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  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357

    Does Boris have a really outsized head? Or is the new Scottish leader a pinhead? Or is Boris leaning into the camera to give an exaggerated effect? Or is it a photoshop on different scales? I can't tell....
    This is the sort of analysis we all look for in our favourite political betting based website.

    CHRIST.
    ALIVE.
    Both points are accurate, Boris has a baw heid and Dross a pin heid
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,370

    Does Boris have a really outsized head? Or is the new Scottish leader a pinhead? Or is Boris leaning into the camera to give an exaggerated effect? Or is it a photoshop on different scales? I can't tell....
    This is the sort of analysis we all look for in our favourite political betting based website.

    CHRIST.
    ALIVE.
    Between this and the long-lensing-to-make-it-look-like-a-crowd, could we have a thread header on cameras, optics and interpretation of same?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608

    Does Boris have a really outsized head? Or is the new Scottish leader a pinhead? Or is Boris leaning into the camera to give an exaggerated effect? Or is it a photoshop on different scales? I can't tell....
    This is the sort of analysis we all look for in our favourite political betting based website.

    CHRIST.
    ALIVE.
    If you think that analysis is shite, you should read the endless threads on here about how the LibDems are going to win seats at general elections.

    Or how Brexit was doomed at the Referendum.

    Or what President Hillary Clinton will be doing next.....



  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,176
    edited August 2020
    Cyclefree said:
    Isn't that what we effectively had earlier this week? Obviously the concern about trial by judge(s) is that it's seen as unfair on the defendant, but given the outcome of the Ceon Broughton case, arguably the concern should be in the other direction.
  • Looking at the new season fixture list Liverpool aren't playing Manchester United until next year. Seems very strange to me, I wonder if that's ever happened before?

    United's first premiership fixture is the 19th September so not as much of a surprise really
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    MaxPB said:

    nichomar said:

    MaxPB said:

    nichomar said:

    MaxPB said:

    My lad received an excellent set of GCSE results today, but he's not best pleased. Why? Well, he attends a boys' grammar school which also takes girls in the 6th form. However, grade inflation means that more boys than usual will be able to proceed into the 6th form, which means fewer places remaining for students from other schools and, in particular, the local girls' grammar. So although he is pleased to be entering the 6th form, as expected, he says there will be more of the dopey kids who would otherwise have been chucked out and fewer potential girlfriends!

    After 5 years in an all boys school that's pretty tough, the coeducational sixth form was such a huge change for all of us, it did almost make me completely fuck up my A-Levels though, got a bunch of Bs and Cs at AS level and had to do loads of resits privately to bring my grades up, it definitely cost me a place at Cambridge because my predictions were middling but I got all As in the end after resits and almost being disowned by my parents for daring to get a grade other an an A.
    Hopefully you don’t put your own children under such unnecessary pressure?
    Why? It's worked well for me and my sister. Both of us have highly successful careers, whatever my parents did was for a very good reason.
    If that’s all there is to life earning money and having more than everybody else.
    What an odd thing to say.
    Nothing odd about it, not all people are obsessed with having more money than others. It is a Tory extreme mind you.
  • TomsToms Posts: 2,478
    Cyclefree said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    eristdoof said:

    nichomar said:

    Nigelb said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Nigelb said:
    Pretty depressing!

    I do wonder about the US comparisons though. Over there 50%+ of older people are Republicans. They (on average) don't think the virus is such a big deal.

    Here in the UK at least, older people seem pretty scared, so perhaps they will continue to see people less and so protect themselves.
    I’d add that thus far our infection rates have remained much lower than in the US. With sensible measures, they should stay so.
    Until there’s a vaccine, we’re not returning to normal, but if we’re sensible, life should be liveable.
    According to the most recent open source information I can find (here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/oxford-vaccine-enters-final-phase-of-covid-19-trials-in-brazil-cvd/ ), despite the delays caused by not having enough infections in those being tested (which is in all other respects wonderful news), the rollout to Brazil now implies that they'll have enough data on the OxChAd1 vaccine "by November." With, if positive, regulatory approval coming rapidly afterwards and rollout of mass vaccination (thanks to them beginning mass production nearly two months ago on the assumption of success) shortly after that.

    IF successful. Still a big assumption, even if all signs have been pretty positive so far - but if this timeline is followed, and the trials are successful, we should have the data in 11-15 weeks from now, with the rest coming within weeks after that.

    Of course, production and administration of enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the UK will take significant time, but simply knowing that it's there, it's coming, and there's a fixed timetable for things to get resolved would be marvellous for a lot of people.
    Who is going to be willingly first in the queue? There are a lot of people who feel it’s been rushed or they are going to be injected with a microchip. It’s going to take some selling
    The elderly and vulnerable.

    As the risks from Covid are minuscule for fit and healthy under 50s with no comorbidities, these groups will be at the back the queue whether they like it or not.

    For that reason, I think the policy risk is quite the other way: prepare for thousands of people who have been drummed into irrational fear of the virus now baffled why, suddenly, the government doesn't think them much of a risk at all...
    The most effective use of the vaccine will be to innoculate those who come in to contact with the most people, regardless of their risk status.
    Yes, frontline workers etc.

    Other than that, the government will priorities the elderly, obese and vulnerable – and will have to explain to millions of fearful people that, in fact, they aren't really at much risk.
    Front line workers, retail workers, the productive middle aged and the productive young. If we waste limited vaccine capacity on old people we will hold back the economy. Honestly it's time to tell the Daily Mail to fuck off.
    The productive healthy young if they're not front line don't need the vaccine that much.

    The whole reason we don't want the productive healthy young to get the disease is so they don't pass it on to the old. Once the frontline and the old are vaccinated the young can rather get back to normal even before they are vaccinated.

    My wife is a frontline health worker, working with the vulnerable, I'd expect her to be near the front of the queue for a vaccine. But I have absolutely no desire to get the vaccine myself before my grandparents do.
    With a relatively new vaccine you'd want older people to benefit from not coming into contact with people who can spread it which means vaccinate everyone else first. Additionally, getting the economy back up to full speed is and should always be priority one which means getting young people back into offices is up there somewhere. Whatever outrage the Daily Mail come up with should just be ignored there's no economic or scientific case to prioritise older people over the economically productive.
    Medical treatment should be given on the basis of medical need.
    Trust you to place a dart in triple 20.
  • ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ydoethur said:

    The one faint silver lining to all this is that the people in charge are surely completely cooked. It has been publicly demonstrated how utterly arrogant, useless and pathetic they are. If OFQUAL still exists on 31st March next year I will be amazed.

    https://twitter.com/PershoreDan/status/1296349926323101696
    NB. All the governments across the UK
    Ofqual is UK now , I presume that is as in UK = England sense.
    The truth is that all the education departments and quangoes across the UK have had an absolute car crash on this, and all for the same reason - none of them have a clue what they're doing.

    They need to be eliminated* and replaced by people who actually have two brain cells to rub together and a dim knowledge of the subject

    *Not in that sense, obviously.
    There is no hiding for any of them no matter how much the nats try to dismiss it
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,555
    Cyclefree said:

    The story does not back up the 'Let's scrap the right to jury trial' headline at all.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999
    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

  • Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,065

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    It is clear what the government’s overriding priority is - to make its mates richer by throwing public money at them. Blessed are those who are friends of Johnson, Gove and Cummings, for they will be levelled up as all around are scorned.

    How does BTEC students still not getting their grades sit with levelling up. How on earth are they going to get a fair shot at university applications?
    Most BTEC students go into employment or onto an apprenticeship after, only a minority go to university
    Well thats all right, lets look after the A level ones and ignore BTec students as we have done for my whole life. Not really levelling up though is it?
    If they go on and do an apprenticeship they may end up earning more than their A Level colleagues who go to university with no student debt.

    Top universities like Oxbridge and UCL do not accept BTECs alone anyway, you have to do A levels or IB for example as well to be admitted

    If levelling up is about two handfuls of poorer students going to Oxbridge instead of one handful, you are going to have millions of disgruntled voters in 2024.

