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  • alteregoalterego Posts: 1,100
    Cyclefree said:

    alterego said:

    Ms Cyclefree obviously struggles to fill her day

    What a nasty little remark.

    The header took me an hour to write.

    At the moment I am largely bedridden because I am recuperating from a serious and very nasty infection, which required hospital treatment. So, yes, I am limited in what I can do.

    But I will get better.

    You, on the other hand ......
    Sorry to hear you're unwell and hope you're on the mend. However, the length of header is hardly out of character and there was no personal abuse involved.
  • You do begin to wonder if the Russian goons wouldn't be better, you know, using bullets?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54061370

    I get the feeling this is sending a statement.

    Yes they could use bullets, but by doing it this way its saying "we want you dead - and we want the whole world to know it was us".
  • alterego said:

    Cyclefree said:

    alterego said:

    Ms Cyclefree obviously struggles to fill her day

    What a nasty little remark.

    The header took me an hour to write.

    At the moment I am largely bedridden because I am recuperating from a serious and very nasty infection, which required hospital treatment. So, yes, I am limited in what I can do.

    But I will get better.

    You, on the other hand ......
    Sorry to hear you're unwell and hope you're on the mend. However, the length of header is hardly out of character and there was no personal abuse involved.
    I think you should apologise, I took the post as very rude and objectionable.
  • Incidentally does anyone know when the next actual talks with the EU are?

    If there is to be a compromise, any idea when it will actually happen?
  • On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,464

    There has been a lot of talk about Labour facing a dangerous and uncertain future as a political party. That has tended to obscure the fact that, to all intents and purposes, the Conservative and Unionist party no longer exists.

    The Tory Party is now UKIP-lite.
    Lite?
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486
    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868

    alterego said:

    Cyclefree said:

    alterego said:

    Ms Cyclefree obviously struggles to fill her day

    What a nasty little remark.

    The header took me an hour to write.

    At the moment I am largely bedridden because I am recuperating from a serious and very nasty infection, which required hospital treatment. So, yes, I am limited in what I can do.

    But I will get better.

    You, on the other hand ......
    Sorry to hear you're unwell and hope you're on the mend. However, the length of header is hardly out of character and there was no personal abuse involved.
    I think you should apologise, I took the post as very rude and objectionable.
    As well as fundamentally incorrect, since a succinct header would have taken much longer to write ;)
  • rcs1000 said:

    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    A 'large part of the prime of their lives'.

    This isn't the Second World War. Or Vietnam. The young aren't being asked to march into battle, or to lay their lives down.

    This is a few months of doing more hanging out on Zoom relative to being in the pub. It means that you don't get to go to a nightclub for a bit, or a concert, or to karaoke.

    This is not the prime of your lives being stolen from you. It's you being a bit more careful that normal (for a few extra months) to avoid us having another situation where death rates were 77% higher than normal.
    I can't remember where i heard this discussed, but I remember some expert talking about how considering things in terms of how much a month is worth to an individual. A month to a 90 year old is worth a hell of a lot, as they haven't got many left. A month to an 18 year old isn't worth much, as they have so many years to live.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,605

    There has been a lot of talk about Labour facing a dangerous and uncertain future as a political party. That has tended to obscure the fact that, to all intents and purposes, the Conservative and Unionist party no longer exists.

    The Tory Party is now UKIP-lite.
    The Tory party has always adapted and adopted the best bits of other parties.
    There is nothing good about UKIP
    Hence the Tories are not UKIP, they just nicked any sensible policies UKIP had. As they have brazenly done with other parties for hundreds of years.
    UKIP never had any sensible policies
    The 2017 UKIP manifesto included the following policies:

    - An extra £11bn every year for the NHS and social care by 2022

    - A rise in the threshold for paying income tax to £13,500

    - Cut VAT on household bills

    - Axe tuition fees for science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine

    - Provide up to 100,000 new homes for younger people every year

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40042669
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468
    @Philip_Thompson the Conservative Party won the election and are the legitimate government. They won more than a majority of constituencies. Great. That’s not in dispute.

    Does the Government have majority support for the direction they appear to be going in? Categorically not.

    You may argue that is irrelevant, and you are right - it makes no difference. But you can’t claim that the Government has majority support for this policy because they do not.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    Stocky said:

    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    If I were 18? I`d say go through a lot of tissues.
    Covid or no Covid tbf. :smile:
  • On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
    I prefer to regard it as cowardice.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486

    On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
    There was once a PBer who made daily pronouncements on the superior moral and patriotic case for Hard Brexit from his permanent residence in Queensland.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,464

    rcs1000 said:

    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    A 'large part of the prime of their lives'.

    This isn't the Second World War. Or Vietnam. The young aren't being asked to march into battle, or to lay their lives down.

    This is a few months of doing more hanging out on Zoom relative to being in the pub. It means that you don't get to go to a nightclub for a bit, or a concert, or to karaoke.

    This is not the prime of your lives being stolen from you. It's you being a bit more careful that normal (for a few extra months) to avoid us having another situation where death rates were 77% higher than normal.
    I can't remember where i heard this discussed, but I remember some expert talking about how considering things in terms of how much a month is worth to an individual. A month to a 90 year old is worth a hell of a lot, as they haven't got many left. A month to an 18 year old isn't worth much, as they have so many years to live.
    However, a month ahead to an 18 year old is an eternity. To an 82 year old it's a challenge!
  • ClippPClippP Posts: 1,905

    ClippP said:

    Scott_xP said:
    So only two to one?

    Given the way people act with such hysteria over No Deal you'd think it'd be a landslide the other way not just two to one.
    You were acting yesterday like Brits were behind Johnson and his Brexit plan
    They are. "There is only one poll that matters".

    Johnson won the polls that mattered (the referendum and the election), now he needs to do whatever he thinks is best, subject to Parliamentary approval where appropriate - then be judged or damned in four years time on the results of that.
    Did he get a majority of the vote in 2019? No.

    Therefore you have no ability to say he has majority support for his Brexit plan
    Majority of the vote doesn't matter.

