I've never understood how those on the left were simultaneously against the Vietnam war and also critical of the young people who refused to fight in it.
Because if called up, you do your duty to your country, even if you think your country is making a mistake.
Pizza Express Sultana Pizza? I used to enjoy their Romana pizza. At the Leadenhall Market branch. When my old mate was a city lawyer and I had to visit that London every other week for business. Now he works in Henley and mostly at home, and I haven't been to that London this year.
I may have found a worse topping on pizza than pineapple.
Sultanas!
S-U-L-T-A-N-A-S.
Fecking sultanas, the world has gone mad.
Just think of it as Peshwari naan and eat it with curry. The problem with pizza is not the toppings, it's the pizza. Bread for people who find breadmaking too difficult.
That's not true of proper Naples or Rome pizzas. The ones which have a base like bad bread (i.e. any pizza in the US, and nearly all here) are not doing it right.
The best pizza I have ever eaten was Keste in New York. Owned by a immigrant from Naples with the pizza oven shipped over.
I can well believe that.
Nah. The best pizza in the world - cliche of cliches - comes from its birthplace, the backstreets of old Naples. Maybe the Spanish Quarters, maybe by the station, with the hookers.
Anyway, watch where the locals queue for their evening pizza. Join the queue. It will move quickly. If it is the real deal it will come wrapped in a cone, in paper, and be just dough, plain tomato, local mozarrella, fresh basil, and scalding hot.
Let it cool for a few minutes, wander to the nearest piazza. Eat with a friend and a shared bottle of Campanian red on the steps of a crumbling Baroque fountain. Sublimity.
Naples certainly has its charms. I remember being propositioned by a whore having just come off the ferry from Capri, having walked from Capri to Anacapri. I was footsore, tired and dusty. She was nothing to write home about either.
I was slightly disappointed by Neapolitan pizza, although I admit I didn't try the street food variety. I recall my best meal was a pile of lamb chops washed down with the house red. There are some brilliant local red wine varieties we never see in the UK.
The worst pizza I recall having ever eaten was in Ravenna. Which makes sense when you accept that Italian food is regional. It was worth it for the Byzantine mosaics, though.
You've obviously never ordered a pizza in the land of Freeeeeeeeeeeedom.
I was served a deep fried pizza base (plus toppings) by a takeaway in Invereray once. As I'd been on a hill all day I managed to eat half, but I really can't recommend it unless you like greasy cardboard.
It didn't actually specify fried on the menu. I suppose that was just assumed.
I was organising a conference in Edinburgh once. I still remember hearing how one of the Italian students had gone into a fish and chips place, pointed at the pizza in the warming cabinet, and watched astounded as it was folded in half, dipped in batter,and plunged into boiling oil ...
The thing that I don't get is that the existence of such an option must mean some people actually order deep fried pizza deliberately. Who are they?
Did the student manage to survive without PTSD?
The locals. The local version of calzone, to be fair. (But the Mars Bar option is a tourist thing, like tourist tat art in innumerable locations worldwide.)
Edit: they deep fry Scotch Pies [mutton pies in water crust pastry] to warm them up. Ditto white pudding, black pudding, etc.
The student evidently found it a memorable experience, but I hope it was not quite as bad as PTSD,
Battered deep fried haggis is something else. I rather enjoyed it in Newcastle as a student, but I can no longer understand why.
My planned move from Teesside to Aberdeenshire swaps a Parmo for a (battered) Haggis supper. I only live in classy places me...
I've never understood how those on the left were simultaneously against the Vietnam war and also critical of the young people who refused to fight in it.
Because if called up, you do your duty to your country, even if you think your country is making a mistake.
There is a principled way to refuse, as Casius Clay did, and an unprincipled way to refuse, as Donald Trump did.
It's the biggest job in tech. So why can't they find anyone to do it?
An exciting new vacancy has opened up that will likely tempt some IT leaders into freshening up their CV: the UK is recruiting a Government Chief Digital Officer (GCDO), who will be working at the highest levels of the Cabinet Office to lead the digital transformation of public services in the country. All of this and more, for £200,000 a year
£200,000 is a lot of money, but people who could do that job likely earn more for a lot less hassle.
The problem is the government's digital strategy is like its Brexit strategy. Everyone agrees on the name but beyond that there is no consensus. We've already had government cloud, gov.uk. What's the next step? Either it will be another failed NHS project or it will run smack into data privacy concerns, or it will be necessarily more limited.