    There are 250k Btec students waiting for their results, about 100k of who are wanting to get into universities. The universities are struggling to get all the students who qualify onto their courses. Inevitably those who suffer will be the BTEC students who wont get their final grades until a week before university terms start. It is a shocking disgrace, just as bad as the A-level fiasco, maybe even worse, but wont get the same national attention because no one really believes in levelling up outside of election campaigns.
    Most graduates now vote Labour, especially those who do not go on to the Russell Group and a high earning professional career and yet still have lots of student debt.

    The skilled working class though is increasingly voting Tory as are those who own their own home or have got on the property ladder with a mortgage, it therefore makes sense for this Tory government to encourage BTEC students to get an apprenticeship and avoid going to university with student debt and increase their chances of getting on the property ladder earlier
    It also shows the toxicity of the student debt issue, and how George Osborne screwed it up. An actual graduate tax as opposed to the de facto one Osborne imposed would not have the problem that students graduate with a £30,000 debt hanging over them -- and let us take a moment to appreciate the irony that it is those who eventually have it written off are the ones who have the debt, putting them off voting Conservative, for longest.
    The problem with a graduate tax is that it provides an incentive to move abroad to work, and avoid the extra tax. Structuring it as debt has the advantage of avoiding that problem (at the expense of others).

    The obvious solution is to say that good universities are a public good that we all benefit from and should all fund through general taxation. If that isn't true, then really the government should have nothing to do with it.

    That this obvious solution can't be taken is because politicians have spent decades telling the voters they can have all the good public services they want without having to pay for them, and the public have been willingly deceived.
    While I agree with your "obvious solution" I disagree with your "incentive to move abroad" argument.

    Moving abroad is a big choice and is rarely based on having to pay an extra 1 or 2% on income tax. The tax* someone pays will change anyway when they move abroad so will their living costs.


    *By tax here I include obligatory insurance schemes such as health and pension schemes, but are often overlooked when comparing tax between countries.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862
    Cyclefree said:
    The Scottish Government has already tried this but backed off in response to unanimous disapproval. I thought that my colleagues in the Criminal bar who resisted an idea that could have got them back to work much faster highly honourable in their stance.

    We are now taking over a series of unused cinemas to have a "remote jury". It seems a bit bizarre and over the top when you see what schools are doing but hey, at least a few of the wheels are going to start to slowly turn again.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    He quit as PuSoS over Cummings - no love lost between him & Johnson
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,002

    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote

    https://twitter.com/PeterGrantMP/status/1296410284429578241
  • He quit as PuSoS over Cummings - no love lost between him & Johnson
    I know.

    He is the constituency mp for my wife's former home
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,065
    Cyclefree said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    eristdoof said:

    nichomar said:

    Nigelb said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Nigelb said:
    Pretty depressing!

    I do wonder about the US comparisons though. Over there 50%+ of older people are Republicans. They (on average) don't think the virus is such a big deal.

    Here in the UK at least, older people seem pretty scared, so perhaps they will continue to see people less and so protect themselves.
    I’d add that thus far our infection rates have remained much lower than in the US. With sensible measures, they should stay so.
    Until there’s a vaccine, we’re not returning to normal, but if we’re sensible, life should be liveable.
    According to the most recent open source information I can find (here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/oxford-vaccine-enters-final-phase-of-covid-19-trials-in-brazil-cvd/ ), despite the delays caused by not having enough infections in those being tested (which is in all other respects wonderful news), the rollout to Brazil now implies that they'll have enough data on the OxChAd1 vaccine "by November." With, if positive, regulatory approval coming rapidly afterwards and rollout of mass vaccination (thanks to them beginning mass production nearly two months ago on the assumption of success) shortly after that.

    IF successful. Still a big assumption, even if all signs have been pretty positive so far - but if this timeline is followed, and the trials are successful, we should have the data in 11-15 weeks from now, with the rest coming within weeks after that.

    Of course, production and administration of enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the UK will take significant time, but simply knowing that it's there, it's coming, and there's a fixed timetable for things to get resolved would be marvellous for a lot of people.
    Who is going to be willingly first in the queue? There are a lot of people who feel it’s been rushed or they are going to be injected with a microchip. It’s going to take some selling
    The elderly and vulnerable.

    As the risks from Covid are minuscule for fit and healthy under 50s with no comorbidities, these groups will be at the back the queue whether they like it or not.

    For that reason, I think the policy risk is quite the other way: prepare for thousands of people who have been drummed into irrational fear of the virus now baffled why, suddenly, the government doesn't think them much of a risk at all...
    The most effective use of the vaccine will be to innoculate those who come in to contact with the most people, regardless of their risk status.
    Yes, frontline workers etc.

    Other than that, the government will priorities the elderly, obese and vulnerable – and will have to explain to millions of fearful people that, in fact, they aren't really at much risk.
    Front line workers, retail workers, the productive middle aged and the productive young. If we waste limited vaccine capacity on old people we will hold back the economy. Honestly it's time to tell the Daily Mail to fuck off.
    The productive healthy young if they're not front line don't need the vaccine that much.

    The whole reason we don't want the productive healthy young to get the disease is so they don't pass it on to the old. Once the frontline and the old are vaccinated the young can rather get back to normal even before they are vaccinated.

    My wife is a frontline health worker, working with the vulnerable, I'd expect her to be near the front of the queue for a vaccine. But I have absolutely no desire to get the vaccine myself before my grandparents do.
    With a relatively new vaccine you'd want older people to benefit from not coming into contact with people who can spread it which means vaccinate everyone else first. Additionally, getting the economy back up to full speed is and should always be priority one which means getting young people back into offices is up there somewhere. Whatever outrage the Daily Mail come up with should just be ignored there's no economic or scientific case to prioritise older people over the economically productive.
    Medical treatment should be given on the basis of medical need.
    The required "medical treatment" may be different, depending on whether you are talking about the "medical need" of that person, the "medical need" of their local community or the "medical need" of the country as a whole.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608

    Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    Ditto mine.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862
    malcolmg said:

    Screeching u turn news (or more likely it was originally wee diddies mouthing off without authority).

    https://twitter.com/northsoundnews/status/1296134471385845761?s=20

    Presumably the Nats sent the Yestapo in with rubber truncheons.

    The diddies had their horoscopes read.
    Aberdeen City Council does not make the law of the land, that is the responsibility of the numpties at Holyrood and Aberdeen are as bound by the nonsense they produce as the rest of us. That does not stop them from having a view on whether or not locking down Aberdeen and killing off local businesses is necessary or appropriate. They are of the view that it is not and were right to say so.

    The Scots love for Nanny Nicola controlling their every move is a source of bewilderment to me but the lack of economics as a school subject continues to pay dividends for the SNP.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,370
    malcolmg said:

    Does Boris have a really outsized head? Or is the new Scottish leader a pinhead? Or is Boris leaning into the camera to give an exaggerated effect? Or is it a photoshop on different scales? I can't tell....
    This is the sort of analysis we all look for in our favourite political betting based website.

    CHRIST.
    ALIVE.
    Both points are accurate, Boris has a baw heid and Dross a pin heid
    You need to study this educational video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMiKyfd6hA0

    otherwise you will fail your Photography GCSE
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862

    malcolmg said:

    Does Boris have a really outsized head? Or is the new Scottish leader a pinhead? Or is Boris leaning into the camera to give an exaggerated effect? Or is it a photoshop on different scales? I can't tell....
    This is the sort of analysis we all look for in our favourite political betting based website.

    CHRIST.
    ALIVE.
    Both points are accurate, Boris has a baw heid and Dross a pin heid
    You need to study this educational video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMiKyfd6hA0

    otherwise you will fail your Photography GCSE
    Nah, he will get a pass mark anyway, certainly this year.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216

    Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    For once I'm with the SNP on this - the vote should go to legal residents of Scotland - if you start down "Scottish votes for Scots" what happens to non-Scots living in Scotland? I'm not with them on fiddling the franchise otoh.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357

    Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    Give you a clue , you need to live in Scotland. Move there and register at least 3 months before the vote and she will have a vote and you will also.
    How you think someone in Wales should get to decide what happens in Scotland, how Scottish taxes are spent etc, escapes me.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,533

    Scott_xP said:
    Turnout won’t be great from that age band I expect...
    What has it typically been in the past?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    Scott_xP said:

    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote

    https://twitter.com/PeterGrantMP/status/1296410284429578241
    Unionists are running about like headless chickens, absolutely bricking it and trying to think of how they can rig the upcoming vote. You could not make it up.
  • GrandioseGrandiose Posts: 2,323
    Scott_xP said:

    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote

    https://twitter.com/PeterGrantMP/status/1296410284429578241
    Scots who move away from Scotland stop being part of Scotland's future?

    interesting campaigning principle...
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,729
    Toms said:

    Cyclefree said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    eristdoof said:

    nichomar said:

    Nigelb said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Nigelb said:
    Pretty depressing!