    He got million more votes than any alternative. Therefore Britain has backed him.
    So we must just stand and watch our country's good name being dragged through the mud by someone for whom honesty is a rather attractive flower and not both a public as well as private virtue.
    Sadly yes. Just as many of us had to stand and watch as Tony Blair killed tens of thousands of innocent people in our name in Iraq. It sucks but it is the system. And as Churchill said it is the worst form of Government apart from all the others.
    Agree about Iraq. Actually it's our electoral system that results in what the late Lord Hailsham called 'elective dictatorship'!
    Trouble is that any electoral system will still end up with someone in power who got less than 50% of the popular vote.
    Not if they do not have absolute power. But in practce that means reforming the voting system. Good idea, of course.
    Voting reforms don't mean whoever gets in power got 50% of the vote.
    So their power is limited. This sounds excellent to me. Not more "elected dictatorship". An idea whose time has come, I think.
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 5,005
    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    The same basis applies as the drive to surrender and collaborate in some: If we just let the attacker get on with it, other people will pay the price (not me) and I can retain my way of life, more or less.

  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,605

    Incidentally does anyone know when the next actual talks with the EU are?

    If there is to be a compromise, any idea when it will actually happen?

    Depends if October's current deadline slips into November. That deadline is down to the deal having to be translated into the languages of all the member states. So can they lean on some interpreters to work overtime....
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,167
    edited September 2020
    It seems unclear to many people whether today's posture is a last throw of the ultra-populist dice, also at a dicey time for the PM and seeking to reverse Labour's momentum in the polls, and with serious negotiation to come later in the year, or whether this really does portend a new approach, inevitably culminating in no-deal.

    Either way, as Cyclefree alludes to in the header, the government seems either unaware or cheerfully oblivious to the reputational damage it's strewing along the path to this conclusion.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,210

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    Once again, we have deliberate and wilful ignorance of the longer term health impacts on a significant minority (i.e. 5% or more) of people who catch and recover from CV-19.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/evidence-slowly-building-for-long-term-heart-problems-post-covid-19/
    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30701-5/fulltext
    https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/09/06/utah-coronavirus-patients/
  • @Philip_Thompson the Conservative Party won the election and are the legitimate government. They won more than a majority of constituencies. Great. That’s not in dispute.

    Does the Government have majority support for the direction they appear to be going in? Categorically not.

    You may argue that is irrelevant, and you are right - it makes no difference. But you can’t claim that the Government has majority support for this policy because they do not.

    A majority voted to back Brexit (2016).

    This government was elected to carry out its policies to Get Brexit Done.

    Once that's done, people can cast judgement however they like next time.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,205
    Heard they were masked, good to know Belarus heavies are taking Covid seriously.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468

    @Philip_Thompson the Conservative Party won the election and are the legitimate government. They won more than a majority of constituencies. Great. That’s not in dispute.

    Does the Government have majority support for the direction they appear to be going in? Categorically not.

    You may argue that is irrelevant, and you are right - it makes no difference. But you can’t claim that the Government has majority support for this policy because they do not.

    A majority voted to back Brexit (2016).

    This government was elected to carry out its policies to Get Brexit Done.

    Once that's done, people can cast judgement however they like next time.
    Yes but that’s not what we’re discussing. I’m not disputing the legitimacy of the Government’s actions.

    I’m saying they don’t have majority support for the direction they appear to be going in. It doesn’t make a difference, but you can’t claim otherwise as it’s just a lie.
  • @Philip_Thompson the Conservative Party won the election and are the legitimate government. They won more than a majority of constituencies. Great. That’s not in dispute.

    Does the Government have majority support for the direction they appear to be going in? Categorically not.

    You may argue that is irrelevant, and you are right - it makes no difference. But you can’t claim that the Government has majority support for this policy because they do not.

    A majority voted to back Brexit (2016).

    This government was elected to carry out its policies to Get Brexit Done.

    Once that's done, people can cast judgement however they like next time.
    Answer @Gallowgate's point.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,605

    You do begin to wonder if the Russian goons wouldn't be better, you know, using bullets?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54061370

    I get the feeling this is sending a statement.

    Yes they could use bullets, but by doing it this way its saying "we want you dead - and we want the whole world to know it was us".
    Doesn't it rather send the message "We want you to be very poorly in a foreign hospital, where you will get a level of care that shows how shit our neurotoxins really are...and then have a couple of hundred of our spie - er, cultural attaches - sent back to the Motherland."?
  • On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
    I prefer to regard it as cowardice.
    What? Staying in the UK?

    Ok .....
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,464

    Incidentally does anyone know when the next actual talks with the EU are?

    If there is to be a compromise, any idea when it will actually happen?

    Depends if October's current deadline slips into November. That deadline is down to the deal having to be translated into the languages of all the member states. So can they lean on some interpreters to work overtime....
    Particularly the guys writing in Irish!
  • TOPPING said:

    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    Thinking out loud here:

    The problem is if someone not in a risk group, parties on down, contracts Covid (asymptomatically), goes to work in Asda the following day and infects a colleague who then visits their grandparents and infects them.

    Currently the colleague can go to see their grandparents and must socially distance from them.

    In lockdown your colleague can't go to see their grandparents.

    So theoretically, someone behaving irresponsibly doesn't prevent their colleague from going to see their grandparents as the latter must socially distance from them anyway.

    So then the risk is that they give a care worker the virus on the bus. But isn't social distancing in place on public transport?

    So actually, if everyone follows the rules/guidance/regulations/law people not in a risk group can go out and party.

    But then of course if they are reckless then they are unlikely to be careful of other people/socially distance.

    What have I missed?
    I agree with you. But apparently this social distancing and being vaguely sensible is 'asking the young to give up a large part of their lives'.

    I noticed that the staunch Libertarian Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller fame has attacked those opposing the wearing of masks. His argument is that it is wrong to equate mask wearing with being forced to wear seatbelts - which is a common anti-masker argument in the US apparently. He says that if you don't wear a seatbelt then the most likely victim is not other people but yourself.

    He would rather equate not wearing a mask with drinking and driving. DUI laws are not there primarily to protect the driver, but to protect others who they might hurt whilst under the influence. He believes masks should be viewed in the same light. They are not to protect you, they are to protect others from you. As such they are not so much a right withheld by the government as a responsibility imposed on themselves by a reasonable individual.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,775
    And yet you let someone else publish first! Did the great Lobachevsky teach you nothing!

    (A huge plus for Starmer is his reasonableness. It's politics, so there's a daft amount of bickering, but actually far less so than might be the case under a less reasonable loto.)
  • Rexel56Rexel56 Posts: 807

    Rexel56 said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Good. Maybe they can knock some heads together win von der Leyen and Barnier and the EU can accept the UK's entirely reasonable proposals: have fish settled like Norway, have state aid settled like Canada.

    Then we can put all this behind us and move on with our lives.
    I see your problem. You think a Canada-style deal will make our relationship with the EU only as significant to us as Canada's relationship with the EU is to Canada and we won't have to think about it very much anymore. You're ignoring scale and geography.
    Geography is irrelevant, that is why.
    Seems odd then that “geographic proximity” was explicitly written into the political declaration as a factor...
    In the explicitly not legally binding political declaration?

