Political Betting. Come for the tipping, stay for the ww2 chat.
I've not even got started on Arthur Donaldson being the head of a Vichy style government in Scotland.
Wouldn't have been him - he was neutral. The Tories would hasve done that no problem. Look at Ramsay which even his fellow Tory Churchill had to bang up.
You learn something new every day, that's how you know you're still alive.
Today I learnt something really quite remarkable: that there are 'US Postal Service Agents' with powers of arrest. It's one of those new discoveries that opens up more questions than it answers.
It is something to do with the postmaster general being mentioned in the constitution so they have lots of power.
Political Betting. Come for the tipping, stay for the ww2 chat.
Trump's old news. Alternative histories of the Third Reich are where it's hip and happening now. Apparently.
And a particularf kind of alternative history. Rather disturbing wish fulfilment if you ask me, which doesn't even meet the plausibility and accuracy criteria.
I have often reflected on what might have happened in the late 1930s had Scotland - and possibly Wales - already become independent states. It is far from clear that an independent Scotland would not have sought to follow the example of Eire - and Holland & Belgium et al - by declaring itself neutral. Had that happened, would England on its own have been strong enough to resist the Nazis? I have serious doubts.
I think England would have invaded Scotland in that scenario. To do otherwise would be to lose.
But that would itself have been an act of aggression which destroyed much of the moral and legal argument for declaring war against Germany in the first place. As it happens, Germany had some justification for invading Norway in that it had simply beaten the Allies to it by a couple of days!
We invaded Iran during WWII, in an act of aggression, the moral and legal argument for declaring war on Germany was still there.
In so doing we became a fellow aggressor - and provided justification for Germany violating the neutrality of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and much of Scandinavia. When it suited us we shared their contempt for International Law. Blair had plenty of ready precedents to build on in 2003.
Nobody cares about international law when their backs are to the wall. Rightly so.
You'd have been laughed out of court at Stalingrad, had you said "Hang on a moment, the No Step Back Order violates international law."
As someone who is an expert in Airborne and Air Assault history (see my user name) I'm happy to debate parachute infantry/airborne operations of WWII from about 11 am tomorrow.
Wasn't one of our number doing an MA in military history?
I have often reflected on what might have happened in the late 1930s had Scotland - and possibly Wales - already become independent states. It is far from clear that an independent Scotland would not have sought to follow the example of Eire - and Holland & Belgium et al - by declaring itself neutral. Had that happened, would England on its own have been strong enough to resist the Nazis? I have serious doubts.
Of course as the Battle of Britain was won in southern England and that was what prevented Nazi invasion
The logistics of Germany invading Britain being completely impossible is what stopped a Nazi invasion.
Had the Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain they could have got their troops and tanks on barges across the channel to likely successfully invade without being bombed to pieces by the RAF, while their dive bombers and U boats finished off the Royal Navy
This (a Nazi invasion) was extensively wargamed after the war and it was concluded that it could only have lasted about three days. The key is that once the Royal Navy could reach the Channel from Scapa Flow and the Mediterranean, there could be no German reinforcements. Remember that after Dunkirk a large part of the British army was here. U-boats could not really operate in the Channel.
Yes. The Germans had no naval dive bombers to speak of, and the RN would have gutted any German invasion fleet.
I have often reflected on what might have happened in the late 1930s had Scotland - and possibly Wales - already become independent states. It is far from clear that an independent Scotland would not have sought to follow the example of Eire - and Holland & Belgium et al - by declaring itself neutral. Had that happened, would England on its own have been strong enough to resist the Nazis? I have serious doubts.
I think England would have invaded Scotland in that scenario. To do otherwise would be to lose.
But that would itself have been an act of aggression which destroyed much of the moral and legal argument for declaring war against Germany in the first place. As it happens, Germany had some justification for invading Norway in that it had simply beaten the Allies to it by a couple of days!
We invaded Iran during WWII, in an act of aggression, the moral and legal argument for declaring war on Germany was still there.
In so doing we became a fellow aggressor - and provided justification for Germany violating the neutrality of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and much of Scandinavia. When it suited us we shared their contempt for International Law. Blair had plenty of ready precedents to build on in 2003.
Nobody cares about international law when their backs are to the wall. Rightly so.
You'd have been laughed out of court at Stalingrad, had you said "Hang on a moment, the No Step Back Order violates international law."
But that provides ample justification for Germany's own aggression in 1940 and 1941.
On topic the short answer to TSE's thread question is no.
A look at the list of convicted names gives a clue. Trump supporters believe people like Flynn were set up by the outgoing Obama administration in what they say is a bigger political scandal than Watergate but which the liberal press has ignored (their words). Bannon being arrested, to them, is further proof of this.
And DavidL is right - you have politically-driven DAs who drive cases for political reasons. Which further allows supporters to claim that their side is being persecuted.
You learn something new every day, that's how you know you're still alive.
Today I learnt something really quite remarkable: that there are 'US Postal Service Agents' with powers of arrest. It's one of those new discoveries that opens up more questions than it answers.
Someone's been having fun editing Wikipedia tonight...
The United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) or the Postal Inspectors, is the law enforcement arm of the Democratic Party. Its jurisdiction is defined as actions that may adversely affect the Democratic Party, the far left or anarchists. The mission of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is to subvert the election to Joe Biden and Far Left Kamala Harris.
I have often reflected on what might have happened in the late 1930s had Scotland - and possibly Wales - already become independent states. It is far from clear that an independent Scotland would not have sought to follow the example of Eire - and Holland & Belgium et al - by declaring itself neutral. Had that happened, would England on its own have been strong enough to resist the Nazis? I have serious doubts.