    I do wonder about the US comparisons though. Over there 50%+ of older people are Republicans. They (on average) don't think the virus is such a big deal.

    Here in the UK at least, older people seem pretty scared, so perhaps they will continue to see people less and so protect themselves.
    I’d add that thus far our infection rates have remained much lower than in the US. With sensible measures, they should stay so.
    Until there’s a vaccine, we’re not returning to normal, but if we’re sensible, life should be liveable.
    According to the most recent open source information I can find (here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/oxford-vaccine-enters-final-phase-of-covid-19-trials-in-brazil-cvd/ ), despite the delays caused by not having enough infections in those being tested (which is in all other respects wonderful news), the rollout to Brazil now implies that they'll have enough data on the OxChAd1 vaccine "by November." With, if positive, regulatory approval coming rapidly afterwards and rollout of mass vaccination (thanks to them beginning mass production nearly two months ago on the assumption of success) shortly after that.

    IF successful. Still a big assumption, even if all signs have been pretty positive so far - but if this timeline is followed, and the trials are successful, we should have the data in 11-15 weeks from now, with the rest coming within weeks after that.

    Of course, production and administration of enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the UK will take significant time, but simply knowing that it's there, it's coming, and there's a fixed timetable for things to get resolved would be marvellous for a lot of people.
    Who is going to be willingly first in the queue? There are a lot of people who feel it’s been rushed or they are going to be injected with a microchip. It’s going to take some selling
    The elderly and vulnerable.

    As the risks from Covid are minuscule for fit and healthy under 50s with no comorbidities, these groups will be at the back the queue whether they like it or not.

    For that reason, I think the policy risk is quite the other way: prepare for thousands of people who have been drummed into irrational fear of the virus now baffled why, suddenly, the government doesn't think them much of a risk at all...
    The most effective use of the vaccine will be to innoculate those who come in to contact with the most people, regardless of their risk status.
    Yes, frontline workers etc.

    Other than that, the government will priorities the elderly, obese and vulnerable – and will have to explain to millions of fearful people that, in fact, they aren't really at much risk.
    Front line workers, retail workers, the productive middle aged and the productive young. If we waste limited vaccine capacity on old people we will hold back the economy. Honestly it's time to tell the Daily Mail to fuck off.
    The productive healthy young if they're not front line don't need the vaccine that much.

    The whole reason we don't want the productive healthy young to get the disease is so they don't pass it on to the old. Once the frontline and the old are vaccinated the young can rather get back to normal even before they are vaccinated.

    My wife is a frontline health worker, working with the vulnerable, I'd expect her to be near the front of the queue for a vaccine. But I have absolutely no desire to get the vaccine myself before my grandparents do.
    With a relatively new vaccine you'd want older people to benefit from not coming into contact with people who can spread it which means vaccinate everyone else first. Additionally, getting the economy back up to full speed is and should always be priority one which means getting young people back into offices is up there somewhere. Whatever outrage the Daily Mail come up with should just be ignored there's no economic or scientific case to prioritise older people over the economically productive.
    Medical treatment should be given on the basis of medical need.
    Trust you to place a dart in triple 20.
    Actually far from triple 20 , it scored null points . Of course it depends how you define "medical need" and that is a discussion that could go on for ever.
  • malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote

    https://twitter.com/PeterGrantMP/status/1296410284429578241
    Unionists are running about like headless chickens, absolutely bricking it and trying to think of how they can rig the upcoming vote. You could not make it up.
    I am confident that in the end the Scots will remain in the union

    You are just as confident they will not

    And each of us is entitled to our view
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ydoethur said:

    The one faint silver lining to all this is that the people in charge are surely completely cooked. It has been publicly demonstrated how utterly arrogant, useless and pathetic they are. If OFQUAL still exists on 31st March next year I will be amazed.

    https://twitter.com/PershoreDan/status/1296349926323101696
    NB. All the governments across the UK
    Ofqual is UK now , I presume that is as in UK = England sense.
    The truth is that all the education departments and quangoes across the UK have had an absolute car crash on this, and all for the same reason - none of them have a clue what they're doing.

    They need to be eliminated* and replaced by people who actually have two brain cells to rub together and a dim knowledge of the subject

    *Not in that sense, obviously.
    There is no hiding for any of them no matter how much the nats try to dismiss it
    You are more obsessed than HYFUD now G, you will do yourself an injury soon, relax and worry about Wales and things that affect your own family.
  • Now I'm getting pb adverts for Scotland as a result of this thread. :smile:
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357

    He quit as PuSoS over Cummings - no love lost between him & Johnson
    LOL, if you believe that rehearsed flounce as real you are dafter than I imagined.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999
    edited August 2020
    Scott_xP said:
    After spending the last 5 years screeching that pro IRA, Hamas supporting, anti Zionist critic of Israel Jeremy Corby is an antisemitic traitor, will Govey be making any comment on the political hinterland of pro IRA, Hamas supporting, anti Zionist critic of Israel George Galloway?
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote

    https://twitter.com/PeterGrantMP/status/1296410284429578241
    Unionists are running about like headless chickens, absolutely bricking it and trying to think of how they can rig the upcoming vote. You could not make it up.
    I am confident that in the end the Scots will remain in the union

    You are just as confident they will not

    And each of us is entitled to our view
    And only one of you should be entitled to a vote.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,370
    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ydoethur said:

    The one faint silver lining to all this is that the people in charge are surely completely cooked. It has been publicly demonstrated how utterly arrogant, useless and pathetic they are. If OFQUAL still exists on 31st March next year I will be amazed.

    https://twitter.com/PershoreDan/status/1296349926323101696
    NB. All the governments across the UK
    Ofqual is UK now , I presume that is as in UK = England sense.
    The truth is that all the education departments and quangoes across the UK have had an absolute car crash on this, and all for the same reason - none of them have a clue what they're doing.

    They need to be eliminated* and replaced by people who actually have two brain cells to rub together and a dim knowledge of the subject

    *Not in that sense, obviously.
    Air Marshall Harris was given to writing that he could improve the survival rate for his bomber crews, if he could have a free hand shooting senior managers of the aircraft industry and the Air Ministry
    Wasn’t that more or less the approach Stalin adopted?
    Yes, in fact AM Harris freely admitted that his suggested policy was rather Stalinist.

    What is fascinating in studying WWII policy decision making is how the same old favourites pop up.

    For example -

    - before the war, the RAF was using rifle-calibre machine guns for everything.
    - a reasoned analysis pointed out that with the advent of armour plating, self sealing tanks, faster speeds etc something heavier was needed.
    - after much thought, jumping to 20mm cannon was decided on, instead of the half way house of larger machine guns - as the Americans did.
    - it was believed by the "Bomber experts" in the Aviation ministry that cannon (and indeed larger machine guns) couldn't just be mounted on existing aircraft. New aircraft would have to be designed round them.
    - The new aircraft (Standard Bomber project) got cancelled in 1940, in the rush to get more of what was in production already.
    - Despite successful trials, the "better armament will only work on totally new aircraft" lobby prevented any change until the last part of the war.

    This was why Harris wanted to shoot people. Probably with a Hispano cannon....
  • malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ydoethur said:

    The one faint silver lining to all this is that the people in charge are surely completely cooked. It has been publicly demonstrated how utterly arrogant, useless and pathetic they are. If OFQUAL still exists on 31st March next year I will be amazed.

    https://twitter.com/PershoreDan/status/1296349926323101696
    NB. All the governments across the UK
    Ofqual is UK now , I presume that is as in UK = England sense.
    The truth is that all the education departments and quangoes across the UK have had an absolute car crash on this, and all for the same reason - none of them have a clue what they're doing.