    Yes it is mentioned as a reason there should be an LPF.

    Canada has an LPF.

    Therefore its not relevant as a difference.
    Paragraph three makes clear that the entire relationship is to be rooted in, among other factors, the geography, ideals and history of a common European heritage... of course this isn’t legally binding, but to suggest that geography isn’t a factor is perverse
  • Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    So 10% can't leave home so that another 10% can go to nightclubs. Does that even work from a pure Utilitarian perspective, never might a moral perspective?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,719
    rcs1000 said:

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    Once again, we have deliberate and wilful ignorance of the longer term health impacts on a significant minority (i.e. 5% or more) of people who catch and recover from CV-19.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/evidence-slowly-building-for-long-term-heart-problems-post-covid-19/
    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30701-5/fulltext
    https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/09/06/utah-coronavirus-patients/
    Also actuarily those with "underlying conditions" often have good life expectancy. The average covid fatality lost 10 years of life in the two studies cited here, hardly on theit last legs.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-kills-people-an-average-of-a-decade-before-their-time-11588424401?redirect=amp#click=https://t.co/Vf5p6CEu4I
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    So you think the right to have a drink and a party with your friends is more important than the safety of your elderly relatives? What a nasty, selfish idea.
    If I had campaigned for Brexit, I could easily see the attraction in demonising the young as a lot of selfish shits who thoroughly deserved what is now very plainly coming their way.
  • It seems unclear to many people whether today's posture is a last throw of the ultra-populist dice, also at a dicey time for the PM and seeking to reverse Labour's momentum in the polls, and with serious negotiation to come later in the year, or whether this really does portend a new approach, inevitably culminating in no-deal.

    Either way, as Cyclefree alludes to in the header, the government seems either unaware or cheerfully oblivious to the reputational damage it's strewing along the path to this conclusion.

    Sadly I think you give too much credit to Boris to be thinking ahead at all. I don't view this as either a posture or a signal, just yet another lazy cock-up.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,107
    edited September 2020

    Is this true or a wind-up?
    twitter.com/BorisJohnson_MP/status/1302997944484978688

    Yes and no. A member of staff has tested positive, and so some classes (as per the protocol) have been asked not to go in for a few days. Unless the situation has changed this morning, when I saw the story, there isn't any evidence that it is beyond this one staff member.
  • ClippP said:

    ClippP said:

    Scott_xP said:
    So only two to one?

    Given the way people act with such hysteria over No Deal you'd think it'd be a landslide the other way not just two to one.
    You were acting yesterday like Brits were behind Johnson and his Brexit plan
    They are. "There is only one poll that matters".

    Johnson won the polls that mattered (the referendum and the election), now he needs to do whatever he thinks is best, subject to Parliamentary approval where appropriate - then be judged or damned in four years time on the results of that.
    Did he get a majority of the vote in 2019? No.

    Therefore you have no ability to say he has majority support for his Brexit plan
    Majority of the vote doesn't matter.

    He got million more votes than any alternative. Therefore Britain has backed him.
    So we must just stand and watch our country's good name being dragged through the mud by someone for whom honesty is a rather attractive flower and not both a public as well as private virtue.
    Sadly yes. Just as many of us had to stand and watch as Tony Blair killed tens of thousands of innocent people in our name in Iraq. It sucks but it is the system. And as Churchill said it is the worst form of Government apart from all the others.
    Agree about Iraq. Actually it's our electoral system that results in what the late Lord Hailsham called 'elective dictatorship'!
    Trouble is that any electoral system will still end up with someone in power who got less than 50% of the popular vote.
    Not if they do not have absolute power. But in practce that means reforming the voting system. Good idea, of course.
    Voting reforms don't mean whoever gets in power got 50% of the vote.
    So their power is limited. This sounds excellent to me. Not more "elected dictatorship". An idea whose time has come, I think.
    Nope you still end up with an 'elected dictatorship'. Basically whoever commands a majority in Parliament is still in a position to do what they want as long as they can take enough MPs with them.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,605
    Why have we not had a thread on this threat to our way of life?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54057512

    Jammie Dodgers AND Wagon Wheels. Boris will never recover from that blow....
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 17,208
    edited September 2020

    It seems unclear to many people whether today's posture is a last throw of the ultra-populist dice, also at a dicey time for the PM and seeking to reverse Labour's momentum in the polls, and with serious negotiation to come later in the year, or whether this really does portend a new approach, inevitably culminating in no-deal.

    Either way, as Cyclefree alludes to in the header, the government seems either unaware or cheerfully oblivious to the reputational damage it's strewing along the path to this conclusion.

    I was trying to think of anything competent that this government has done. Where it has had a clear objective and has executed calmly and efficiently on that objective. I can only think of three things: Nightingale hospitals; furlough; Eat Out to Help Out. The last is a brilliant bit of marketing and not something you would expect governments to get involved in.

    Meanwhile the list of projects that never had proper objectives and were mucked up in some way is long and lengthening.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    @Philip_Thompson the Conservative Party won the election and are the legitimate government. They won more than a majority of constituencies. Great. That’s not in dispute.

    Does the Government have majority support for the direction they appear to be going in? Categorically not.

    You may argue that is irrelevant, and you are right - it makes no difference. But you can’t claim that the Government has majority support for this policy because they do not.

    A majority voted to back Brexit (2016).

    This government was elected to carry out its policies to Get Brexit Done.

    Once that's done, people can cast judgement however they like next time.
    You seem to disagree with HYUFD a lot but there isn't a cigarette paper between you in terms of insanity. If Boris decided to nuke Brussels to Get Brexit Done, he would blithely point to an 80 seat majority and the royal prerogative and you would say that the people can give their cerdict at the ballot box. It has stopped being funny.
  • FF43 said:

    It seems unclear to many people whether today's posture is a last throw of the ultra-populist dice, also at a dicey time for the PM and seeking to reverse Labour's momentum in the polls, and with serious negotiation to come later in the year, or whether this really does portend a new approach, inevitably culminating in no-deal.

    Either way, as Cyclefree alludes to in the header, the government seems either unaware or cheerfully oblivious to the reputational damage it's strewing along the path to this conclusion.

    I was trying to think of anything competent that this government has done. Where it has had a clear objective and has executed calmly and efficiently on that objective. I can only think of three things: Nightingale hospitals; furlough; Eat Out to Help Out. The last is a brilliant bit of marketing and not something you would expect governments to get involved in.