I think England would have invaded Scotland in that scenario. To do otherwise would be to lose.
But that would itself have been an act of aggression which destroyed much of the moral and legal argument for declaring war against Germany in the first place. As it happens, Germany had some justification for invading Norway in that it had simply beaten the Allies to it by a couple of days!
We invaded Iran during WWII, in an act of aggression, the moral and legal argument for declaring war on Germany was still there.
In so doing we became a fellow aggressor - and provided justification for Germany violating the neutrality of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and much of Scandinavia. When it suited us we shared their contempt for International Law. Blair had plenty of ready precedents to build on in 2003.
Nobody cares about international law when their backs are to the wall. Rightly so.
You'd have been laughed out of court at Stalingrad, had you said "Hang on a moment, the No Step Back Order violates international law."
If Hitler had captured Moscow, could he have held Russia ?
I have often reflected on what might have happened in the late 1930s had Scotland - and possibly Wales - already become independent states. It is far from clear that an independent Scotland would not have sought to follow the example of Eire - and Holland & Belgium et al - by declaring itself neutral. Had that happened, would England on its own have been strong enough to resist the Nazis? I have serious doubts.
I think England would have invaded Scotland in that scenario. To do otherwise would be to lose.
But that would itself have been an act of aggression which destroyed much of the moral and legal argument for declaring war against Germany in the first place. As it happens, Germany had some justification for invading Norway in that it had simply beaten the Allies to it by a couple of days!
We invaded Iran for oil during WWII, in an act of aggression, the moral and legal argument for declaring war on Germany was still there.
We deposed their democratically elected government long after the war for the same reason. And helped eff up the Middle East for the next half century or so.
You learn something new every day, that's how you know you're still alive.
Today I learnt something really quite remarkable: that there are 'US Postal Service Agents' with powers of arrest. It's one of those new discoveries that opens up more questions than it answers.
Lots of Federal agencies have their own law enforcement as their authority crosses state lines.
Yes. The Germans had no naval dive bombers to speak of, and the RN would have gutted any German invasion fleet.
That's probably wrong in practice, even if it's right in theory. An initially successful, even if superficial, sea invasion combined with Nazi air attacks would probably have led to a complete collapse of morale, as had already happened in France and elsewhere. We - that is to say Western civilisation - really were within a hair's breadth of utter destruction.
If you think a 7 point GOP lead in Louisiana is good news for Trump then it is a good job you don't bet.
The Minnesota poll isn’t good for Biden however. That really should be low hanging fruit.
Trump got a lower percentage of the vote than Romney in 2012. Yet Clinton only just scraped it compared to Obama.
Trump has a lot of third party voters available to him to "come home", it is why he is is not out of it and why in general this will be a hard to poll election.
That's a very point Alistair and one that gets missed. If you look at the 2016 election, Hillary got the same number of votes as Obama but, of the increase in turnout, 3rd party candidates picked up roughly two-thirds of that increase. Given the vast majority went to the Libertarians or Evan McMullin, it is likely many of these voters are more natural Republicans than Democrats. In several states (e.g. Nevada), the Libertarians and McMullin received more votes than the majority Hillary had over Trump.
"As well as two close-protection guards who are routinely at the Prime Minister's side, he was joined by Miss Symonds, a local guide and an unknown woman who was walking Dilyn. The tourist said: 'It just looked like any other normal family day out.'"
I have often reflected on what might have happened in the late 1930s had Scotland - and possibly Wales - already become independent states. It is far from clear that an independent Scotland would not have sought to follow the example of Eire - and Holland & Belgium et al - by declaring itself neutral. Had that happened, would England on its own have been strong enough to resist the Nazis? I have serious doubts.
Of course as the Battle of Britain was won in southern England and that was what prevented Nazi invasion
The logistics of Germany invading Britain being completely impossible is what stopped a Nazi invasion.
Had the Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain they could have got their troops and tanks on barges across the channel to likely successfully invade without being bombed to pieces by the RAF, while their dive bombers and U boats finished off the Royal Navy
This (a Nazi invasion) was extensively wargamed after the war and it was concluded that it could only have lasted about three days. The key is that once the Royal Navy could reach the Channel from Scapa Flow and the Mediterranean, there could be no German reinforcements. Remember that after Dunkirk a large part of the British army was here. U-boats could not really operate in the Channel.
Yes. The Germans had no naval dive bombers to speak of, and the RN would have gutted any German invasion fleet.
Operation Sealion was a fantasy as this long (but excellent) analysis shows:
As someone who is an expert in Airborne and Air Assault history (see my user name) I'm happy to debate parachute infantry/airborne operations of WWII from about 11 am tomorrow.
Wasn't one of our number doing an MA in military history?
SeanF.
Thanks. I'm doing the Peninsular War.
But, you're quite right.
Why are some morons now trying to take statues of Picton down?
I assume he once said something juicy about slavery ?
If you want to talk about Operation Sealion. go over to alternatehistory.com - they have a whole series of threads devoted to it and love nothing more than some newbie arguing it was bound to succeed.
The most convincing scenario for a successful German invasion in 1940 I've ever read was in Kenneth Macksey's book "Invasion" written in 1980 which postulates a German invasion in mid-July 1940.
Back to the slightly less insane, a thin gruel of US polling tonight. Biden up four in Pennsylvania (49-45) and Rasmussen, after days of negative approval for Trump (not often posted by a certain poster) showing a +3 positive approval (51-48) but still well out of step with other pollsters.
A Minnesota state poll shows a dead heat at 47 and that's the most likely gain for Trump in this election you would think.