    They need to be eliminated* and replaced by people who actually have two brain cells to rub together and a dim knowledge of the subject

    *Not in that sense, obviously.
    There is no hiding for any of them no matter how much the nats try to dismiss it
    You are more obsessed than HYFUD now G, you will do yourself an injury soon, relax and worry about Wales and things that affect your own family.
    You are blind to the fact my wife and I are as passionate for the union as you are against

    You will not silence me on this issue and the outcome will effect many of our family

    I do not think about Wales as Wales is not going to follow Scotland's attempts

  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,222

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ydoethur said:

    The one faint silver lining to all this is that the people in charge are surely completely cooked. It has been publicly demonstrated how utterly arrogant, useless and pathetic they are. If OFQUAL still exists on 31st March next year I will be amazed.

    https://twitter.com/PershoreDan/status/1296349926323101696
    NB. All the governments across the UK
    Ofqual is UK now , I presume that is as in UK = England sense.
    The truth is that all the education departments and quangoes across the UK have had an absolute car crash on this, and all for the same reason - none of them have a clue what they're doing.

    They need to be eliminated* and replaced by people who actually have two brain cells to rub together and a dim knowledge of the subject

    *Not in that sense, obviously.
    There is no hiding for any of them no matter how much the nats try to dismiss it
    You are more obsessed than HYFUD now G, you will do yourself an injury soon, relax and worry about Wales and things that affect your own family.
    You are blind to the fact my wife and I are as passionate for the union as you are against

    You will not silence me on this issue and the outcome will effect many of our family

    I do not think about Wales as Wales is not going to follow Scotland's attempts

    Malc, and other nationalists, underestimate the extent to which all countries within our union are valued by many people.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Scott_xP said:
    After spending the last 5 years screeching that pro IRA, Hamas supporting, anti Zionist critic of Israel Jeremy Corby is an antisemitic traitor, will Govey be making any comment on the political hinterland of pro IRA, Hamas supporting, anti Zionist critic of Israel George Galloway?
    Let's all enjoy this again.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FKiDUmESDE
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999

    Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    Voters can currently vote in UK elections for up to 15 years after leaving the UK. Even if you think the ethno franchise is a goer, why should it be a longer period after leaving Scotland?
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,317
    edited August 2020
    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:
    Isn't that what we effectively had earlier this week? Obviously the concern about trial by judge(s) is that it's seen as unfair on the defendant, but given the outcome of the Ceon Broughton case, arguably the concern should be in the other direction.
    That was an appeal on the basis that the judge’s direction in law at the trial was wrong and therefore that misdirection invalidated the jury’s verdict. Very different from a trial where the judge makes both findings of fact and law.
    eristdoof said:

    Cyclefree said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    eristdoof said:

    nichomar said:

    Nigelb said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Nigelb said:
    Pretty depressing!

    I do wonder about the US comparisons though. Over there 50%+ of older people are Republicans. They (on average) don't think the virus is such a big deal.

    Here in the UK at least, older people seem pretty scared, so perhaps they will continue to see people less and so protect themselves.
    I’d add that thus far our infection rates have remained much lower than in the US. With sensible measures, they should stay so.
    Until there’s a vaccine, we’re not returning to normal, but if we’re sensible, life should be liveable.
    According to the most recent open source information I can find (here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/oxford-vaccine-enters-final-phase-of-covid-19-trials-in-brazil-cvd/ ), despite the delays caused by not having enough infections in those being tested (which is in all other respects wonderful news), the rollout to Brazil now implies that they'll have enough data on the OxChAd1 vaccine "by November." With, if positive, regulatory approval coming rapidly afterwards and rollout of mass vaccination (thanks to them beginning mass production nearly two months ago on the assumption of success) shortly after that.

    IF successful. Still a big assumption, even if all signs have been pretty positive so far - but if this timeline is followed, and the trials are successful, we should have the data in 11-15 weeks from now, with the rest coming within weeks after that.

    Of course, production and administration of enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the UK will take significant time, but simply knowing that it's there, it's coming, and there's a fixed timetable for things to get resolved would be marvellous for a lot of people.
    Who is going to be willingly first in the queue? There are a lot of people who feel it’s been rushed or they are going to be injected with a microchip. It’s going to take some selling
    The elderly and vulnerable.

    As the risks from Covid are minuscule for fit and healthy under 50s with no comorbidities, these groups will be at the back the queue whether they like it or not.

    For that reason, I think the policy risk is quite the other way: prepare for thousands of people who have been drummed into irrational fear of the virus now baffled why, suddenly, the government doesn't think them much of a risk at all...
    The most effective use of the vaccine will be to innoculate those who come in to contact with the most people, regardless of their risk status.
    Yes, frontline workers etc.

    Other than that, the government will priorities the elderly, obese and vulnerable – and will have to explain to millions of fearful people that, in fact, they aren't really at much risk.
    Front line workers, retail workers, the productive middle aged and the productive young. If we waste limited vaccine capacity on old people we will hold back the economy. Honestly it's time to tell the Daily Mail to fuck off.
    The productive healthy young if they're not front line don't need the vaccine that much.

    The whole reason we don't want the productive healthy young to get the disease is so they don't pass it on to the old. Once the frontline and the old are vaccinated the young can rather get back to normal even before they are vaccinated.

    My wife is a frontline health worker, working with the vulnerable, I'd expect her to be near the front of the queue for a vaccine. But I have absolutely no desire to get the vaccine myself before my grandparents do.
    With a relatively new vaccine you'd want older people to benefit from not coming into contact with people who can spread it which means vaccinate everyone else first. Additionally, getting the economy back up to full speed is and should always be priority one which means getting young people back into offices is up there somewhere. Whatever outrage the Daily Mail come up with should just be ignored there's no economic or scientific case to prioritise older people over the economically productive.
    Medical treatment should be given on the basis of medical need.
    The required "medical treatment" may be different, depending on whether you are talking about the "medical need" of that person, the "medical need" of their local community or the "medical need" of the country as a whole.
    Really? Is that how medical treatment is given now? You turn up at A&E and get treated in the basis of whether the country or your local area benefits from you being treated? News to me, if so.

    Perhaps Dr Foxy if he is around could opine.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ydoethur said:

    The one faint silver lining to all this is that the people in charge are surely completely cooked. It has been publicly demonstrated how utterly arrogant, useless and pathetic they are. If OFQUAL still exists on 31st March next year I will be amazed.

    https://twitter.com/PershoreDan/status/1296349926323101696
    NB. All the governments across the UK
    Ofqual is UK now , I presume that is as in UK = England sense.
    The truth is that all the education departments and quangoes across the UK have had an absolute car crash on this, and all for the same reason - none of them have a clue what they're doing.

    They need to be eliminated* and replaced by people who actually have two brain cells to rub together and a dim knowledge of the subject

    *Not in that sense, obviously.
    Air Marshall Harris was given to writing that he could improve the survival rate for his bomber crews, if he could have a free hand shooting senior managers of the aircraft industry and the Air Ministry
    Wasn’t that more or less the approach Stalin adopted?
    Yes, in fact AM Harris freely admitted that his suggested policy was rather Stalinist.

    What is fascinating in studying WWII policy decision making is how the same old favourites pop up.

    For example -

    - before the war, the RAF was using rifle-calibre machine guns for everything.
    - a reasoned analysis pointed out that with the advent of armour plating, self sealing tanks, faster speeds etc something heavier was needed.
    - after much thought, jumping to 20mm cannon was decided on, instead of the half way house of larger machine guns - as the Americans did.
    - it was believed by the "Bomber experts" in the Aviation ministry that cannon (and indeed larger machine guns) couldn't just be mounted on existing aircraft. New aircraft would have to be designed round them.
    - The new aircraft (Standard Bomber project) got cancelled in 1940, in the rush to get more of what was in production already.
    - Despite successful trials, the "better armament will only work on totally new aircraft" lobby prevented any change until the last part of the war.