    Meanwhile the list of projects that never had proper objectives and were mucked in some way is long and lengthening.
    The Apprenticeship grant is excellent, its very easy to get and encourages employers to employ young people and get them in training.

    I have been very surprised at the excellence of the Treasuries I.T. abilities during Covid
  • Evening all. It's a bit bad tempered on here tonight.
  • On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
    I prefer to regard it as cowardice.
    That's a bizarre interpretation. People have taken something from her, she has found a way to get it back. Good luck to her, I'd do the same if I could. In a few years maybe I will be able to exercise the same option courtesy of an independent Scotland in the EU.
    Incidentally, we have travelled a long way from the broad sunlit uplands of Brexit. Now it's something that only the brave can endure. No thanks, your project is shit. Those of us who can see it for what it is will protect ourselves and our families however we can.
  • FF43 said:

    It seems unclear to many people whether today's posture is a last throw of the ultra-populist dice, also at a dicey time for the PM and seeking to reverse Labour's momentum in the polls, and with serious negotiation to come later in the year, or whether this really does portend a new approach, inevitably culminating in no-deal.

    Either way, as Cyclefree alludes to in the header, the government seems either unaware or cheerfully oblivious to the reputational damage it's strewing along the path to this conclusion.

    I was trying to think of anything competent that this government has done. Where it has had a clear objective and has executed calmly and efficiently on that objective. I can only think of three things: Nightingale hospitals; furlough; Eat Out to Help Out. The last is a brilliant bit of marketing and not something you would expect governments to get involved in.

    Meanwhile the list of projects that never had proper objectives and were mucked up in some way is long and lengthening.
    Indeed.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    So 10% can't leave home so that another 10% can go to nightclubs. Does that even work from a pure Utilitarian perspective, never might a moral perspective?
    I’m not suggesting reopening nightclubs.

    I support their continued closure.

  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,719
    It does seem to be true:

    https://www.itv.com/news/central/2020-09-07/school-visited-by-boris-johnson-less-than-two-weeks-ago-confirms-coronavirus-case

    Castle Rock is in Coalville, about 12 miles from Leicester in NW Leics District. It is an area with a previously low rate.
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    So 10% can't leave home so that another 10% can go to nightclubs. Does that even work from a pure Utilitarian perspective, never might a moral perspective?
    I’m not suggesting reopening nightclubs.

    I support their continued closure.

    Judging by the people interviewed in Birmingham after the knife attacks the late night bars are open and throbbing so it’s almost as bad.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,107
    edited September 2020
    Foxy said:

    It does seem to be true:

    https://www.itv.com/news/central/2020-09-07/school-visited-by-boris-johnson-less-than-two-weeks-ago-confirms-coronavirus-case

    Castle Rock is in Coalville, about 12 miles from Leicester in NW Leics District. It is an area with a previously low rate.
    The tweet isn't accurate. As per your own link, the school hasn't been closed. A single member of staff has tested positive (and no indication of where they got it) and as per protocol some classes have been asked not to go in today. The school is still open.

    If that is the extent of it, that would sort of validate the approach.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    So 10% can't leave home so that another 10% can go to nightclubs. Does that even work from a pure Utilitarian perspective, never might a moral perspective?
    Straw man argument. The generations looking forward to or at or having recently left university are being deprived to a shocking extent of travel, education, social life and work prospects, not of the chance to go to fcking nightclubs. Do you neither know anyone of that age nor remember what it was like when you were? Or was nightclubs the only thing you did?
  • ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    So you think the right to have a drink and a party with your friends is more important than the safety of your elderly relatives? What a nasty, selfish idea.
    It seems like the lives of others are less important than spending a few months unable to party, for some. Ninety percent of other activities are possible, with a little caution, but a few months not partying makes it a large part of the prime of their lives given up completely, apparently.

    It does look rather an unpleasant and self-centred stance.
    Sorry but this is completely unaware on a site where youngsters are hardly represented if at all. The generation in charge are handing the youth of today an environmental catastrophe, have failed to provide proper exams, expect students to pay tens of thousands of pounds for courses with limited contact teaching time and social activity, then wont provide enough jobs for those that need them. That's before we get onto housing and the demarcation of politics by age, consistently favouring the elderly and against the young.

    Its a period in their lives when lifelong friends are made, marriages formed and the crisis might last several years- denying that social life and partying is important to the countrys sons and daughters is the unpleasant and self centred stance.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,405

    FF43 said:

    It seems unclear to many people whether today's posture is a last throw of the ultra-populist dice, also at a dicey time for the PM and seeking to reverse Labour's momentum in the polls, and with serious negotiation to come later in the year, or whether this really does portend a new approach, inevitably culminating in no-deal.

    Either way, as Cyclefree alludes to in the header, the government seems either unaware or cheerfully oblivious to the reputational damage it's strewing along the path to this conclusion.

    I was trying to think of anything competent that this government has done. Where it has had a clear objective and has executed calmly and efficiently on that objective. I can only think of three things: Nightingale hospitals; furlough; Eat Out to Help Out. The last is a brilliant bit of marketing and not something you would expect governments to get involved in.

    Meanwhile the list of projects that never had proper objectives and were mucked in some way is long and lengthening.
    The Apprenticeship grant is excellent, its very easy to get and encourages employers to employ young people and get them in training.

    I have been very surprised at the excellence of the Treasuries I.T. abilities during Covid
    I'm not the companies doing it know what they are doing and have spent 5 years doing the leg work and rewriting everything to be in a position to do these things quickly.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
    I prefer to regard it as cowardice.
    That's a bizarre interpretation. People have taken something from her, she has found a way to get it back. Good luck to her, I'd do the same if I could. In a few years maybe I will be able to exercise the same option courtesy of an independent Scotland in the EU.
    Incidentally, we have travelled a long way from the broad sunlit uplands of Brexit. Now it's something that only the brave can endure. No thanks, your project is shit. Those of us who can see it for what it is will protect ourselves and our families however we can.
    Bizarre is putting it kindly. Beibheirli_C has been handed the White Feather for shirking the mustard gas, the shelling and the trench feet which Brexit offers to all right thinking Britons. Despite not actually being a Briton anyway. Not the vision of 2016, as far as I remember.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Never fought a llama
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,775
    IshmaelZ said:

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    So 10% can't leave home so that another 10% can go to nightclubs. Does that even work from a pure Utilitarian perspective, never might a moral perspective?
    Straw man argument. The generations looking forward to or at or having recently left university are being deprived to a shocking extent of travel, education, social life and work prospects, not of the chance to go to fcking nightclubs. Do you neither know anyone of that age nor remember what it was like when you were? Or was nightclubs the only thing you did?
    Straw man reply - This has happened before and far more harshly so. WW1 in particular. There's a lot of talk of 'rights', but really we have none. We're born into the world and live in it as we find it.