I was reading last week about the Welsh Government's successes here but really they amounted to setting up the .wales domain; moving their web sites to the cloud; and giving all their staff new laptops. All very laudable but it's not Skynet.
And because we are naive, we will end up paying a lot of money to American cloud companies, whereas the American government, and most others, limits their support to homegrown companies.
Here's a plan for the Scottish Government. Open two datacentres somewhere cold up north, to save on cooling costs which are where the money goes these days. Set up a company to run Scot Cloud, and mandate that all Scotland's government and local government sites must be hosted there. Then open it up to the private sector and hey presto, one of those billion dollar tech companies Dominic Cummings is so keen on.
I imagine it will go to some Oxford-educated crony who talks a good game on data lakes but in five years time, not much will have happened.
I may have found a worse topping on pizza than pineapple.
Sultanas!
S-U-L-T-A-N-A-S.
Fecking sultanas, the world has gone mad.
Just think of it as Peshwari naan and eat it with curry. The problem with pizza is not the toppings, it's the pizza. Bread for people who find breadmaking too difficult.
That's not true of proper Naples or Rome pizzas. The ones which have a base like bad bread (i.e. any pizza in the US, and nearly all here) are not doing it right.
The best pizza I have ever eaten was Keste in New York. Owned by a immigrant from Naples with the pizza oven shipped over.
I can well believe that.
Nah. The best pizza in the world - cliche of cliches - comes from its birthplace, the backstreets of old Naples. Maybe the Spanish Quarters, maybe by the station, with the hookers.
Anyway, watch where the locals queue for their evening pizza. Join the queue. It will move quickly. If it is the real deal it will come wrapped in a cone, in paper, and be just dough, plain tomato, local mozarrella, fresh basil, and scalding hot.
Let it cool for a few minutes, wander to the nearest piazza. Eat with a friend and a shared bottle of Campanian red on the steps of a crumbling Baroque fountain. Sublimity.
Naples certainly has its charms. I remember being propositioned by a whore having just come off the ferry from Capri, having walked from Capri to Anacapri. I was footsore, tired and dusty. She was nothing to write home about either.
I was slightly disappointed by Neapolitan pizza, although I admit I didn't try the street food variety. I recall my best meal was a pile of lamb chops washed down with the house red. There are some brilliant local red wine varieties we never see in the UK.
The worst pizza I recall having ever eaten was in Ravenna. Which makes sense when you accept that Italian food is regional. It was worth it for the Byzantine mosaics, though.
You've obviously never ordered a pizza in the land of Freeeeeeeeeeeedom.
I was served a deep fried pizza base (plus toppings) by a takeaway in Invereray once. As I'd been on a hill all day I managed to eat half, but I really can't recommend it unless you like greasy cardboard.
It didn't actually specify fried on the menu. I suppose that was just assumed.
I was organising a conference in Edinburgh once. I still remember hearing how one of the Italian students had gone into a fish and chips place, pointed at the pizza in the warming cabinet, and watched astounded as it was folded in half, dipped in batter,and plunged into boiling oil ...
The thing that I don't get is that the existence of such an option must mean some people actually order deep fried pizza deliberately. Who are they?
Did the student manage to survive without PTSD?
The locals. The local version of calzone, to be fair. (But the Mars Bar option is a tourist thing, like tourist tat art in innumerable locations worldwide.)
Edit: they deep fry Scotch Pies [mutton pies in water crust pastry] to warm them up. Ditto white pudding, black pudding, etc.
The student evidently found it a memorable experience, but I hope it was not quite as bad as PTSD,
Battered deep fried haggis is something else. I rather enjoyed it in Newcastle as a student, but I can no longer understand why.
Because it is actually rather nice, especially after 6 pints of local ale.
Labour will be voting against the second reading of the “ breaking international law bill”. Let the Tories own their trashing of what’s left of the UKs reputation.
Yes but he didn't read his deal. Yes I know that he fought an election to support his deal. But as he didn't read it and doesn't understand it all these Tory grandees criticising him are bang out of order - its not his fault that they have a brain and he does not.
Labour will be voting against the second reading of the “ breaking international law bill”. Let the Tories own their trashing of what’s left of the UKs reputation.
I've never understood how those on the left were simultaneously against the Vietnam war and also critical of the young people who refused to fight in it.
Because if called up, you do your duty to your country, even if you think your country is making a mistake.