There are other polls being tweeted - one has Trump up 50-43 in Louisiana, a state he won by 20 last time so that's a 6.5% swing to Biden. I wonder if we are seeing disproportionately large swings for Biden in states he has no chance of winning while the states he needs to win are much closer.
I have often reflected on what might have happened in the late 1930s had Scotland - and possibly Wales - already become independent states. It is far from clear that an independent Scotland would not have sought to follow the example of Eire - and Holland & Belgium et al - by declaring itself neutral. Had that happened, would England on its own have been strong enough to resist the Nazis? I have serious doubts.
I think England would have invaded Scotland in that scenario. To do otherwise would be to lose.
But that would itself have been an act of aggression which destroyed much of the moral and legal argument for declaring war against Germany in the first place. As it happens, Germany had some justification for invading Norway in that it had simply beaten the Allies to it by a couple of days!
We invaded Iran during WWII, in an act of aggression, the moral and legal argument for declaring war on Germany was still there.
In so doing we became a fellow aggressor - and provided justification for Germany violating the neutrality of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and much of Scandinavia. When it suited us we shared their contempt for International Law. Blair had plenty of ready precedents to build on in 2003.
Nobody cares about international law when their backs are to the wall. Rightly so.
You'd have been laughed out of court at Stalingrad, had you said "Hang on a moment, the No Step Back Order violates international law."
If Hitler had captured Moscow, could he have held Russia ?
As someone who is an expert in Airborne and Air Assault history (see my user name) I'm happy to debate parachute infantry/airborne operations of WWII from about 11 am tomorrow.
Wasn't one of our number doing an MA in military history?
SeanF.
Thanks. I'm doing the Peninsular War.
But, you're quite right.
Why are some morons now trying to take statues of Picton down?
I assume he once said something juicy about slavery ?
You learn something new every day, that's how you know you're still alive.
Today I learnt something really quite remarkable: that there are 'US Postal Service Agents' with powers of arrest. It's one of those new discoveries that opens up more questions than it answers.
USPIS was founded by Benjamin Franklin - I know this just because of an episode of Brooklyn 99 that delved into USPIS revealing such shocking secrets as: yes they actually exist - and yes they actually are Federal Agents.
When an employer sees A/A* grades from a class of 2020 candidate on a CV, what will they think?
That it's probably bollocks?
The infamous failed algorithm would never have been written in the first place if the teachers could be trusted not to over-inflate their predicted grades. The Education Secretary and his devolved counterparts inevitably stand at the front of the queue for public criticism, but there's still plenty of blame left to go around the rest of the education establishment.
As well as two close-protection guards who are routinely at the Prime Minister's side, he was joined by Miss Symonds, a local guide and an unknown woman who was walking Dilyn. The tourist said: 'It just looked like any other normal family day out.'
] I wonder if we are seeing disproportionately large swings for Biden in states he has no chance of winning while the states he needs to win are much closer.
] I wonder if we are seeing disproportionately large swings for Biden in states he has no chance of winning while the states he needs to win are much closer.
That is the nightmare scenario for the Dems.
The figures on this page would seem to support that.
I read elsewhere that the hyperventilation over local lockdowns has now moved on to Birmingham.
I dare say that they are detecting more cases in the city, but I can find no indication as to how many of these are causing people to present in hospitals and thus bringing the NHS under imminent threat of implosion, which was (of course) the original rationale for issuing stay at home instructions. I suspect that the answer is "very few." That's not to say that the issue is totally irrelevant - one just hopes that it doesn't lead to the panic flap crushing of a million people, for the sake of a small cluster of mostly asymptomatic cases in a few streets of crappy terraced housing in one suburb.
For context, the current Covid-19 hospitalisation rate in England as a whole is approximately 1 in 100,000, and falling.
I read elsewhere that the hyperventilation over local lockdowns has now moved on to Birmingham.
I dare say that they are detecting more cases in the city, but I can find no indication as to how many of these are causing people to present in hospitals and thus bringing the NHS under imminent threat of implosion, which was (of course) the original rationale for issuing stay at home instructions. I suspect that the answer is "very few." That's not to say that the issue is totally irrelevant - one just hopes that it doesn't lead to the panic flap crushing of a million people, for the sake of a small cluster of mostly asymptomatic cases in a few streets of crappy terraced housing in one suburb.
For context, the current Covid-19 hospitalisation rate in England as a whole is approximately 1 in 100,000, and falling.
Isn't the idea of the whackamole strategy to do just what is required to squish outbreaks that pop up before they get out of control and threaten to overwhelm the NHS again?
I read elsewhere that the hyperventilation over local lockdowns has now moved on to Birmingham.
I dare say that they are detecting more cases in the city, but I can find no indication as to how many of these are causing people to present in hospitals and thus bringing the NHS under imminent threat of implosion, which was (of course) the original rationale for issuing stay at home instructions. I suspect that the answer is "very few." That's not to say that the issue is totally irrelevant - one just hopes that it doesn't lead to the panic flap crushing of a million people, for the sake of a small cluster of mostly asymptomatic cases in a few streets of crappy terraced housing in one suburb.
For context, the current Covid-19 hospitalisation rate in England as a whole is approximately 1 in 100,000, and falling.
Isn't the idea of the whackamole strategy to do just what is required to squish outbreaks that pop up before they get out of control and threaten to overwhelm the NHS again?
Yes, but enforcement activity needs to be applied judiciously and with proper regard for the evidence. I'm simply concerned that, as the total caseload in the country decreases and the numbers of people sick and dying from the virus decline, so the paranoia surrounding it will rise in inverse proportion, as will the severity of the repression measures. This is because tiny outbreaks will become high profile, and the panic that they might cause the dreaded second wave and undo all the previous hard work will grow more acute.
