed, we can't stay locked down forever or the printing presses will overheat.
Not been an economist. What would stop the B of E printing money ?
Traditionally that they can't afford the paper to print on. The inflationary effect of printing money to fund a spending deficit tends to be exponential, if you keep going to the bitter end in doesn't matter how much you print as the currencies value has become zero.
I've some German postage stamps from their episode of hyperinflation where they have had the prices over stamped, not once but twice, the nominal value of the mark was declining so fast.
It is possible to stop the runaway train once it gets going, but it is very difficult - IIRC there was a South American country which did this successfully in the early 90s by running a parallel new stable currency, but it's not easy.
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
In fairness to Boris, he effectively implied it was a giant overreaction in his TV interview today, but his argument was that a blunt instrument like lockdown was pretty much the only tool at governments' disposal in March when nobody knew anything about this bloody thing.
I think that's a fair point, actually. When you are fighting an unknown invisible enemy all you can do is tend to the overcautious.
For once, I agree with Boris!
But Boris has been about as consistent as Eadric. When you are all over the place, there is always something you have said that falls close to the mark. But also a whole lot of stuff that does not.
A QC with a baseball bat isn't the humane method of killing foxes.
I don't know. How quickly did he do it? Did he chase the fox over garden fences for a mile till he cornered it in the Lido?
The poor fox shouldn't have had to endure the sight of Jolyon in his wife's silk kimono beforehand. That was cruel and unusual torture after which the bludgeoning was surely a relief.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
Yes. The Woke is almost as big a threat as the Rona according to morons
Will Wokeness fade away like the Rona?
Wokeness is the future. Tory dinosaurs like Terry Dicks who advocated executing Mandela are slowly dying off.
This is my point. Woke wins eventually - it is written - so let's stop losing elections over it.
No it doesn't, Churchill's statue is not coming down
See, this is an attempt to set up a battle - Tories being against what almost everyone is against - that is impossible to lose.
Off topic on this post (but I have been out on my bike all morning) - this Labour report. I compare and contrast it to the similar LibDem report and wonder how many vats of fudge Ed Milliband and his team consumed during its creation.
All of the big national parties seem to be at a crossroads. Tories split between northern populists and HYUFD hard liners. Labour between realist and idealist. LibDems between Labour-lite and radical centre. Even the good old Brexit Party Company seems about to resurrect itself because having Secured Brexit apparently they need now to come back to Secure Brexit. And the same every year after that. Why are all the parties at this point - because the political tectonic plates are shifting again.
My instinct politically is increasingly a "whatever works" approach. There is too much classifying and pigeon-holing going on where people want to die in a ditch over their version of Conservatism / Socialism / Liberalism / Farage-disease. Most voters aren't any of these, apply a whatever works approach and vote for whatever and whomever seems to convince the most (or the least worst) at the time. Tories would be fools to think that punters having said "I'll vote Tory to get Brexit done" that they can go hardline neo-right on them. Labour need to tell the union movement that their affiliation and individual membership is appreciated but otherwise they have no formal part to play. LibDems need to accept the coalition happened, was both good and bad, and take the learnings. Fundamentally normals just want a sense that grown-ups are in charge. And this country seems to have sidelined all its political grownups in favour of ideologues.
I think Labour need to uncouple from this culture war stuff. I'm starting to view it as a toxic distraction. IMO the Left will inevitably prevail in that area in due course - since it isn't really a war, it's just social progress - but in the meantime it's costing elections. The Right are whipping up fear and loathing of an imaginary monolithic ultra-radical bogeyman called the Woke, which is threatening the right of every freeborn Englishman to tell a joke or two and slap the wife, and are ruthlessly using this to con people out of their votes. We must find a way to stop this.
The real issue for the left on this is that some of the same old characters are involved.
The ones who want to get rid of Prevent for example - and there is that interesting story of how they got the Southern Poverty Law Centre to classify The Quilliam Foundation as Islaamaphobic.
I would also suggest that they need to make their peace with the fact that increasing numbers of BAME people are voting for non-left parties.
My remedy would be to focus hard on the economics. Develop policies which will make people on low and average incomes better off and hammer at that day in and day out. And do not be afraid of some "bash the rich" populism. Don't pretend there will not be losers. That's bullshit and everyone knows it is. So make a virtue of it. Emphasize the point - #times up for privilege and vested interests.
Then, on the social side, play it cool, calm & collected. Take the heat out of the Right's lurid scaremongering. Change the rules and the presentation. One example, transgender, reduce it to the prosaic practical issues. Get away from "Labour say there's no such thing as biological sex." Move the story to "Tories unclear on the definition and policing of same sex spaces."