Here's a plan for the Scottish Government. Open two datacentres somewhere cold up north, to save on cooling costs which are where the money goes these days. Set up a company to run Scot Cloud, and mandate that all Scotland's government and local government sites must be hosted there. Then open it up to the private sector and hey presto, one of those billion dollar tech companies Dominic Cummings is so keen on.
Doing it in Scotland as you suggest wouldn't magically make it a success. The problem is really quite simple if you know how to do this sort of thing you can have a lot more fun, earn a lot more, and have a lot less hassle doing if for Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. The odds on a government run cloud attracting private customers on its own merits are essentially nil. If you had that sort of talent it would get poached.
Think of it like this. Could the goverment set up a state-run Premier League football club on the cheap? No, if the players and management were any good they'd be signed up by City, United, Liverpool and the like quicker than you could count to ten.
Here's a plan for the Scottish Government. Open two datacentres somewhere cold up north, to save on cooling costs which are where the money goes these days. Set up a company to run Scot Cloud, and mandate that all Scotland's government and local government sites must be hosted there. Then open it up to the private sector and hey presto, one of those billion dollar tech companies Dominic Cummings is so keen on.
Doing it in Scotland as you suggest wouldn't magically make it a success. The problem is really quite simple if you know how to do this sort of thing you can have a lot more fun, earn a lot more, and have a lot less hassle doing if for Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. The odds on a government run cloud attracting private customers on its own merits are essentially nil. If you had that sort of talent it would get poached.
Think of it like this. Could the goverment set up a state-run Premier League football club on the cheap? No, if the players and management were any good they'd be signed up by City, United, Liverpool and the like quicker than you could count to ten.
"His Instagram account shows him lying in a pool with three girls and another clip shows him having champagne poured down a girl into his mouth on a party boat."
Labour will be voting against the second reading of the “ breaking international law bill”. Let the Tories own their trashing of what’s left of the UKs reputation.
That's good to hear. Any link?
If you go to the order paper for the Commons for Monday they’ve tabled an amendment . Declining support and the reasons why.
Labour will be voting against the second reading of the “ breaking international law bill”. Let the Tories own their trashing of what’s left of the UKs reputation.
That's good to hear. Any link?
If you go to the order paper for the Commons for Monday they’ve tabled an amendment . Declining support and the reasons why.
I may have found a worse topping on pizza than pineapple.
Sultanas!
S-U-L-T-A-N-A-S.
Fecking sultanas, the world has gone mad.
Just think of it as Peshwari naan and eat it with curry. The problem with pizza is not the toppings, it's the pizza. Bread for people who find breadmaking too difficult.
That's not true of proper Naples or Rome pizzas. The ones which have a base like bad bread (i.e. any pizza in the US, and nearly all here) are not doing it right.
The best pizza I have ever eaten was Keste in New York. Owned by a immigrant from Naples with the pizza oven shipped over.
I can well believe that.
Nah. The best pizza in the world - cliche of cliches - comes from its birthplace, the backstreets of old Naples. Maybe the Spanish Quarters, maybe by the station, with the hookers.
Anyway, watch where the locals queue for their evening pizza. Join the queue. It will move quickly. If it is the real deal it will come wrapped in a cone, in paper, and be just dough, plain tomato, local mozarrella, fresh basil, and scalding hot.
Let it cool for a few minutes, wander to the nearest piazza. Eat with a friend and a shared bottle of Campanian red on the steps of a crumbling Baroque fountain. Sublimity.
Naples certainly has its charms. I remember being propositioned by a whore having just come off the ferry from Capri, having walked from Capri to Anacapri. I was footsore, tired and dusty. She was nothing to write home about either.
I was slightly disappointed by Neapolitan pizza, although I admit I didn't try the street food variety. I recall my best meal was a pile of lamb chops washed down with the house red. There are some brilliant local red wine varieties we never see in the UK.
The worst pizza I recall having ever eaten was in Ravenna. Which makes sense when you accept that Italian food is regional. It was worth it for the Byzantine mosaics, though.
You've obviously never ordered a pizza in the land of Freeeeeeeeeeeedom.
I was served a deep fried pizza base (plus toppings) by a takeaway in Invereray once. As I'd been on a hill all day I managed to eat half, but I really can't recommend it unless you like greasy cardboard.
It didn't actually specify fried on the menu. I suppose that was just assumed.