    This was why Harris wanted to shoot people. Probably with a Hispano cannon....
    If it was a Mk.1 there's a good chance it would have jammed after the 2nd round.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    Dura_Ace said:

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote

    https://twitter.com/PeterGrantMP/status/1296410284429578241
    Unionists are running about like headless chickens, absolutely bricking it and trying to think of how they can rig the upcoming vote. You could not make it up.
    I am confident that in the end the Scots will remain in the union

    You are just as confident they will not

    And each of us is entitled to our view
    And only one of you should be entitled to a vote.
    We know which one as well.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,370
    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:
    Isn't that what we effectively had earlier this week? Obviously the concern about trial by judge(s) is that it's seen as unfair on the defendant, but given the outcome of the Ceon Broughton case, arguably the concern should be in the other direction.
    That was an appeal on the basis that the judge’s direction in law at the trial was wrong and therefore that misdirection invalidated the jury’s verdict. Very different from a trial where the judge makes both findings of fact and law.
    eristdoof said:

    Cyclefree said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    eristdoof said:

    nichomar said:

    Nigelb said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Nigelb said:
    Pretty depressing!

    I do wonder about the US comparisons though. Over there 50%+ of older people are Republicans. They (on average) don't think the virus is such a big deal.

    Here in the UK at least, older people seem pretty scared, so perhaps they will continue to see people less and so protect themselves.
    I’d add that thus far our infection rates have remained much lower than in the US. With sensible measures, they should stay so.
    Until there’s a vaccine, we’re not returning to normal, but if we’re sensible, life should be liveable.
    According to the most recent open source information I can find (here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/oxford-vaccine-enters-final-phase-of-covid-19-trials-in-brazil-cvd/ ), despite the delays caused by not having enough infections in those being tested (which is in all other respects wonderful news), the rollout to Brazil now implies that they'll have enough data on the OxChAd1 vaccine "by November." With, if positive, regulatory approval coming rapidly afterwards and rollout of mass vaccination (thanks to them beginning mass production nearly two months ago on the assumption of success) shortly after that.

    IF successful. Still a big assumption, even if all signs have been pretty positive so far - but if this timeline is followed, and the trials are successful, we should have the data in 11-15 weeks from now, with the rest coming within weeks after that.

    Of course, production and administration of enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the UK will take significant time, but simply knowing that it's there, it's coming, and there's a fixed timetable for things to get resolved would be marvellous for a lot of people.
    Who is going to be willingly first in the queue? There are a lot of people who feel it’s been rushed or they are going to be injected with a microchip. It’s going to take some selling
    The elderly and vulnerable.

    As the risks from Covid are minuscule for fit and healthy under 50s with no comorbidities, these groups will be at the back the queue whether they like it or not.

    For that reason, I think the policy risk is quite the other way: prepare for thousands of people who have been drummed into irrational fear of the virus now baffled why, suddenly, the government doesn't think them much of a risk at all...
    The most effective use of the vaccine will be to innoculate those who come in to contact with the most people, regardless of their risk status.
    Yes, frontline workers etc.

    Other than that, the government will priorities the elderly, obese and vulnerable – and will have to explain to millions of fearful people that, in fact, they aren't really at much risk.
    Front line workers, retail workers, the productive middle aged and the productive young. If we waste limited vaccine capacity on old people we will hold back the economy. Honestly it's time to tell the Daily Mail to fuck off.
    The productive healthy young if they're not front line don't need the vaccine that much.

    The whole reason we don't want the productive healthy young to get the disease is so they don't pass it on to the old. Once the frontline and the old are vaccinated the young can rather get back to normal even before they are vaccinated.

    My wife is a frontline health worker, working with the vulnerable, I'd expect her to be near the front of the queue for a vaccine. But I have absolutely no desire to get the vaccine myself before my grandparents do.
    With a relatively new vaccine you'd want older people to benefit from not coming into contact with people who can spread it which means vaccinate everyone else first. Additionally, getting the economy back up to full speed is and should always be priority one which means getting young people back into offices is up there somewhere. Whatever outrage the Daily Mail come up with should just be ignored there's no economic or scientific case to prioritise older people over the economically productive.
    Medical treatment should be given on the basis of medical need.
    The required "medical treatment" may be different, depending on whether you are talking about the "medical need" of that person, the "medical need" of their local community or the "medical need" of the country as a whole.
    Really? Is that how medical treatment is given now? You turn up at A&E and get treated in the basis of whether the country or your local area benefits from you being treated? News to me, if so.

    Perhaps Dr Foxy if he is around could opine.
    The existing healthcare system (NICE etc) considers more than the immediate benefit to the patient, alone.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608
    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote

    https://twitter.com/PeterGrantMP/status/1296410284429578241
    Unionists are running about like headless chickens, absolutely bricking it and trying to think of how they can rig the upcoming vote. You could not make it up.
    "rigging it" like allowing 16 and 17 year-olds the vote?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862

    Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    For once I'm with the SNP on this - the vote should go to legal residents of Scotland - if you start down "Scottish votes for Scots" what happens to non-Scots living in Scotland? I'm not with them on fiddling the franchise otoh.
    Agreed. There is a difference between those who move abroad but remain on the electoral register of where they are from and those that move to another part of the UK and have the right to vote there.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    One one hand the SNP are xenophobic blood and soil nationalist who are totally racist.

    But in the other hand they aren't racist enough when it comes to define the franchise.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.
  • Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    When America became independent, the people living in America became Americans, not people living elsewhere.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468
    edited August 2020
    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    What was his crime?

    Why is his school relevant?
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527

    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    What was his crime?

    Why is his school relevant?
    Selling drugs.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766
    Cyclefree said:
    I thought we were fed up with experts? Now we seem to be getting rid of the twelve good men and true.

  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,317

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:
    Isn't that what we effectively had earlier this week? Obviously the concern about trial by judge(s) is that it's seen as unfair on the defendant, but given the outcome of the Ceon Broughton case, arguably the concern should be in the other direction.
    That was an appeal on the basis that the judge’s direction in law at the trial was wrong and therefore that misdirection invalidated the jury’s verdict. Very different from a trial where the judge makes both findings of fact and law.
    eristdoof said:

    Cyclefree said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    eristdoof said:

    nichomar said:

    Nigelb said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Nigelb said:
    Pretty depressing!

    I do wonder about the US comparisons though. Over there 50%+ of older people are Republicans. They (on average) don't think the virus is such a big deal.

    Here in the UK at least, older people seem pretty scared, so perhaps they will continue to see people less and so protect themselves.
    I’d add that thus far our infection rates have remained much lower than in the US. With sensible measures, they should stay so.
    Until there’s a vaccine, we’re not returning to normal, but if we’re sensible, life should be liveable.
    According to the most recent open source information I can find (here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/oxford-vaccine-enters-final-phase-of-covid-19-trials-in-brazil-cvd/ ), despite the delays caused by not having enough infections in those being tested (which is in all other respects wonderful news), the rollout to Brazil now implies that they'll have enough data on the OxChAd1 vaccine "by November." With, if positive, regulatory approval coming rapidly afterwards and rollout of mass vaccination (thanks to them beginning mass production nearly two months ago on the assumption of success) shortly after that.

    IF successful. Still a big assumption, even if all signs have been pretty positive so far - but if this timeline is followed, and the trials are successful, we should have the data in 11-15 weeks from now, with the rest coming within weeks after that.

    Of course, production and administration of enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the UK will take significant time, but simply knowing that it's there, it's coming, and there's a fixed timetable for things to get resolved would be marvellous for a lot of people.
    Who is going to be willingly first in the queue? There are a lot of people who feel it’s been rushed or they are going to be injected with a microchip. It’s going to take some selling
    The elderly and vulnerable.

    As the risks from Covid are minuscule for fit and healthy under 50s with no comorbidities, these groups will be at the back the queue whether they like it or not.

    For that reason, I think the policy risk is quite the other way: prepare for thousands of people who have been drummed into irrational fear of the virus now baffled why, suddenly, the government doesn't think them much of a risk at all...
    The most effective use of the vaccine will be to innoculate those who come in to contact with the most people, regardless of their risk status.
    Yes, frontline workers etc.

    Other than that, the government will priorities the elderly, obese and vulnerable – and will have to explain to millions of fearful people that, in fact, they aren't really at much risk.
    Front line workers, retail workers, the productive middle aged and the productive young. If we waste limited vaccine capacity on old people we will hold back the economy. Honestly it's time to tell the Daily Mail to fuck off.
    The productive healthy young if they're not front line don't need the vaccine that much.