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,107
    edited September 2020
    Caerphilly county to go under local lockdown

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54057835
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    rcs1000 said:

    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    A 'large part of the prime of their lives'.

    This isn't the Second World War. Or Vietnam. The young aren't being asked to march into battle, or to lay their lives down.

    This is a few months of doing more hanging out on Zoom relative to being in the pub. It means that you don't get to go to a nightclub for a bit, or a concert, or to karaoke.

    This is not the prime of your lives being stolen from you. It's you being a bit more careful that normal (for a few extra months) to avoid us having another situation where death rates were 77% higher than normal.
    I can't remember where i heard this discussed, but I remember some expert talking about how considering things in terms of how much a month is worth to an individual. A month to a 90 year old is worth a hell of a lot, as they haven't got many left. A month to an 18 year old isn't worth much, as they have so many years to live.
    However, a month ahead to an 18 year old is an eternity. To an 82 year old it's a challenge!
    Every month is a gift regardless of age nobody knows what’s around the corner, this pandemic started by bring out the best in most people, it seems to be degenerating into something not terribly nice.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,315

    FF43 said:

    It seems unclear to many people whether today's posture is a last throw of the ultra-populist dice, also at a dicey time for the PM and seeking to reverse Labour's momentum in the polls, and with serious negotiation to come later in the year, or whether this really does portend a new approach, inevitably culminating in no-deal.

    Either way, as Cyclefree alludes to in the header, the government seems either unaware or cheerfully oblivious to the reputational damage it's strewing along the path to this conclusion.

    I was trying to think of anything competent that this government has done. Where it has had a clear objective and has executed calmly and efficiently on that objective. I can only think of three things: Nightingale hospitals; furlough; Eat Out to Help Out. The last is a brilliant bit of marketing and not something you would expect governments to get involved in.

    Meanwhile the list of projects that never had proper objectives and were mucked in some way is long and lengthening.
    The Apprenticeship grant is excellent, its very easy to get and encourages employers to employ young people and get them in training.

    I have been very surprised at the excellence of the Treasuries I.T. abilities during Covid
    Possibly that is because the Treasury has a lot of senior civil servants who lived through and learnt from the 2008/9 financial crisis. So that experience of how to manage in a crisis seems to have stood them in good stead.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,222

    FF43 said:

    FF43 said:

    Scott_xP said:
    So only two to one?

    Given the way people act with such hysteria over No Deal you'd think it'd be a landslide the other way not just two to one.
    You were acting yesterday like Brits were behind Johnson and his Brexit plan
    They are. "There is only one poll that matters".

    Johnson won the polls that mattered (the referendum and the election), now he needs to do whatever he thinks is best, subject to Parliamentary approval where appropriate - then be judged or damned in four years time on the results of that.
    Did he get a majority of the vote in 2019? No.

    Therefore you have no ability to say he has majority support for his Brexit plan
    Majority of the vote doesn't matter.

    He got million more votes than any alternative. Therefore Britain has backed him.
    Then why does YG poll say the majority don't support this proposal?
    Johnson got the plurality of the votes (ie more than anyone else), but only a minority of the total. Essentially Johnson engineered a takeover of the Conservative Party by UKIP/Brexit Party thus consolidating the Leave minority. While the neo-Remain majority is split across several parties. As long as that split stays, Johnson sits pretty.
    As I said above, I believe that splits as soon as Brexit becomes defined.
    I am less sure of that. As long as he can keep his Brexiteer minority together Johnson can safely ignore the majority. At the very least he and advisers believe this to be case.
    This is true. Johnson and his government are going to fuck this country. They’re going to fuck Remainers. They’re going to fuck all the red wallers whose xenophobia the two Leave campaigns so successfully played on.

    They’re going to fuck everyone because they think that out of the ashes they can build the kind of society that gets the right wing tumescent. With the kind of policies that would never win an election.

    They’re going to sorrowfully point at the remains of what was the economy, wiping away their crocodile tears, and cut, cut, cut. Cut taxes, cut the NHS, cut workers’ rights. All the things that these red wallers really, when it comes down to it, care more about then a bit of fucking sovereignty.

    And they’ll be able to say ‘well, this is Brexit, this is what people voted for.’

    People didn’t vote for No Deal, indeed we were told it would be the easiest deal in history, but we know Johnson, Cummings; Farage, etc, etc, don’t give a fuck about normal people. They convinced just enough low information voters that they care, but they don’t really. They know Brexit won’t answer the grievances of the red wallers, of working class people across the country, who lent this government their votes. But it will be too late. It will, at least, please the Tory shires and it will please the government’s hedge fund backers.

    They’ll be happy to wreak havoc now, lose the next election and saddle Labour with the task of dealing with Scottish independence and Irish reunification. Then blame Labour for that collective shit show and eventually regain power and finally get what they’ve always wanted, a spiteful, jingoistic, xenophobic right-wing hell-hole. Small government, low taxes, laissez-faire, fuck anyone who needs income support, who needs the NHS, fuck them all. They don’t deserve it, they’re little people, losers, not like us.

    Little England here we come.
    That`s a very colourful and entertaining post even though I don`t agree with all of it. Nice one.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    Cyclefree said:

    alterego said:

    Ms Cyclefree obviously struggles to fill her day

    What a nasty little remark.

    The header took me an hour to write.

    At the moment I am largely bedridden because I am recuperating from a serious and very nasty infection, which required hospital treatment. So, yes, I am limited in what I can do.

    But I will get better.

    You, on the other hand ......
    This poster seems to get a kick from being unpleasant and rude.

    Get well soon Cyclefree.
    Very good header Cyclefree. Your thoughts are always well-argued and well thought out.