I was organising a conference in Edinburgh once. I still remember hearing how one of the Italian students had gone into a fish and chips place, pointed at the pizza in the warming cabinet, and watched astounded as it was folded in half, dipped in batter,and plunged into boiling oil ...
The thing that I don't get is that the existence of such an option must mean some people actually order deep fried pizza deliberately. Who are they?
Did the student manage to survive without PTSD?
The locals. The local version of calzone, to be fair. (But the Mars Bar option is a tourist thing, like tourist tat art in innumerable locations worldwide.)
Edit: they deep fry Scotch Pies [mutton pies in water crust pastry] to warm them up. Ditto white pudding, black pudding, etc.
The student evidently found it a memorable experience, but I hope it was not quite as bad as PTSD,
Battered deep fried haggis is something else. I rather enjoyed it in Newcastle as a student, but I can no longer understand why.
Because it is actually rather nice, especially after 6 pints of local ale.
Has anyone passed such a non-negative assessment without the 6 pints of ale?
Only, a gay former colleague used to say the difference between a straight guy and a gay guy was six pints.
In per capita terms France is seeing almost double the number of new cases per day vs the US and with a much, much less rigorous testing regime with far fewer tests per day per capita. Where is the media outrage at Macron for fucking it up so badly, why wasn't the French government prepared for the second wave, what steps are they taking to get to 1m tests per day, what policies does France have wrt schools, universities and socialising? I know about ours, of course but I also know about most of the US just from reading our own media.
There is a serious lack of scrutiny of left wing government responses to the virus, apparently cuddly lefties can't be bad at these things, only baby eating right wingers are evil and let everyone die of it.
Weirdly the same lack of outrage of Macron buddying up to Trump even more than Boris, rolling out the biggest of big red carpets....When he does it, it is all about international diplomacy, when Boris does it, it is because he loves everything about the Donald.
There is just zero coverage of French politics compared to US politics full stop.
People here know about also rans (barely-rans more like) in the contest to become the opposition party presidential candidate for an election months away, but who is the current French prime minister?
No one cares who the French PM is, it's like asking who the senate leader is in the US. Everyone knows Macron and the excuses that the British media don't have any French speakers is laughable. The fact of the matter is that the media outrage will never exist for virtuous nations, it will only be for evil ones like the UK (and US) despite France and Macron having as crap a time of it as the UK and Boris.
So you're outraged that the UK media is more outraged about the pandemic in the UK than in France? I'm bloody furious we don't get 25 minutes a day on Ecuador.
You should - Ecuador (and Brazil) are likely to overtake our death rate per capita within days. Chile and Bolivia have already done so within the last 24 hours.
Oh good let’s have a few third world countries go out of control so we can drop down the league table, sick
So OK to say the UK is worst in the world/europe, but not okay to say the same of other countries?
I just think it’s sick to make it appear like a contest.
Then you won't like reading the many commenters on here who do it on a daily basis. I suspect we even have thread headers who do it though I've long since stopped reading them.
I believe you both live in Spain? Coincidentally. *checks Spain worldometer ratings*
Actually the rankings are an incredibly valuable monitor of how well a country's leaders are dealing with the situation. They are of course flawed in all kinds of ways but they are not produced by the government. When you are told by the government that it is world-beating it is valuable to know that what it is world-beating at is deaths per million, Spain and Belgium excepted.
Not sure of your point but none of the statistics shown in worldometer, etc are reliable as each country is counting the data differently. A pro government article in Spain recently estimated the Spanish death toll was around 20,000 + higher than the official figure. The figures produced therefore really are pretty well those provided by governments.
I may have found a worse topping on pizza than pineapple.
Sultanas!
S-U-L-T-A-N-A-S.
Fecking sultanas, the world has gone mad.
Just think of it as Peshwari naan and eat it with curry. The problem with pizza is not the toppings, it's the pizza. Bread for people who find breadmaking too difficult.
That's not true of proper Naples or Rome pizzas. The ones which have a base like bad bread (i.e. any pizza in the US, and nearly all here) are not doing it right.
The best pizza I have ever eaten was Keste in New York. Owned by a immigrant from Naples with the pizza oven shipped over.
I can well believe that.
Nah. The best pizza in the world - cliche of cliches - comes from its birthplace, the backstreets of old Naples. Maybe the Spanish Quarters, maybe by the station, with the hookers.
Anyway, watch where the locals queue for their evening pizza. Join the queue. It will move quickly. If it is the real deal it will come wrapped in a cone, in paper, and be just dough, plain tomato, local mozarrella, fresh basil, and scalding hot.