The logical endpoint of that sort of reasoning may be seen in New Zealand, where the appearance of a small cluster in one suburb led to nearly a third of the country's population being slammed into a tight lockdown and a parliamentary election being put back by a month.
It is reported that the leader of Birmingham city council has been entreating his citizens to pull together to avoid a lockdown of the entire city, and the local police have begun openly to discuss such a thing as well. I merely question the value of this kind of clucking. If the disease were running rampant throughout Birmingham then people would most likely be dropping like flies again; the reality is that it is not. Why, therefore, aren't messages and interventions being properly targeted at the affected locations, as opposed to local officials behaving like some awful hybrid of Lance Corporal Jones and Private Frazer?
On the contrary, it is as simple as one might first have assumed. Most people travelling by land or sea into Europe from the developing world are young men, aged about 18-35, travelling for economic purposes, and it's certainly not unheard of for said young men to pretend to be teenage kids.
Generally speaking, these people are desperate rather than dangerous and are just after an opportunity to make a decent living that may be hard or impossible in the places from which they have travelled. Some will have a target country in mind in which they would like to settle; others will try their luck in various places along the way until they find somebody willing to let them stay, as seems to have happened in this particular case (indeed, one might be moved to ask why it is that he remained free to chance his life on a leaky dinghy paddle to Dover after the French authorities had rejected his asylum claim.) They'll attempt to gain entry and then either disappear into the grey economy, or masquerade as refugees and invent stories about persecution which may or may not contain some kernel of truth.
It's all very sad, but neither the UK nor any other European country has the space to accommodate the hundreds of millions of people in much of the rest of the world for whom life is rather shit. I dare say that the usual suspects will be laying the responsibility for this man's death at the feet of the Government for not rolling out the red carpet to every asylum claimant that rocks up in Calais, but in truth it's in a bind: the genuine refugees and the economic migrants are hard to tell apart, and there is pretty much zero appetite outside of the leafier parts of North London to accommodate any of the latter, which presumably counts for something in a democracy. But I guess we knew that already, didn't we?
I read elsewhere that the hyperventilation over local lockdowns has now moved on to Birmingham.
I dare say that they are detecting more cases in the city, but I can find no indication as to how many of these are causing people to present in hospitals and thus bringing the NHS under imminent threat of implosion, which was (of course) the original rationale for issuing stay at home instructions. I suspect that the answer is "very few." That's not to say that the issue is totally irrelevant - one just hopes that it doesn't lead to the panic flap crushing of a million people, for the sake of a small cluster of mostly asymptomatic cases in a few streets of crappy terraced housing in one suburb.
For context, the current Covid-19 hospitalisation rate in England as a whole is approximately 1 in 100,000, and falling.
Isn't the idea of the whackamole strategy to do just what is required to squish outbreaks that pop up before they get out of control and threaten to overwhelm the NHS again?
Yes, but enforcement activity needs to be applied judiciously and with proper regard for the evidence. I'm simply concerned that, as the total caseload in the country decreases and the numbers of people sick and dying from the virus decline, so the paranoia surrounding it will rise in inverse proportion, as will the severity of the repression measures. This is because tiny outbreaks will become high profile, and the panic that they might cause the dreaded second wave and undo all the previous hard work will grow more acute.
The logical endpoint of that sort of reasoning may be seen in New Zealand, where the appearance of a small cluster in one suburb led to nearly a third of the country's population being slammed into a tight lockdown and a parliamentary election being put back by a month.
It is reported that the leader of Birmingham city council has been entreating his citizens to pull together to avoid a lockdown of the entire city, and the local police have begun openly to discuss such a thing as well. I merely question the value of this kind of clucking. If the disease were running rampant throughout Birmingham then people would most likely be dropping like flies again; the reality is that it is not. Why, therefore, aren't messages and interventions being properly targeted at the affected locations, as opposed to local officials behaving like some awful hybrid of Lance Corporal Jones and Private Frazer?
Well I don't see any evidence that we're being slammed into tighter lockdowns, quite the opposite. Leicester had the first local lockdown and it was genuinely a lockdown. My city now is in a "local lockdown" and to be honest I couldn't tell you much what's changed - we're not supposed to have houseguests essentially but businesses are still trading and pubs are still open. If I wanted to go out for cocktails or a pint I could, during a so-called local lockdown.
It seems to me that yes the Kiwis have essentially used a hammer throughout this pandemic - and as the saying goes when all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. But here in the UK we've been getting more adept and flexible in how we deal with this.
Preferably we surely need to be able to find a way deal with outbreaks without major disruption or closing businesses - before people start 'dropping like flies' which then requires tougher containment action?
I read elsewhere that the hyperventilation over local lockdowns has now moved on to Birmingham.
I dare say that they are detecting more cases in the city, but I can find no indication as to how many of these are causing people to present in hospitals and thus bringing the NHS under imminent threat of implosion, which was (of course) the original rationale for issuing stay at home instructions. I suspect that the answer is "very few." That's not to say that the issue is totally irrelevant - one just hopes that it doesn't lead to the panic flap crushing of a million people, for the sake of a small cluster of mostly asymptomatic cases in a few streets of crappy terraced housing in one suburb.
For context, the current Covid-19 hospitalisation rate in England as a whole is approximately 1 in 100,000, and falling.
Isn't the idea of the whackamole strategy to do just what is required to squish outbreaks that pop up before they get out of control and threaten to overwhelm the NHS again?
Yes, but enforcement activity needs to be applied judiciously and with proper regard for the evidence. I'm simply concerned that, as the total caseload in the country decreases and the numbers of people sick and dying from the virus decline, so the paranoia surrounding it will rise in inverse proportion, as will the severity of the repression measures. This is because tiny outbreaks will become high profile, and the panic that they might cause the dreaded second wave and undo all the previous hard work will grow more acute.