    Get better soon and please continue to contribute, I think it is clear most people like your headers.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,167
    edited September 2020
    The government should have been able to muster enough support for its own deal. The pattern of failure to first agree on and then implement the Tories' own policies on Brexit began in 2016.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,719
    Alistair said:

    Never fought a llama
    Rama Starmer Fa Fa Fa?

    https://youtu.be/Ll5kKCzHii0

    Actually, perhaps he is too square for that theme song. Probably we all are...
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Omnium said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    So 10% can't leave home so that another 10% can go to nightclubs. Does that even work from a pure Utilitarian perspective, never might a moral perspective?
    Straw man argument. The generations looking forward to or at or having recently left university are being deprived to a shocking extent of travel, education, social life and work prospects, not of the chance to go to fcking nightclubs. Do you neither know anyone of that age nor remember what it was like when you were? Or was nightclubs the only thing you did?
    Straw man reply - This has happened before and far more harshly so. WW1 in particular. There's a lot of talk of 'rights', but really we have none. We're born into the world and live in it as we find it.

    Loopy rejoinder, way beyond the straw man class of fallacy. We have two rationally defensible positions - protect the old vs liberate the young - neither of which is remotely comparable with "WW1 in particular," so you can't privilege your choice as saying "it's not as bad as WW1." That's like defending every single action of the government by saying its not as bad as what Pol Pot did, the Cambodians sucked it up and we can too.
  • I don't know if it is true or not, but it sounds plausible and reasonable. If so then there is a logic to the UK's position, but it's wholly mismanaged the messaging.

    It seems to me like someone in the Government thought it might create waves with the EU, or its own backbenchers, to do some sabre-rattling with it which has almost certainly done more harm than good:

    "An official list is being drawn up by a Joint Committee of what goods might end up in the EU by moving through the province and via the Irish republic land border.

    The UK/EU group have been meeting regularly all year to hammer out the list, but the UK fears the list will not be ready by the end of the year.

    If talks collapse Britain wants to be able to decide what goods are exempt from cross-border tariffs that would go up in a No Deal scenario.

    But Brussels will argue they want a level of control to decide if their import taxes apply too.

    A new law will be published this week that sets out Britain’s position - with No10 arguing it had to come this week in order to get through Parliament by December. They denied this move was actually to pressure Brussels into doing a trade deal.

    The official said: “If we don't take these steps we face the prospect of legal confusion at the end of the year and potentially extremely damaging defaults, including tariffs on goods moving from GB to Northern Ireland.

    “We are making minor clarifications in extremely specific areas to ensure that, as we implement the protocol, we are doing so in a way that allows ministers to always uphold and protect the Good Friday peace agreement.”

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/12603257/major-brussels-row-explodes-after-claims-britain-is-planning-to-break-brexit-promises/
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226

    There has been a lot of talk about Labour facing a dangerous and uncertain future as a political party. That has tended to obscure the fact that, to all intents and purposes, the Conservative and Unionist party no longer exists.

    The Tory Party is now UKIP-lite.
    The Tory party has always adapted and adopted the best bits of other parties.
    There is nothing good about UKIP
    Hence the Tories are not UKIP, they just nicked any sensible policies UKIP had. As they have brazenly done with other parties for hundreds of years.
    UKIP never had any sensible policies
    The 2017 UKIP manifesto included the following policies:

    - An extra £11bn every year for the NHS and social care by 2022

    - A rise in the threshold for paying income tax to £13,500

    - Cut VAT on household bills

    - Axe tuition fees for science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine

    - Provide up to 100,000 new homes for younger people every year

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40042669
    Did UKIP think there was a magic money tree?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,719
    IshmaelZ said:

    On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
    I prefer to regard it as cowardice.
    That's a bizarre interpretation. People have taken something from her, she has found a way to get it back. Good luck to her, I'd do the same if I could. In a few years maybe I will be able to exercise the same option courtesy of an independent Scotland in the EU.
    Incidentally, we have travelled a long way from the broad sunlit uplands of Brexit. Now it's something that only the brave can endure. No thanks, your project is shit. Those of us who can see it for what it is will protect ourselves and our families however we can.
    Bizarre is putting it kindly. Beibheirli_C has been handed the White Feather for shirking the mustard gas, the shelling and the trench feet which Brexit offers to all right thinking Britons. Despite not actually being a Briton anyway. Not the vision of 2016, as far as I remember.
    Cowardice is a bizarre accusation.

    If anyone can claim an EU passport it is all upside. Freedoms regained for a trivial financial cost.

    Sadly I am not eligible, though probably eligible for an Aussie one.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    O/T, I posted the link earlier from NBC about many pro-Biden North Carolina voters wanting to see more of him before fully committing to vote. The takeaway I took from that is that his performances in the debates and campaigning in general are going to be important deciding factors in whether people fully commit to him. That is worth bearing in mind from a betting perspective (and for reading the polls).
  • Cyclefree said:

    FF43 said:

    It seems unclear to many people whether today's posture is a last throw of the ultra-populist dice, also at a dicey time for the PM and seeking to reverse Labour's momentum in the polls, and with serious negotiation to come later in the year, or whether this really does portend a new approach, inevitably culminating in no-deal.

    Either way, as Cyclefree alludes to in the header, the government seems either unaware or cheerfully oblivious to the reputational damage it's strewing along the path to this conclusion.

    I was trying to think of anything competent that this government has done. Where it has had a clear objective and has executed calmly and efficiently on that objective. I can only think of three things: Nightingale hospitals; furlough; Eat Out to Help Out. The last is a brilliant bit of marketing and not something you would expect governments to get involved in.

    Meanwhile the list of projects that never had proper objectives and were mucked in some way is long and lengthening.
    The Apprenticeship grant is excellent, its very easy to get and encourages employers to employ young people and get them in training.

    I have been very surprised at the excellence of the Treasuries I.T. abilities during Covid
    Possibly that is because the Treasury has a lot of senior civil servants who lived through and learnt from the 2008/9 financial crisis. So that experience of how to manage in a crisis seems to have stood them in good stead.
    The quality of officials in the Treasury is particularly good. A lot of talent ends up there.

    Very little ends up in Transport and the Home Office. The dire salaries and chopping leadership in both departments plays a part but about one thing I can be sure: calling them useless lazy so-and-sos and beating them over the head with a stick isn't going to drive better performance.
  • The government should have been able to muster enough support for its own deal. The pattern of failure to first agree on and then implement the Tories' own policies on Brexit began in 2016.
    But that is not the point.

    There must be many labour mps and former labour mps who really do regret not passing TM's deal and Gloria is obviously one of them, and she knows the red wall seats
  • The government should have been able to muster enough support for its own deal. The pattern of failure to first agree on and then implement the Tories' own policies on Brexit began in 2016.
    But that is not the point.