    The whole reason we don't want the productive healthy young to get the disease is so they don't pass it on to the old. Once the frontline and the old are vaccinated the young can rather get back to normal even before they are vaccinated.

    My wife is a frontline health worker, working with the vulnerable, I'd expect her to be near the front of the queue for a vaccine. But I have absolutely no desire to get the vaccine myself before my grandparents do.
    With a relatively new vaccine you'd want older people to benefit from not coming into contact with people who can spread it which means vaccinate everyone else first. Additionally, getting the economy back up to full speed is and should always be priority one which means getting young people back into offices is up there somewhere. Whatever outrage the Daily Mail come up with should just be ignored there's no economic or scientific case to prioritise older people over the economically productive.
    Medical treatment should be given on the basis of medical need.
    The required "medical treatment" may be different, depending on whether you are talking about the "medical need" of that person, the "medical need" of their local community or the "medical need" of the country as a whole.
    Really? Is that how medical treatment is given now? You turn up at A&E and get treated in the basis of whether the country or your local area benefits from you being treated? News to me, if so.

    Perhaps Dr Foxy if he is around could opine.
    The existing healthcare system (NICE etc) considers more than the immediate benefit to the patient, alone.
    That as I understand it is in order to determine whether a new drug should be made available at all.

    When you see a doctor, he/she does not say “well you have X and this gel is what is needed to cure it but it’s of no value to the country for you to be treated so you’re not getting it” does he?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    Stocky said:

    malcolmg said:

    ydoethur said:

    malcolmg said:

    Scott_xP said:

    ydoethur said:

    The one faint silver lining to all this is that the people in charge are surely completely cooked. It has been publicly demonstrated how utterly arrogant, useless and pathetic they are. If OFQUAL still exists on 31st March next year I will be amazed.

    https://twitter.com/PershoreDan/status/1296349926323101696
    NB. All the governments across the UK
    Ofqual is UK now , I presume that is as in UK = England sense.
    The truth is that all the education departments and quangoes across the UK have had an absolute car crash on this, and all for the same reason - none of them have a clue what they're doing.

    They need to be eliminated* and replaced by people who actually have two brain cells to rub together and a dim knowledge of the subject

    *Not in that sense, obviously.
    There is no hiding for any of them no matter how much the nats try to dismiss it
    You are more obsessed than HYFUD now G, you will do yourself an injury soon, relax and worry about Wales and things that affect your own family.
    You are blind to the fact my wife and I are as passionate for the union as you are against

    You will not silence me on this issue and the outcome will effect many of our family

    I do not think about Wales as Wales is not going to follow Scotland's attempts

    Malc, and other nationalists, underestimate the extent to which all countries within our union are valued by many people.
    Stocky , I don't underestimate it at all, we are talking about who should have a vote on whether Scotland should run its own affairs, I defy anyone to show me how that can be a person living in Wales regardless of where they were born. It is for the people who live and work in the country to decide what they want it to be like. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either very stupid or mendacious.
    I happen to like England but would not expect a vote on whether it should get independence or not.
    Many may value Scotland but many more show clearly they place no value on it and even worse. It is a prop for England to imagine past glories and Empire, their last colony.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862
    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    Nope.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,935
    justin124 said:

    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    What was his crime?

    Why is his school relevant?
    Selling drugs.
    Lucky he didn't get the death penalty.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527

    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    What was his crime?

    Why is his school relevant?
    It is referred to in press coverage as clear evidence of his privileged background.
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    Because she doesn’t live there.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    He is also serving 20 years for the drugs offences, of course 50 years ago caning pupils was routine at Westminster even if not as many as 24 strokes
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999
    So, that new indy ref II franchise in full:

    Attended an Edinburgh Fringe show
    Appeared in an Edinburgh Fringe show
    Bought one of the Scottish piper dolls on the Royal Mile
    Thinking that Billy O'Connolly chap is BLOODY funny
    Being able to pronounce Kirkcaldy on the third attempt
    Loving Scotch Whiskey
  • MikeSmithsonMikeSmithson Posts: 7,382
    DavidL said:

    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    Nope.
    Indeed. Galloway in NO circumstances.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    Guaranteed they had a visitor from England, you more than likely dashing about Scotland causing clusters so you can whine about it on here.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766
    https://twitter.com/DAaronovitch/status/1296358552613814273

    The word honourable doing a hell of a lot of lifting there.
  • HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    Madness.

    You really are beyond belief
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862

    Scott_xP said:
    Turnout won’t be great from that age band I expect...
    What has it typically been in the past?
    0%, except in the Independence referendum where one party tried to rig the vote in their favour. Under 18s can't normally vote.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    HYUFD said:

    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    He is also serving 20 years for the drugs offences, of course 50 years ago caning pupils was routine at Westminster even if not as many as 24 strokes
    Caning in some private schools continued until 1999 , but a Judicial Singapore caning is no comparison. This guy will be scarred for life - make no mistake.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,176

    Cyclefree said:
    I thought we were fed up with experts? Now we seem to be getting rid of the twelve good men and true.

    As I mentioned up thread, that happened this week without much complaint.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862

    So, that new indy ref II franchise in full:

    Attended an Edinburgh Fringe show
    Appeared in an Edinburgh Fringe show
    Bought one of the Scottish piper dolls on the Royal Mile
    Thinking that Billy O'Connolly chap is BLOODY funny
    Being able to pronounce Kirkcaldy on the third attempt
    Loving Scotch Whiskey

    You forgot
    being 16 without a decent education.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,249
    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:
    Isn't that what we effectively had earlier this week? Obviously the concern about trial by judge(s) is that it's seen as unfair on the defendant, but given the outcome of the Ceon Broughton case, arguably the concern should be in the other direction.
    That was an appeal on the basis that the judge’s direction in law at the trial was wrong and therefore that misdirection invalidated the jury’s verdict. Very different from a trial where the judge makes both findings of fact and law.
    eristdoof said:

    Cyclefree said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    eristdoof said:

    nichomar said:

    Nigelb said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Nigelb said:
    Pretty depressing!

    I do wonder about the US comparisons though. Over there 50%+ of older people are Republicans. They (on average) don't think the virus is such a big deal.

    Here in the UK at least, older people seem pretty scared, so perhaps they will continue to see people less and so protect themselves.
    I’d add that thus far our infection rates have remained much lower than in the US. With sensible measures, they should stay so.
    Until there’s a vaccine, we’re not returning to normal, but if we’re sensible, life should be liveable.
    According to the most recent open source information I can find (here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/oxford-vaccine-enters-final-phase-of-covid-19-trials-in-brazil-cvd/ ), despite the delays caused by not having enough infections in those being tested (which is in all other respects wonderful news), the rollout to Brazil now implies that they'll have enough data on the OxChAd1 vaccine "by November." With, if positive, regulatory approval coming rapidly afterwards and rollout of mass vaccination (thanks to them beginning mass production nearly two months ago on the assumption of success) shortly after that.

    IF successful. Still a big assumption, even if all signs have been pretty positive so far - but if this timeline is followed, and the trials are successful, we should have the data in 11-15 weeks from now, with the rest coming within weeks after that.

    Of course, production and administration of enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the UK will take significant time, but simply knowing that it's there, it's coming, and there's a fixed timetable for things to get resolved would be marvellous for a lot of people.
    Who is going to be willingly first in the queue? There are a lot of people who feel it’s been rushed or they are going to be injected with a microchip. It’s going to take some selling
    The elderly and vulnerable.

    As the risks from Covid are minuscule for fit and healthy under 50s with no comorbidities, these groups will be at the back the queue whether they like it or not.

    For that reason, I think the policy risk is quite the other way: prepare for thousands of people who have been drummed into irrational fear of the virus now baffled why, suddenly, the government doesn't think them much of a risk at all...
    The most effective use of the vaccine will be to innoculate those who come in to contact with the most people, regardless of their risk status.
    Yes, frontline workers etc.