The logical endpoint of that sort of reasoning may be seen in New Zealand, where the appearance of a small cluster in one suburb led to nearly a third of the country's population being slammed into a tight lockdown and a parliamentary election being put back by a month.
It is reported that the leader of Birmingham city council has been entreating his citizens to pull together to avoid a lockdown of the entire city, and the local police have begun openly to discuss such a thing as well. I merely question the value of this kind of clucking. If the disease were running rampant throughout Birmingham then people would most likely be dropping like flies again; the reality is that it is not. Why, therefore, aren't messages and interventions being properly targeted at the affected locations, as opposed to local officials behaving like some awful hybrid of Lance Corporal Jones and Private Frazer?
Well I don't see any evidence that we're being slammed into tighter lockdowns, quite the opposite. Leicester had the first local lockdown and it was genuinely a lockdown. My city now is in a "local lockdown" and to be honest I couldn't tell you much what's changed - we're not supposed to have houseguests essentially but businesses are still trading and pubs are still open. If I wanted to go out for cocktails or a pint I could, during a so-called local lockdown.
It seems to me that yes the Kiwis have essentially used a hammer throughout this pandemic - and as the saying goes when all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. But here in the UK we've been getting more adept and flexible in how we deal with this.
Preferably we surely need to be able to find a way deal with outbreaks without major disruption or closing businesses - before people start 'dropping like flies' which then requires tougher containment action?
Then it seems to me that you and I are essentially in agreement. I just become concerned when I hear talk of lockdowns emanating from a city of the sheer size of Birmingham at the first sign of trouble, that's all.
If, as we are led to believe, local data on infection rates and loci are being promptly supplied to the authorities, then we want them descending on the affected areas or business premises, and controlling the outbreaks at source - rather than resorting to lecturing and scaring the crap out of a wider population in which 99% of those addressed have nothing to do with the problem. We don't want any more Leicesters.
The Torygraph is also reporting tonight that the Covid hospital admission numbers during the peak of the pandemic were over-reported in the same fashion as the deaths - i.e. people who were being admitted for unconnected reasons were being counted as Covid patients if they had ever tested positive for the virus.
One assumes that this is the product of another cock-up by PHE, but it's behind the inevitable paywall so I can't elaborate further - save to note that, as I have mentioned before, hospital per capita admission rates for Covid were broadly similar across the four home nations at the peak of the pandemic, whereas they are now above average in Scotland and Wales and below average in England and Northern Ireland. If the English numbers for the peak of the pandemic were as substantially overcooked as the deaths, then a recomputation might bring the true rates a little closer to those seen presently.
I read elsewhere that the hyperventilation over local lockdowns has now moved on to Birmingham.
I dare say that they are detecting more cases in the city, but I can find no indication as to how many of these are causing people to present in hospitals and thus bringing the NHS under imminent threat of implosion, which was (of course) the original rationale for issuing stay at home instructions. I suspect that the answer is "very few." That's not to say that the issue is totally irrelevant - one just hopes that it doesn't lead to the panic flap crushing of a million people, for the sake of a small cluster of mostly asymptomatic cases in a few streets of crappy terraced housing in one suburb.
For context, the current Covid-19 hospitalisation rate in England as a whole is approximately 1 in 100,000, and falling.
Isn't the idea of the whackamole strategy to do just what is required to squish outbreaks that pop up before they get out of control and threaten to overwhelm the NHS again?
Yes, but enforcement activity needs to be applied judiciously and with proper regard for the evidence. I'm simply concerned that, as the total caseload in the country decreases and the numbers of people sick and dying from the virus decline, so the paranoia surrounding it will rise in inverse proportion, as will the severity of the repression measures. This is because tiny outbreaks will become high profile, and the panic that they might cause the dreaded second wave and undo all the previous hard work will grow more acute.
The logical endpoint of that sort of reasoning may be seen in New Zealand, where the appearance of a small cluster in one suburb led to nearly a third of the country's population being slammed into a tight lockdown and a parliamentary election being put back by a month.
It is reported that the leader of Birmingham city council has been entreating his citizens to pull together to avoid a lockdown of the entire city, and the local police have begun openly to discuss such a thing as well. I merely question the value of this kind of clucking. If the disease were running rampant throughout Birmingham then people would most likely be dropping like flies again; the reality is that it is not. Why, therefore, aren't messages and interventions being properly targeted at the affected locations, as opposed to local officials behaving like some awful hybrid of Lance Corporal Jones and Private Frazer?
Well I don't see any evidence that we're being slammed into tighter lockdowns, quite the opposite. Leicester had the first local lockdown and it was genuinely a lockdown. My city now is in a "local lockdown" and to be honest I couldn't tell you much what's changed - we're not supposed to have houseguests essentially but businesses are still trading and pubs are still open. If I wanted to go out for cocktails or a pint I could, during a so-called local lockdown.
It seems to me that yes the Kiwis have essentially used a hammer throughout this pandemic - and as the saying goes when all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. But here in the UK we've been getting more adept and flexible in how we deal with this.
Preferably we surely need to be able to find a way deal with outbreaks without major disruption or closing businesses - before people start 'dropping like flies' which then requires tougher containment action?
Then it seems to me that you and I are essentially in agreement. I just become concerned when I hear talk of lockdowns emanating from a city of the sheer size of Birmingham at the first sign of trouble, that's all.