    There must be many labour mps and former labour mps who really do regret not passing TM's deal and Gloria is obviously one of them, and she knows the red wall seats
    That's fine, but the primary responsibility is not with them.
  • It really was obvious at the time and I for one really regret TM's deal did not go through
  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,222

    It really was obvious at the time and I for one really regret TM's deal did not go through
    What if it had gone through? Would she still be PM?
  • IanB2 said:

    alterego said:

    Cyclefree said:

    alterego said:

    Ms Cyclefree obviously struggles to fill her day

    What a nasty little remark.

    The header took me an hour to write.

    At the moment I am largely bedridden because I am recuperating from a serious and very nasty infection, which required hospital treatment. So, yes, I am limited in what I can do.

    But I will get better.

    You, on the other hand ......
    Sorry to hear you're unwell and hope you're on the mend. However, the length of header is hardly out of character and there was no personal abuse involved.
    I think you should apologise, I took the post as very rude and objectionable.
    As well as fundamentally incorrect, since a succinct header would have taken much longer to write ;)
    It takes me about 4-5 hours to write a header, in at least two or three drafts over a few days.

    I'm astonished at how David Herdson, Alastair Meeks and Cyclefree can bang such quality out in minutes.
  • The government should have been able to muster enough support for its own deal. The pattern of failure to first agree on and then implement the Tories' own policies on Brexit began in 2016.
    But that is not the point.

    There must be many labour mps and former labour mps who really do regret not passing TM's deal and Gloria is obviously one of them, and she knows the red wall seats
    That's fine, but the primary responsibility is not with them.
    It is part of the collective failure of all the politicians to arrive at a fair compromise
  • On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
    I prefer to regard it as cowardice.
    That's a bizarre interpretation. People have taken something from her, she has found a way to get it back. Good luck to her, I'd do the same if I could. In a few years maybe I will be able to exercise the same option courtesy of an independent Scotland in the EU.
    Incidentally, we have travelled a long way from the broad sunlit uplands of Brexit. Now it's something that only the brave can endure. No thanks, your project is shit. Those of us who can see it for what it is will protect ourselves and our families however we can.
    Not at all. I am still very positive about it. I was merely using the terminology offered by those who have always opposed it and who continue to wallow in their own self fulfilling pit of despair. I pity you.
  • Stocky said:

    It really was obvious at the time and I for one really regret TM's deal did not go through
    What if it had gone through? Would she still be PM?
    Probably
  • It really was obvious at the time and I for one really regret TM's deal did not go through
    Lots of MPs totally misjudged the public mood, thinking their oh so clever delaying tactics were awesome because all the FBPE mob were all cheering them to the rafters.
  • I'm also getting the comment thread cut-off mid-thread thingy with no "show more comments" button available..

    I can only see them all through vanilla forums at present.
  • The government should have been able to muster enough support for its own deal. The pattern of failure to first agree on and then implement the Tories' own policies on Brexit began in 2016.
    But that is not the point.

    There must be many labour mps and former labour mps who really do regret not passing TM's deal and Gloria is obviously one of them, and she knows the red wall seats
    That's fine, but the primary responsibility is not with them.
    It is part of the collective failure of all the politicians to arrive at a fair compromise
    Yes, but the government that proposed the whole project has the primary responsibility to see that it's carried through to an adequate conclusion.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468
    In addition to my infected wound, my GP thinks its best I have another COVID test as I have a mild fever and a sore throat and generally feel sh*t. Fingers crossed its just “some other” virus.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    So you think the right to have a drink and a party with your friends is more important than the safety of your elderly relatives? What a nasty, selfish idea.
    If I had campaigned for Brexit, I could easily see the attraction in demonising the young as a lot of selfish shits who thoroughly deserved what is now very plainly coming their way.
    To continue your analogy then, yes, if the young choose to put the lives and will being of their families in mortal danger so they can continue to party without regret then yes they are a load of selfish shits. And ignorant as well which is why they probably did vote Remain.
  • The government should have been able to muster enough support for its own deal. The pattern of failure to first agree on and then implement the Tories' own policies on Brexit began in 2016.
    But that is not the point.

    There must be many labour mps and former labour mps who really do regret not passing TM's deal and Gloria is obviously one of them, and she knows the red wall seats
    That's fine, but the primary responsibility is not with them.
    It is part of the collective failure of all the politicians to arrive at a fair compromise
    Yes, but the government that proposed the whole project has the primary responsibility to see that it's carried through to an adequate conclusion.
    It was not possible without some labour mps to pass the deal and it was there for the acceptance

    It is no use trying to deflect from the point Gloria is making that this could have been resolved and much like a deal Starmer would agree to today

    Still you cannot cry over spilt milk
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,167
    edited September 2020

    It really was obvious at the time and I for one really regret TM's deal did not go through
    Lots of MPs totally misjudged the public mood, thinking their oh so clever delaying tactics were awesome because all the FBPE mob were all cheering them to the rafters.
    The pernennial issue is that all of this should and would have been irrelevant had the May - and indeed Cameron - government been organised and able enough to complete its own objectives. One or two referenda, hard, soft, no-deal Brexit, fully none of these are originally Labour ideas.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    So 10% can't leave home so that another 10% can go to nightclubs. Does that even work from a pure Utilitarian perspective, never might a moral perspective?
    Straw man argument. The generations looking forward to or at or having recently left university are being deprived to a shocking extent of travel, education, social life and work prospects, not of the chance to go to fcking nightclubs. Do you neither know anyone of that age nor remember what it was like when you were? Or was nightclubs the only thing you did?
    Bollocks are they. They still have the right to education, travel a social life and work prospects. The worst that can be said is that they have to wear a mask on occasion. Fucking grow up.
  • In addition to my infected wound, my GP thinks its best I have another COVID test as I have a mild fever and a sore throat and generally feel sh*t. Fingers crossed its just “some other” virus.

    I really hope you recover soon.

    All the best
  • On Topic:

    Since we cannot trust anything the Govt says - since we have no idea what is posturing and what is actual intention - then all we can do is let it play out until we get to 1st Jan 2021. After that, the reality of Brexit will be there for all to see. Only then can we really judge.

    I expect there to be a loud burst of jingoist rah-rah on New Year's Eve followed by a wake up call over the first few weeks.

    I am not expecting it to be pleasant.

    You never have.

    But you seem rather more rattled than when you were going rah-rah, waving your Irish passport in the faces of those less fortunate....
    "Less fortunate"? Like Brexit was bad luck?

    Those you support manufactured this f*ck-up to save the Tory Party from Farage. I did not bother getting the passport until the Brexiteers rubbed my nose in the sh*t they made and told me to suck it up because they won.
    Funny because I distinctly remember you 'rubbing our noses' in the fact you could get an Irish passport well before the referendum. As it happens I could have got an Irish passport as well. Still could. I wouldn't because even if I thought Brexit were going to be a disaster - which I don't - I also don't believe in running away when things get a little difficult.
    Running away? I am still in the UK unlike many of the Leavers who regale us with the wonders of Brexit from their foreign bunkers.