Ditto on all aspects of the equality agenda, inc race. Don't get bogged down with "taking the knee" and rhetoric and symbolism. Focus on the bread and butter. On what equality and diversity means in practice. In terms of people's everyday lives. Because when you do this, what you find is that most of it is pretty much a no-brainer.
So the Labour plan should be class war up front, then pretend that the army of screaming nutjobs behind them holding Labour placards are nothing to do with them - despite being on the record as having bought into all the woke diktats? I predict that strategy will turn out to be suboptimal.
Class war? That is simply an emotive and false term for an economic policy which actually favours the less well off as opposed to smoke and mirrors bullshit about 'levelling up'.
As for 'woke diktats', this is more invented (by the right) than real, therefore the best policy is to disengage and let the right talk to themselves about it. Which they mainly do now, let's face it.
You do like persisting in the idea that the left can just carry on full speed ahead with its extreme agenda, and then simply edit the English language to pretend that what it's doing is moderate.
Well, it isn't, and people aren't going to fall for it. The woke have already overreached themselves, and their cultural vandalism will provoke a political backlash that will make Brexit look like a lovers' tiff.
I think there would be an awful lot less controversy over the ban on hunting if it hadn't been implemented as transparent dead cat material by Blair to distract his backbenchers.
I can't be bothered to refight the hunting argument (yes it's cruel, no it's not a class issue and no, I don't expect Boris to re-legalise it), but the above is the reverse of the truth. TB fought us tooth and nail over the issue, using every delaying tactic and distraction, until we finally forced him to give in, in return for something else that I forget.
As he observes in his autobiography, it was inadequately prohibited so it's both illegal and widely still practiced. With luck, that will be fixed in due course.
It's not cruel Nick. You would like to think it is, but it isn't.
I would consider setting a pack of dogs onto another live animal to tear it limb from limb might constitute cruelty. I am no expert though.
I like the "another live animal" rhetorical touch.
They are at liberty to think it's cruel because it "sounds" cruel. But the enquiry established to confirm whether it was or wasn't said it wasn't.
Foxes get killed because they are vermin. Like rats and mice and so forth. There was a tv programme on not so long ago about some Lucas Terriers which their owner took to go ratting. Very interesting/entertaining it was too. On prime TV could even have been the BBC.
How vermin is killed never usually attracts debate unless the people doing the killing are dressed up like poshos in which case the activity is deemed beyond the pale.
Surely the 'live animal' notion is beyond question.
Shoot the fox by all means. Dress up like poshos on horseback, if that floats your boat, but don't couch it as a country sport. Sheep dog trials, it ain't.
I am not sure televised 'ratting' is the way forward either, not quite "One Man and His Dog".
Yes there's a lot that once you find out about seems, in the rarefied atmosphere of PB, to be quite distasteful.
Shooting foxes? I mean not that it doesn't happen, it does, and it's not 100% foolproof, but by far the more common methods are trapping (and then killing if the fox usually with the blunt end of a shovel - ask any gamekeeper) or gassing.
Either of those "the way forward"?
You might be right and I am just offended by poshos on horseback.
A good test of that is probably whether the poshos on horseback still offend if not chasing a fox - or chasing a fox but not accompanied by hounds.
If we're doing class war, it's the poshos with rifles on the moors who offend me, but that's because they act like they own the moors (to be fair to them, they probably do).
Ha! Good point although there are a lot of corporate shoots these days where the participants wish they owned the place.
That said, this coming shooting season has been (1-decimated) as there is simply not the confidence to buy in the birds.
Hasn't stopped the self-styled custodians of the countryside doing their thing.
"'Surge' in illegal bird of prey killings since lockdown"
Were the BLM protests another gigantic mute hound?
In the US looks like they had an impact. But NYC and London, doesn't look like had any impact. Its like you hit 20% of your population having had it and it dies away.
That seems to be the picture wherever you look. I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it. If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
In fairness to Boris, he effectively implied it was a giant overreaction in his TV interview today, but his argument was that a blunt instrument like lockdown was pretty much the only tool at governments' disposal in March when nobody knew anything about this bloody thing.
I think that's a fair point, actually. When you are fighting an unknown invisible enemy all you can do is tend to the overcautious.
For once, I agree with Boris!
I still think that the public in general give governments a lot more credit for their reactions to an unprecedented global pandemic, than is reflected in commentary on the matter - most of which is operating with perfect hindsight.
There have been screw-ups, such as the UK contact tracing app, but the constant negativity from the media isn't necessarily reflected in the population.