    Other than that, the government will priorities the elderly, obese and vulnerable – and will have to explain to millions of fearful people that, in fact, they aren't really at much risk.
    Front line workers, retail workers, the productive middle aged and the productive young. If we waste limited vaccine capacity on old people we will hold back the economy. Honestly it's time to tell the Daily Mail to fuck off.
    The productive healthy young if they're not front line don't need the vaccine that much.

    The whole reason we don't want the productive healthy young to get the disease is so they don't pass it on to the old. Once the frontline and the old are vaccinated the young can rather get back to normal even before they are vaccinated.

    My wife is a frontline health worker, working with the vulnerable, I'd expect her to be near the front of the queue for a vaccine. But I have absolutely no desire to get the vaccine myself before my grandparents do.
    With a relatively new vaccine you'd want older people to benefit from not coming into contact with people who can spread it which means vaccinate everyone else first. Additionally, getting the economy back up to full speed is and should always be priority one which means getting young people back into offices is up there somewhere. Whatever outrage the Daily Mail come up with should just be ignored there's no economic or scientific case to prioritise older people over the economically productive.
    Medical treatment should be given on the basis of medical need.
    The required "medical treatment" may be different, depending on whether you are talking about the "medical need" of that person, the "medical need" of their local community or the "medical need" of the country as a whole.
    Really? Is that how medical treatment is given now? You turn up at A&E and get treated in the basis of whether the country or your local area benefits from you being treated? News to me, if so.

    Perhaps Dr Foxy if he is around could opine.
    That in some measure is what we already have ... treatment options are limited by the approval process and NICE Guidance, which is based on medical evidence, but also whether the extra benefits are justified by the expenditure and overall benefit.

    So, for example not all diabetics get a Continuous Glucose Monitoring system, which will bleep when the diabetic is going into hypo, or the half-way house version which provides continuous data but only collects it when the user does a scan. It would be taken away again if there was not a certain level of improvement. These things (as worn by eg Theresa May) cost 1k a year or so to run in supplies.

    image

    These are balanced against cost of individual treatment, but also against cost to the community of later complications of D.

    And in generalsome treatments are done dependent on age, BMI, smoking etc.

    That is all partly of process of balancing individual need against the overall community.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139

    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    Madness.

    You really are beyond belief
    At least Galloway is a Unionist, you can remedy the damage of socialism, you cannot remedy the damage after the country is broken up
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    All credibility is gone.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527

    Scott_xP said:
    My wife is every bit as much a Scot as any of the nats so why should she not receive a vote
    For the same reason I was denied a vote in the 1997 Wales Devolution Referendum - ie I was no longer on the electoral roll in Wales.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,935
    justin124 said:

    HYUFD said:

    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    He is also serving 20 years for the drugs offences, of course 50 years ago caning pupils was routine at Westminster even if not as many as 24 strokes
    Caning in some private schools continued until 1999 , but a Judicial Singapore caning is no comparison. This guy will be scarred for life - make no mistake.
    Hard to get too worked up about it. He should have read the warnings on the entry visa, and on entering Signapore, that drug dealing is an extremely serious offence.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862

    https://twitter.com/DAaronovitch/status/1296358552613814273

    The word honourable doing a hell of a lot of lifting there.

    His fault, and it is indeed a serious fault, is that he listened to the muppets who were advising him who assured him that this was the best possible outcome in the circumstances and generally (another word doing a fair bit of lifting) fair (ish).

    An inquiring mind would have challenged this in about March when there was still an alternative. A moderately dull mind might have thought 6 weeks ago that this was sub optimal. A person with the mind of the average cat would have had the self preservation to panic when they saw what an incredible mess Swinney got into just over a week ago. It's....sad.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    RobD said:

    justin124 said:

    HYUFD said:

    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    He is also serving 20 years for the drugs offences, of course 50 years ago caning pupils was routine at Westminster even if not as many as 24 strokes
    Caning in some private schools continued until 1999 , but a Judicial Singapore caning is no comparison. This guy will be scarred for life - make no mistake.
    Hard to get too worked up about it. He should have read the warnings on the entry visa, and on entering Signapore, that drug dealing is an extremely serious offence.
    But it is interesting that little has been said here , yet Clinton intervened in 1994 and got the US guy's sentence reduced from six to four strokes.
  • houndtanghoundtang Posts: 450

    Cyclefree said:
    I thought we were fed up with experts? Now we seem to be getting rid of the twelve good men and true.

    Another golden opportunity presented by the lockdown. But of course it's all about a virus.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Things I don;t understand today include:

    Why President Macron is ruling out a new lockdown in France, when COVID is apparently rampant in.....er......the USA.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486
    RobD said:

    justin124 said:

    HYUFD said:

    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    He is also serving 20 years for the drugs offences, of course 50 years ago caning pupils was routine at Westminster even if not as many as 24 strokes
    Caning in some private schools continued until 1999 , but a Judicial Singapore caning is no comparison. This guy will be scarred for life - make no mistake.
    Hard to get too worked up about it. He should have read the warnings on the entry visa, and on entering Signapore, that drug dealing is an extremely serious offence.
    Eh?

    It's a barbaric practice, that shouldn't exist anywhere in the world.

    You might not think it worth "getting worked up about", many of us consider it an international disgrace.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    malcolmg said:

    Guaranteed they had a visitor from England, you more than likely dashing about Scotland causing clusters so you can whine about it on here.
    Not Aberdeen? It’s a lot closer.....
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,176

    RobD said:

    justin124 said:

    HYUFD said:

    justin124 said:

    I see that a 31 year old Briton and former Westminster School pupil has been flogged in Singapore. He received the maximum 24 strokes of the Rotan cane. Very little sign of uproar here though - very different to what happened in 1994 when US guy - Michael Fay - was given a mere 4 strokes. It will have been excruciating for the British guy - many pass out after just 3 strokes.

    He is also serving 20 years for the drugs offences, of course 50 years ago caning pupils was routine at Westminster even if not as many as 24 strokes
    Caning in some private schools continued until 1999 , but a Judicial Singapore caning is no comparison. This guy will be scarred for life - make no mistake.
    Hard to get too worked up about it. He should have read the warnings on the entry visa, and on entering Signapore, that drug dealing is an extremely serious offence.
    Eh?

    It's a barbaric practice, that shouldn't exist anywhere in the world.

    You might not think it worth "getting worked up about", many of us consider it an international disgrace.
    Boycott Singapore then. Personally I'd rather put up with drugs and the consequences of them than resort to draconian punishments, but I respect other countries to take a different view.
  • Alistair said:

    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    All credibility is gone.
    When did he have any credibility?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999
    edited August 2020
    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    Throw the kitchen sink at keeping Corbyn out of Downing St but a Galloway appeaser? Who'd have thunk?

    Sorry to wee on your frites, but Scotland has become electorally immunised against GG . On his last foray he garnered a massive 3.3% of the votes in 2011 on the Glasgow regional list, and after sulking in a car park all evening refused to turn up for the announcement of the result.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862

    malcolmg said:

    Guaranteed they had a visitor from England, you more than likely dashing about Scotland causing clusters so you can whine about it on here.
    Not Aberdeen? It’s a lot closer.....
    A friend of my brother who is a qualified electrician once had a job in that factory which involved him watching chickens being electrocuted. Animal welfare required a qualified electrician on site in case something went wrong. He lasted just over 2 weeks which was apparently better than average.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,317
    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:
    I thought we were fed up with experts? Now we seem to be getting rid of the twelve good men and true.

    As I mentioned up thread, that happened this week without much complaint.
    No it didn’t. If you are referring to the Ceon Broughton case, this was an appeal on a point of law to the Court of Appeal. The conviction was overturned on a point of law. This has been available for decades.

    It is also very different from a trial with a judge alone without a jury.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,999
    DavidL said:

    So, that new indy ref II franchise in full:

    Attended an Edinburgh Fringe show
    Appeared in an Edinburgh Fringe show
    Bought one of the Scottish piper dolls on the Royal Mile
    Thinking that Billy O'Connolly chap is BLOODY funny
    Being able to pronounce Kirkcaldy on the third attempt
    Loving Scotch Whiskey

    You forgot
    being 16 without a decent education.
    I seem to recall at some point in the past before you'd been driven mad by the prospect of Indy Ref II that you'd come round to the idea of 16 & 17 years olds having a vote. Sad.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357
    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    You prove my point eloquently
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,176
    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:
    I thought we were fed up with experts? Now we seem to be getting rid of the twelve good men and true.