    What I did is make sure that Cummings's pet project cannot deprive me of something that is important to me. I grant that it is sheer luck in the birthright lottery but it is what it is.
    I prefer to regard it as cowardice.
    That's a bizarre interpretation. People have taken something from her, she has found a way to get it back. Good luck to her, I'd do the same if I could. In a few years maybe I will be able to exercise the same option courtesy of an independent Scotland in the EU.
    Incidentally, we have travelled a long way from the broad sunlit uplands of Brexit. Now it's something that only the brave can endure. No thanks, your project is shit. Those of us who can see it for what it is will protect ourselves and our families however we can.
    Not at all. I am still very positive about it. I was merely using the terminology offered by those who have always opposed it and who continue to wallow in their own self fulfilling pit of despair. I pity you.
    You are very kind but I really have too great a life to be worthy of your pity.
  • The government should have been able to muster enough support for its own deal. The pattern of failure to first agree on and then implement the Tories' own policies on Brexit began in 2016.
    But that is not the point.

    There must be many labour mps and former labour mps who really do regret not passing TM's deal and Gloria is obviously one of them, and she knows the red wall seats
    That's fine, but the primary responsibility is not with them.
    It is part of the collective failure of all the politicians to arrive at a fair compromise
    Yes, but the government that proposed the whole project has the primary responsibility to see that it's carried through to an adequate conclusion.
    It was not possible without some labour mps to pass the deal and it was there for the acceptance

    That's the government's own fault. The primary responsibility for any form of Brexit cannot be shifted, I'm afraid.

  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,468

    IshmaelZ said:

    ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    So you think the right to have a drink and a party with your friends is more important than the safety of your elderly relatives? What a nasty, selfish idea.
    If I had campaigned for Brexit, I could easily see the attraction in demonising the young as a lot of selfish shits who thoroughly deserved what is now very plainly coming their way.
    To continue your analogy then, yes, if the young choose to put the lives and will being of their families in mortal danger so they can continue to party without regret then yes they are a load of selfish shits. And ignorant as well which is why they probably did vote Remain.
    Young people have an invincibility complex. It’s part and parcel of being young. Since the dawn of time. 🤷‍♂️
  • Thank you. I feel much better for that. Like when you’ve had a good dump.

    Hope I’m wrong like but I can see it happening.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    IshmaelZ said:

    Once again we seem to have slid back into covid moralisation, a PB favourite.

    Over-70s with comorbidities are a small minority of the population and can and should be shielded.

    Or does PB suggest we lock down everyone, regardless of their risk profile, in case they come into close contact with a high-risk person who should be shielding?

    That seems to me to be looking down the telescope from the wrong end.

    So 10% can't leave home so that another 10% can go to nightclubs. Does that even work from a pure Utilitarian perspective, never might a moral perspective?
    Straw man argument. The generations looking forward to or at or having recently left university are being deprived to a shocking extent of travel, education, social life and work prospects, not of the chance to go to fcking nightclubs. Do you neither know anyone of that age nor remember what it was like when you were? Or was nightclubs the only thing you did?
    I do think there's too much equating of young people with nightclubs. My big nightclub phase was mid 30s. That's when I both felt the pull and had the necessary.
  • ukpaul said:

    alterego said:

    Pulpstar said:

    RobD said:

    Cases really picking up now. I wonder why this wasn't seen in the ONS surveys. Maybe it's a case of more intense but localised clusters, which I would guess are more difficult to pick up via random sampling.
    How many of those cases are sick?
    Its seems half (I am obviously being slightly hyperbolic) the premier league footballers have it on return from their holidays and only being picked up because they are all being tested e.g. two Man City players today.

    Letting everybody go on a foreign summer holiday in August seems a particular idiotic move, along with the ever changing (it has just changed again) series of "air-bridge" countries.
    People do seem particularly able to pick it up on foreign trips even if the prevalence is similiar in their holiday country. I guess interactions are upped compared to staying at home.
    Maybe airports are festering plague pits. Maybe Johnny Foreigner has far greater use of aircon than if staying at home.

    Or maybe too many people get pissed on holiday and enter a "I don't give a shit" phase of denial about the risks?

    Covid-19 just LOVES people consuming alcohol.
    The risks from Covid are minuscule for most people though, so it's more people being emboldened to the reality rather than a "denial of the risks".

    Yes, I know the risks to some groups are very high – but these people are a tiny minority of the population.
    So that's okay then? Let's all party and fuck those poor sods who die as a consequence.
    Building a nation of granny/grandad killers. I think a fair number won't care but surely that realisation is going to stop reckless behaviour in schools, universities, clubs, parties? Would I have cared when I was young? Actually, I'm not sure, especially if peer pressure was affecting group dynamics. Doing dangerous stupid stuff is par for the course, just that now that the consequences hit not you with a killer hangover and no clothes but someone you've probably never met struggling to breathe and with scarred lungs/heart.
    Or your own parents and grandparents.
    What we are asking the young to do is give up a large part of the prime of their lives. Imagine being 18 in March 2020. What have you been able to do?
    So you think the right to have a drink and a party with your friends is more important than the safety of your elderly relatives? What a nasty, selfish idea.
    It seems like the lives of others are less important than spending a few months unable to party, for some. Ninety percent of other activities are possible, with a little caution, but a few months not partying makes it a large part of the prime of their lives given up completely, apparently.

    It does look rather an unpleasant and self-centred stance.
    Sorry but this is completely unaware on a site where youngsters are hardly represented if at all. The generation in charge are handing the youth of today an environmental catastrophe, have failed to provide proper exams, expect students to pay tens of thousands of pounds for courses with limited contact teaching time and social activity, then wont provide enough jobs for those that need them. That's before we get onto housing and the demarcation of politics by age, consistently favouring the elderly and against the young.

    Its a period in their lives when lifelong friends are made, marriages formed and the crisis might last several years- denying that social life and partying is important to the countrys sons and daughters is the unpleasant and self centred stance.
    Between 1949 and 1963 any man between 18 and 21 had to do 18 months to 2 years National Service. So far the youth of today have been asked to do 6 months of sitting on their backsides.
  • Evening all. It's a bit bad tempered on here tonight.

    You should have been here 3 or 4 years ago. This is polite.
This discussion has been closed.