I mean it turns out they were trialing both versions at the same time, and found while the home-grown one had issue with iPhones, the other one had issues differentiating between how close an encounter was.
Comments
Some in the past on the left believed that adult-child relationships were OK and thought they should be legalised and that was the future. Never happened though. If anything we've become more aware of and opposed to the evils of paedophilia despite the actions of PIE and some quite prominent left wing Labour support of PIE.
I think the most probable explanation I can see is that having had one of the common cold coronaviruses in the recent past confers a degree of immunity.
I think it is actually significantly more infectious than we think (an R more like measles), but only a limited proportion of the population (say 35%) is susceptible. This would account for why it spreads like wildfire initially, then seem to stall after about 20-25% of the population have had it.
If this is the case, it makes the current crisis possiblly the biggest overreaction in history...
And, no, you indulged in some tiresome sniping at "pb Tories" and were disappointed to receive a response to it.
It might be.
I said I oppose personal violence not that no trouble makers who like violence would join in. It's quite possible to say I draw the line here.
I think that's a fair point, actually. When you are fighting an unknown invisible enemy all you can do is tend to the overcautious.
For once, I agree with Boris!
This suggests that in Oregon it's perhaps (like elsewhere) reopening rather than protests:
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/06/coronavirus-in-oregon-8th-consecutive-day-of-100-or-more-cases-4-new-deaths.html
...Oregon’s biggest outbreak yet is linked to a church near La Grande in Union County, where more than 230 people have tested positive for the virus in the last several days...
It ought to become a great deal clearer over the next week or so.
I mean, is there anyone who seriously thinks that the government's panic about getting us out of lockdown was materially influenced by Dom's stupidity? Really?
Amazing how little any of the events everybody obsessed over at the time has changed things at all.
There have been screw-ups, such as the UK contact tracing app, but the constant negativity from the media isn't necessarily reflected in the population.
All the other indicators are infections are still dropping.
London in the form of the ILEA and Brent/Haringey councils are nothing controversial in today's moderate Labour under Sir Keir, and Boris' Tories wouldn't criticise them
https://youtu.be/COt65HZCJaA
The original point remains. If Philip Thompson were a conservative "liberal" or even a right wing libertarian he would not be in favour of banning hunting. It was, and still is an ethical and moral choice and it was, based on evidence that Topping has referred to, an illiberal Act of parliament that was not based on evidence but on the small minded hatred of what Labour MPs thought of those that participated in it. One thought: if any of you have genuine concern for animal welfare please explain why it is OK to allow rats to die through haemorrhage on warfarin? Is it because they generally don't appear in Disney. the fundamental problem is that most people who pronounce on hunting do so from a position of complete ignorance, and of course that included the prejudiced MPs such as Nick Palmer ex-MP.
An entire pack of silent canines stretching back to the warm Easter weekend around 9 April.
As this country becomes more diverse we could easily see it become more socially conservative than socially liberal as a consequence.
I agree, it would shown it as a huge overreaction. Also it would mean that countries like New Zealand have to make a choice: either they isolate themselves forever, or they accept the proportionate number of deaths.
And in America, i think at the end of May, half of all hotspots were these facilities. Rural America, large proportion of cases can be linked to them.
As for 'woke diktats', this is more invented (by the right) than real, therefore the best policy is to disengage and let the right talk to themselves about it. Which they mainly do now, let's face it.
Plus a lot of people associate rats and mice together and I think its safe to say that Disney might have a rather famous mouse or two.
Gladly, the world would be better off without either.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-spain/update-1-spain-revises-coronavirus-death-toll-to-over-28000-idUSL8N2DW39E
Of course it's a class issue. The only reason it wasn't banned in 1835 along with its equally barbaric lower-class equivalent was class.
Religion is going out of fashion.
What would stop the B of E printing money ?
It makes me worry about the hygiene of a premise if two-thirds of a thousand strong staff can get the same virus.
The point is the hypocracy of the lying xxxxxxx.
England Regional case data by specimen day
Those willing to challenge (in themselves and in others) prejudice against women and minorities.
I've some German postage stamps from their episode of hyperinflation where they have had the prices over stamped, not once but twice, the nominal value of the mark was declining so fast.
It is possible to stop the runaway train once it gets going, but it is very difficult - IIRC there was a South American country which did this successfully in the early 90s by running a parallel new stable currency, but it's not easy.
Not playing.
Well, it isn't, and people aren't going to fall for it. The woke have already overreached themselves, and their cultural vandalism will provoke a political backlash that will make Brexit look like a lovers' tiff.
"'Surge' in illegal bird of prey killings since lockdown"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52667502
https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1274005174466600960?s=20
not terribly new thread?