    As I mentioned up thread, that happened this week without much complaint.
    No it didn’t. If you are referring to the Ceon Broughton case, this was an appeal on a point of law to the Court of Appeal. The conviction was overturned on a point of law. This has been available for decades.

    It is also very different from a trial with a judge alone without a jury.
    If the Broughton case was so clear cut that the judges thought he shouldn't have ever stood trial (why isn't that decided at a pre-trial hearing, by the way?), it doesn't say much for the jury that sent him down.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    edited August 2020

    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    Throw the kitchen sink at keeping Corbyn out of Downing St but a Galloway appeaser? Who'd have thunk?

    Sorry to wee on your frites, but Scotland has become electorally immunised to GG. On his last foray he garnered a massive 3.3% of the votes in 2011 on the Glasgow regional list, and after sulking in a car park all evening refused to turn up for the announcement of the result.
    I would also rather have Corbyn as PM than Sturgeon as First Minister and if I was Scottish would vote Labour over SNP.

    Corbyn v Sturgeon is alien v predator for me but I still prefer a socialist Unionist over a left-wing Scottish Nationalist.

    Galloway was a Glasgow MP for many years, ideally he would fight his old seat as the sole Unionist Alliance candidate next year.

    I would gladly then vote Galloway on the constituency vote and Scottish Conservative on the list if I lived there as the best way of beating the SNP
  • HYUFD is off his rocker. Amazing comedy
  • HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    Throw the kitchen sink at keeping Corbyn out of Downing St but a Galloway appeaser? Who'd have thunk?

    Sorry to wee on your frites, but Scotland has become electorally immunised against GG . On his last foray he garnered a massive 3.3% of the votes in 2011 on the Glasgow regional list, and after sulking in a car park all evening refused to turn up for the announcement of the result.
    HYUFD shames the conservative party

    I would rather Scotland won a fair referendum than Galloway
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,249

    Cyclefree said:
    I thought we were fed up with experts? Now we seem to be getting rid of the twelve good men and true.

    No problem with experts.

    During the Brexit debate most of the problem was with bullshitting experts.
  • Stats for Lefties has blocked me on Twitter :(
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,357

    malcolmg said:

    Guaranteed they had a visitor from England, you more than likely dashing about Scotland causing clusters so you can whine about it on here.
    Not Aberdeen? It’s a lot closer.....
    You seem to know a lot , my suspicions look accurate, up there with your carpetbag full of vials, doing dirty deeds.
  • HYUFD is off his rocker. Amazing comedy

    It is not comedy - just embarrassing
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,370
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    tlg86 said:

    Cyclefree said:
    Isn't that what we effectively had earlier this week? Obviously the concern about trial by judge(s) is that it's seen as unfair on the defendant, but given the outcome of the Ceon Broughton case, arguably the concern should be in the other direction.
    That was an appeal on the basis that the judge’s direction in law at the trial was wrong and therefore that misdirection invalidated the jury’s verdict. Very different from a trial where the judge makes both findings of fact and law.
    eristdoof said:

    Cyclefree said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    eristdoof said:

    nichomar said:

    Nigelb said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Nigelb said:
    Pretty depressing!

    I do wonder about the US comparisons though. Over there 50%+ of older people are Republicans. They (on average) don't think the virus is such a big deal.

    Here in the UK at least, older people seem pretty scared, so perhaps they will continue to see people less and so protect themselves.
    I’d add that thus far our infection rates have remained much lower than in the US. With sensible measures, they should stay so.
    Until there’s a vaccine, we’re not returning to normal, but if we’re sensible, life should be liveable.
    According to the most recent open source information I can find (here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/oxford-vaccine-enters-final-phase-of-covid-19-trials-in-brazil-cvd/ ), despite the delays caused by not having enough infections in those being tested (which is in all other respects wonderful news), the rollout to Brazil now implies that they'll have enough data on the OxChAd1 vaccine "by November." With, if positive, regulatory approval coming rapidly afterwards and rollout of mass vaccination (thanks to them beginning mass production nearly two months ago on the assumption of success) shortly after that.

    IF successful. Still a big assumption, even if all signs have been pretty positive so far - but if this timeline is followed, and the trials are successful, we should have the data in 11-15 weeks from now, with the rest coming within weeks after that.

    Of course, production and administration of enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the UK will take significant time, but simply knowing that it's there, it's coming, and there's a fixed timetable for things to get resolved would be marvellous for a lot of people.
    Who is going to be willingly first in the queue? There are a lot of people who feel it’s been rushed or they are going to be injected with a microchip. It’s going to take some selling
    The elderly and vulnerable.

    As the risks from Covid are minuscule for fit and healthy under 50s with no comorbidities, these groups will be at the back the queue whether they like it or not.

    For that reason, I think the policy risk is quite the other way: prepare for thousands of people who have been drummed into irrational fear of the virus now baffled why, suddenly, the government doesn't think them much of a risk at all...
    The most effective use of the vaccine will be to innoculate those who come in to contact with the most people, regardless of their risk status.
    Yes, frontline workers etc.

    Other than that, the government will priorities the elderly, obese and vulnerable – and will have to explain to millions of fearful people that, in fact, they aren't really at much risk.
    Front line workers, retail workers, the productive middle aged and the productive young. If we waste limited vaccine capacity on old people we will hold back the economy. Honestly it's time to tell the Daily Mail to fuck off.
    The productive healthy young if they're not front line don't need the vaccine that much.

    The whole reason we don't want the productive healthy young to get the disease is so they don't pass it on to the old. Once the frontline and the old are vaccinated the young can rather get back to normal even before they are vaccinated.

    My wife is a frontline health worker, working with the vulnerable, I'd expect her to be near the front of the queue for a vaccine. But I have absolutely no desire to get the vaccine myself before my grandparents do.
    With a relatively new vaccine you'd want older people to benefit from not coming into contact with people who can spread it which means vaccinate everyone else first. Additionally, getting the economy back up to full speed is and should always be priority one which means getting young people back into offices is up there somewhere. Whatever outrage the Daily Mail come up with should just be ignored there's no economic or scientific case to prioritise older people over the economically productive.
    Medical treatment should be given on the basis of medical need.
    The required "medical treatment" may be different, depending on whether you are talking about the "medical need" of that person, the "medical need" of their local community or the "medical need" of the country as a whole.
    Really? Is that how medical treatment is given now? You turn up at A&E and get treated in the basis of whether the country or your local area benefits from you being treated? News to me, if so.

    Perhaps Dr Foxy if he is around could opine.
    The existing healthcare system (NICE etc) considers more than the immediate benefit to the patient, alone.
    That as I understand it is in order to determine whether a new drug should be made available at all.

    When you see a doctor, he/she does not say “well you have X and this gel is what is needed to cure it but it’s of no value to the country for you to be treated so you’re not getting it” does he?
    If there is a shortage of treatment/test X, then guidelines on priority are applied - at least that is what I understand.

    For example, when there was a shortage of tests for COVID, the tests were used according to the priorities in the guidelines, not solely on the clinical need of the patient.
  • malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Discounting the absolute minnows but including TBP and Alliance4Unity, Galloway's new comedy vehicle, I make that six parties competing for the Unionist vote next May. If HYUFD wants the 'unifying' figure of Ruth to start leading a consolidated Unionist movement, he'd should tell her to get her arse into gear.

    'New Unionist party wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament'

    https://tinyurl.com/yxngvgus

    Fantastic, lots of new Unionist MSPs potentially there then on the top up list from Labour, the Tories and LDs, to TBP and even Galloway's new Alliance and the party to abolish the Scottish Parliament all are welcome as long as they are anti SNP.

    Davidson is biding her time, she will however be interim leader of the Tories at Holyrood until polling day. She will strike when Sturgeon's guard is down then we just need to get the Unionist Alliance candidates sorted at constituency level
    Absolutely BARKING
    I would rather have Galloway as First Minister than Sturgeon
    You prove my point eloquently
    He is barking
This discussion has been closed.