If, as we are led to believe, local data on infection rates and loci are being promptly supplied to the authorities, then we want them descending on the affected areas or business premises, and controlling the outbreaks at source - rather than resorting to lecturing and scaring the crap out of a wider population in which 99% of those addressed have nothing to do with the problem. We don't want any more Leicesters.
I agree that's what we want - and from my local experience now this applies to us, I think its what we have.
I know nothing more about it than what we've discussed but I'm hazarding a guess that any Birmingham actions will be more comparable to the Northwest 'lockdown' than the Leicester lockdown.
And Birmingham's a big city - but I wouldn't have thought it was a wider population than the Northwest lockdown that spans from Greater Manchester through East Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire.
The Torygraph is also reporting tonight that the Covid hospital admission numbers during the peak of the pandemic were over-reported in the same fashion as the deaths - i.e. people who were being admitted for unconnected reasons were being counted as Covid patients if they had ever tested positive for the virus.
One assumes that this is the product of another cock-up by PHE, but it's behind the inevitable paywall so I can't elaborate further - save to note that, as I have mentioned before, hospital per capita admission rates for Covid were broadly similar across the four home nations at the peak of the pandemic, whereas they are now above average in Scotland and Wales and below average in England and Northern Ireland. If the English numbers for the peak of the pandemic were as substantially overcooked as the deaths, then a recomputation might bring the true rates a little closer to those seen presently.
I think you can read a small number of Telegraph articles just by registering, without paying anything.
The Torygraph is also reporting tonight that the Covid hospital admission numbers during the peak of the pandemic were over-reported in the same fashion as the deaths - i.e. people who were being admitted for unconnected reasons were being counted as Covid patients if they had ever tested positive for the virus.
One assumes that this is the product of another cock-up by PHE, but it's behind the inevitable paywall so I can't elaborate further - save to note that, as I have mentioned before, hospital per capita admission rates for Covid were broadly similar across the four home nations at the peak of the pandemic, whereas they are now above average in Scotland and Wales and below average in England and Northern Ireland. If the English numbers for the peak of the pandemic were as substantially overcooked as the deaths, then a recomputation might bring the true rates a little closer to those seen presently.
On topic, Steve Bannon appears to have been attempting to maintain his champagne lifestyle after the (financial) support of the Mercers dried up. (He was arrested while enjoying a well earned break on a $35m yacht...)
The allegations involve text messages, shell companies and fake invoices.
You learn something new every day, that's how you know you're still alive.
Today I learnt something really quite remarkable: that there are 'US Postal Service Agents' with powers of arrest. It's one of those new discoveries that opens up more questions than it answers.
USPIS was founded by Benjamin Franklin - I know this just because of an episode of Brooklyn 99 that delved into USPIS revealing such shocking secrets as: yes they actually exist - and yes they actually are Federal Agents.
Yes, the postal inspectorate is one of the oldest federal law enforcement agencies. But pretty much every federal department has Special Agents and/or regular police. Even NASA has Special Agents: every once in a while they bust people for trading in moon rocks.
Most of these police are glorified security guards though, and the same applies at state and city level where most departments have their own police. Sometimes they are specialist, like the NYC Department of Sanitation Police who investigate fly-tipping and other environmental crime. Some sound quite Orwellian, like the New York State Office of Mental Health Police, who are security for the state’s mental hospitals.
Private railroads and universities have police as well, and there’s even the Washington National Cathedral Police. Pretty much every municipality has its own police force too, of course: I am protected by the Village of Sleepy Hollow Police Department, the Town of Mount Pleasant Police Department, the Westchester County Police Department, the Westchester County Sheriff’s Department and the New York State Police, and those agencies could also call on the aid of the !he Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection Police whose officers patrol respectively the commuter rail and water supply aqueducts that run through the area. If I lived a couple of miles further south, I’d also be in the jurisdiction of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department.
I don’t think anyone actually knows how many police forces there are in America, but it must be well in excess of 20,000. For a country that’s supposed to believe in small government, we sure do have a lot of it!
The point is that this a state even the hapless Hilary managed to win (just). If Biden is further ahead than her it really shouldn’t be competitive. But it is. Very.
Biden is, for now, clearly polling quite a bit better than Clinton was. A single poll doesn't change that, however many times HYUFD posts it.
On topic the short answer to TSE's thread question is no.
A look at the list of convicted names gives a clue. Trump supporters believe people like Flynn were set up by the outgoing Obama administration in what they say is a bigger political scandal than Watergate but which the liberal press has ignored (their words). Bannon being arrested, to them, is further proof of this.
And DavidL is right - you have politically-driven DAs who drive cases for political reasons. Which further allows supporters to claim that their side is being persecuted.
Trump supporters sure. But what about the undecideds and the waverers.
] I wonder if we are seeing disproportionately large swings for Biden in states he has no chance of winning while the states he needs to win are much closer.
That is the nightmare scenario for the Dems.
The figures on this page would seem to support that.
Compared to this stage in 2016, Biden is doing 2.1 points better than Clinton overall, but Trump is doing 1.0 points better in the Top Battlegrounds.
Or is it that the polling was way out in some of these states last time and isn't this time? Looking at the 2016 actual results and polling both last time and this time, this seems quite likely, at least in a state like Michigan.
At this point 4 years ago Trump had already been neck and neck with Clinton in the national polling averages, whereas this time he hasn't come close. Biden has stayed above or very close to 50% in the national polling averages, last time Clinton didn't come close.
Of course Trump might still win, but if forced to bet I'd say the value at the current betfair odds is probably on betting against Trump.
You learn something new every day, that's how you know you're still alive.
Today I learnt something really quite remarkable: that there are 'US Postal Service Agents' with powers of arrest. It's one of those new discoveries that opens up more questions than it answers.
USPIS was founded by Benjamin Franklin - I know this just because of an episode of Brooklyn 99 that delved into USPIS revealing such shocking secrets as: yes they actually exist - and yes they actually are Federal Agents.
Yes, the postal inspectorate is one of the oldest federal law enforcement agencies. But pretty much every federal department has Special Agents and/or regular police. Even NASA has Special Agents: every once in a while they bust people for trading in moon rocks.
Most of these police are glorified security guards though, and the same applies at state and city level where most departments have their own police. Sometimes they are specialist, like the NYC Department of Sanitation Police who investigate fly-tipping and other environmental crime. Some sound quite Orwellian, like the New York State Office of Mental Health Police, who are security for the state’s mental hospitals.
Private railroads and universities have police as well, and there’s even the Washington National Cathedral Police. Pretty much every municipality has its own police force too, of course: I am protected by the Village of Sleepy Hollow Police Department, the Town of Mount Pleasant Police Department, the Westchester County Police Department, the Westchester County Sheriff’s Department and the New York State Police, and those agencies could also call on the aid of the !he Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection Police whose officers patrol respectively the commuter rail and water supply aqueducts that run through the area. If I lived a couple of miles further south, I’d also be in the jurisdiction of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department.
I don’t think anyone actually knows how many police forces there are in America, but it must be well in excess of 20,000. For a country that’s supposed to believe in small government, we sure do have a lot of it!
Our post office has its own police force (nowadays an investigation division) with unusual powers too; one that predates the formation of the actual police, since its purpose was to protect the king’s mail against highwaymen.
On the contrary, it is as simple as one might first have assumed. Most people travelling by land or sea into Europe from the developing world are young men, aged about 18-35, travelling for economic purposes, and it's certainly not unheard of for said young men to pretend to be teenage kids.
Generally speaking, these people are desperate rather than dangerous and are just after an opportunity to make a decent living that may be hard or impossible in the places from which they have travelled. Some will have a target country in mind in which they would like to settle; others will try their luck in various places along the way until they find somebody willing to let them stay, as seems to have happened in this particular case (indeed, one might be moved to ask why it is that he remained free to chance his life on a leaky dinghy paddle to Dover after the French authorities had rejected his asylum claim.) They'll attempt to gain entry and then either disappear into the grey economy, or masquerade as refugees and invent stories about persecution which may or may not contain some kernel of truth.
It's all very sad, but neither the UK nor any other European country has the space to accommodate the hundreds of millions of people in much of the rest of the world for whom life is rather shit. I dare say that the usual suspects will be laying the responsibility for this man's death at the feet of the Government for not rolling out the red carpet to every asylum claimant that rocks up in Calais, but in truth it's in a bind: the genuine refugees and the economic migrants are hard to tell apart, and there is pretty much zero appetite outside of the leafier parts of North London to accommodate any of the latter, which presumably counts for something in a democracy. But I guess we knew that already, didn't we?
Comments
You'd have been laughed out of court at Stalingrad, had you said "Hang on a moment, the No Step Back Order violates international law."
Thanks. I'm doing the Peninsular War.
But, you're quite right.
A look at the list of convicted names gives a clue. Trump supporters believe people like Flynn were set up by the outgoing Obama administration in what they say is a bigger political scandal than Watergate but which the liberal press has ignored (their words). Bannon being arrested, to them, is further proof of this.
And DavidL is right - you have politically-driven DAs who drive cases for political reasons. Which further allows supporters to claim that their side is being persecuted.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8648709/PICTURE-EXCLUSIVE-Boris-Johnson-FINALLY-breaks-cover.html
The United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) or the Postal Inspectors, is the law enforcement arm of the Democratic Party. Its jurisdiction is defined as actions that may adversely affect the Democratic Party, the far left or anarchists. The mission of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is to subvert the election to Joe Biden and Far Left Kamala Harris.
I'm tempted to do something Market Garden related.
There's a massive list of them on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the_United_States
Something for everyone there. Guaranteed.
https://rusi.org/commentary/battle-britain-naval-perspective
I assume he once said something juicy about slavery ?
If you want to talk about Operation Sealion. go over to alternatehistory.com - they have a whole series of threads devoted to it and love nothing more than some newbie arguing it was bound to succeed.
The most convincing scenario for a successful German invasion in 1940 I've ever read was in Kenneth Macksey's book "Invasion" written in 1980 which postulates a German invasion in mid-July 1940.
Back to the slightly less insane, a thin gruel of US polling tonight. Biden up four in Pennsylvania (49-45) and Rasmussen, after days of negative approval for Trump (not often posted by a certain poster) showing a +3 positive approval (51-48) but still well out of step with other pollsters.
A Minnesota state poll shows a dead heat at 47 and that's the most likely gain for Trump in this election you would think.
There are other polls being tweeted - one has Trump up 50-43 in Louisiana, a state he won by 20 last time so that's a 6.5% swing to Biden. I wonder if we are seeing disproportionately large swings for Biden in states he has no chance of winning while the states he needs to win are much closer.
https://twitter.com/AliNouriPhD/status/1296483561684512768
https://twitter.com/BrunoBrussels/status/1296562645131235332?s=20
https://twitter.com/laurnorman/status/1296534021103652864?s=20
However time to say good night
Maybe tomorrow we can have a pleasant chat with the Scot nats without declaring war on them
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53512384
The infamous failed algorithm would never have been written in the first place if the teachers could be trusted not to over-inflate their predicted grades. The Education Secretary and his devolved counterparts inevitably stand at the front of the queue for public criticism, but there's still plenty of blame left to go around the rest of the education establishment.
As well as two close-protection guards who are routinely at the Prime Minister's side, he was joined by Miss Symonds, a local guide and an unknown woman who was walking Dilyn. The tourist said: 'It just looked like any other normal family day out.'
Capitulation!
https://www.realclearpolitics.com
Compared to this stage in 2016, Biden is doing 2.1 points better than Clinton overall, but Trump is doing 1.0 points better in the Top Battlegrounds.
I dare say that they are detecting more cases in the city, but I can find no indication as to how many of these are causing people to present in hospitals and thus bringing the NHS under imminent threat of implosion, which was (of course) the original rationale for issuing stay at home instructions. I suspect that the answer is "very few." That's not to say that the issue is totally irrelevant - one just hopes that it doesn't lead to the panic flap crushing of a million people, for the sake of a small cluster of mostly asymptomatic cases in a few streets of crappy terraced housing in one suburb.
For context, the current Covid-19 hospitalisation rate in England as a whole is approximately 1 in 100,000, and falling.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1296546765882232837?s=21
The logical endpoint of that sort of reasoning may be seen in New Zealand, where the appearance of a small cluster in one suburb led to nearly a third of the country's population being slammed into a tight lockdown and a parliamentary election being put back by a month.
It is reported that the leader of Birmingham city council has been entreating his citizens to pull together to avoid a lockdown of the entire city, and the local police have begun openly to discuss such a thing as well. I merely question the value of this kind of clucking. If the disease were running rampant throughout Birmingham then people would most likely be dropping like flies again; the reality is that it is not. Why, therefore, aren't messages and interventions being properly targeted at the affected locations, as opposed to local officials behaving like some awful hybrid of Lance Corporal Jones and Private Frazer?
If Scotland weren't interested in NATO it would probably the first EU air policing mission.
Generally speaking, these people are desperate rather than dangerous and are just after an opportunity to make a decent living that may be hard or impossible in the places from which they have travelled. Some will have a target country in mind in which they would like to settle; others will try their luck in various places along the way until they find somebody willing to let them stay, as seems to have happened in this particular case (indeed, one might be moved to ask why it is that he remained free to chance his life on a leaky dinghy paddle to Dover after the French authorities had rejected his asylum claim.) They'll attempt to gain entry and then either disappear into the grey economy, or masquerade as refugees and invent stories about persecution which may or may not contain some kernel of truth.
It's all very sad, but neither the UK nor any other European country has the space to accommodate the hundreds of millions of people in much of the rest of the world for whom life is rather shit. I dare say that the usual suspects will be laying the responsibility for this man's death at the feet of the Government for not rolling out the red carpet to every asylum claimant that rocks up in Calais, but in truth it's in a bind: the genuine refugees and the economic migrants are hard to tell apart, and there is pretty much zero appetite outside of the leafier parts of North London to accommodate any of the latter, which presumably counts for something in a democracy. But I guess we knew that already, didn't we?
It seems to me that yes the Kiwis have essentially used a hammer throughout this pandemic - and as the saying goes when all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. But here in the UK we've been getting more adept and flexible in how we deal with this.
Preferably we surely need to be able to find a way deal with outbreaks without major disruption or closing businesses - before people start 'dropping like flies' which then requires tougher containment action?
If, as we are led to believe, local data on infection rates and loci are being promptly supplied to the authorities, then we want them descending on the affected areas or business premises, and controlling the outbreaks at source - rather than resorting to lecturing and scaring the crap out of a wider population in which 99% of those addressed have nothing to do with the problem. We don't want any more Leicesters.
One assumes that this is the product of another cock-up by PHE, but it's behind the inevitable paywall so I can't elaborate further - save to note that, as I have mentioned before, hospital per capita admission rates for Covid were broadly similar across the four home nations at the peak of the pandemic, whereas they are now above average in Scotland and Wales and below average in England and Northern Ireland. If the English numbers for the peak of the pandemic were as substantially overcooked as the deaths, then a recomputation might bring the true rates a little closer to those seen presently.
I know nothing more about it than what we've discussed but I'm hazarding a guess that any Birmingham actions will be more comparable to the Northwest 'lockdown' than the Leicester lockdown.
And Birmingham's a big city - but I wouldn't have thought it was a wider population than the Northwest lockdown that spans from Greater Manchester through East Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/uknews/12459291/coronavirus-hospital-admissions-stats-overcount/
The allegations involve text messages, shell companies and fake invoices.
They aren't pretty.
Most of these police are glorified security guards though, and the same applies at state and city level where most departments have their own police. Sometimes they are specialist, like the NYC Department of Sanitation Police who investigate fly-tipping and other environmental crime. Some sound quite Orwellian, like the New York State Office of Mental Health Police, who are security for the state’s mental hospitals.
Private railroads and universities have police as well, and there’s even the Washington National Cathedral Police. Pretty much every municipality has its own police force too, of course: I am protected by the Village of Sleepy Hollow Police Department, the Town of Mount Pleasant Police Department, the Westchester County Police Department, the Westchester County Sheriff’s Department and the New York State Police, and those agencies could also call on the aid of the !he Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection Police whose officers patrol respectively the commuter rail and water supply aqueducts that run through the area. If I lived a couple of miles further south, I’d also be in the jurisdiction of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department.
I don’t think anyone actually knows how many police forces there are in America, but it must be well in excess of 20,000. For a country that’s supposed to believe in small government, we sure do have a lot of it!
Minnesota was close last time.
At this point 4 years ago Trump had already been neck and neck with Clinton in the national polling averages, whereas this time he hasn't come close.
Biden has stayed above or very close to 50% in the national polling averages, last time Clinton didn't come close.
Of course Trump might still win, but if forced to bet I'd say the value at the current betfair odds is probably on betting against Trump.
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