Let it cool for a few minutes, wander to the nearest piazza. Eat with a friend and a shared bottle of Campanian red on the steps of a crumbling Baroque fountain. Sublimity.
Naples certainly has its charms. I remember being propositioned by a whore having just come off the ferry from Capri, having walked from Capri to Anacapri. I was footsore, tired and dusty. She was nothing to write home about either.
I was slightly disappointed by Neapolitan pizza, although I admit I didn't try the street food variety. I recall my best meal was a pile of lamb chops washed down with the house red. There are some brilliant local red wine varieties we never see in the UK.
The worst pizza I recall having ever eaten was in Ravenna. Which makes sense when you accept that Italian food is regional. It was worth it for the Byzantine mosaics, though.
You've obviously never ordered a pizza in the land of Freeeeeeeeeeeedom.
I was served a deep fried pizza base (plus toppings) by a takeaway in Invereray once. As I'd been on a hill all day I managed to eat half, but I really can't recommend it unless you like greasy cardboard.
It didn't actually specify fried on the menu. I suppose that was just assumed.
I was organising a conference in Edinburgh once. I still remember hearing how one of the Italian students had gone into a fish and chips place, pointed at the pizza in the warming cabinet, and watched astounded as it was folded in half, dipped in batter,and plunged into boiling oil ...
The thing that I don't get is that the existence of such an option must mean some people actually order deep fried pizza deliberately. Who are they?
Did the student manage to survive without PTSD?
The locals. The local version of calzone, to be fair. (But the Mars Bar option is a tourist thing, like tourist tat art in innumerable locations worldwide.)
Edit: they deep fry Scotch Pies [mutton pies in water crust pastry] to warm them up. Ditto white pudding, black pudding, etc.
The student evidently found it a memorable experience, but I hope it was not quite as bad as PTSD,
Battered deep fried haggis is something else. I rather enjoyed it in Newcastle as a student, but I can no longer understand why.
Because it is actually rather nice, especially after 6 pints of local ale.
Has anyone passed such a non-negative assessment without the 6 pints of ale?
Only, a gay former colleague used to say the difference between a straight guy and a gay guy was six pints.
I woulkd quite happily eat it sans ale. But I am sensitive to Southron susceptibilities. It's actually decent chips that I find hard to locate.
"His Instagram account shows him lying in a pool with three girls and another clip shows him having champagne poured down a girl into his mouth on a party boat."
Maybe he wore a mask while shopping? If only he'd stuck to partying and drinking.
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
Here's a plan for the Scottish Government. Open two datacentres somewhere cold up north, to save on cooling costs which are where the money goes these days. Set up a company to run Scot Cloud, and mandate that all Scotland's government and local government sites must be hosted there. Then open it up to the private sector and hey presto, one of those billion dollar tech companies Dominic Cummings is so keen on.
Doing it in Scotland as you suggest wouldn't magically make it a success. The problem is really quite simple if you know how to do this sort of thing you can have a lot more fun, earn a lot more, and have a lot less hassle doing if for Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. The odds on a government run cloud attracting private customers on its own merits are essentially nil. If you had that sort of talent it would get poached.
Think of it like this. Could the goverment set up a state-run Premier League football club on the cheap? No, if the players and management were any good they'd be signed up by City, United, Liverpool and the like quicker than you could count to ten.
No, it would probably work, largely because the government could mandate its use in order to get it off the ground. The technology is well-known. The point is that other countries are protectionist and provide hidden subsidies. National security, you see. That's why even the smallest town's parks department is hosted in the good ol' US of A. We support American companies instead. If Cummings is serious about British tech giants, that is what he needs to address. Government support; venture capital; not selling out to foreign giants.
ETA: no-one is suggesting doing it on the cheap; merely that it would be more efficient in cooling costs in naturally cold places. Football is irrelevant.
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
Strangely I turned on the radio this lunchtime and the first words I heard were "German car makers". Ahh the pre Corona nostalgia. A simpler, happier time.
It just feels contrived. Maybe there is actually some amazing scientific data and rationale and modelling behind it. But it really just feels more like desperation, a need to create policy to be seen to be trying everything at your disposal.
I think there are two things at work in the weird Scottish masking policy
1. The narcissism of small differences 2. As you say, desperation - adding extra bells and whistles to the policy in the hope that they'll clang and squeal loudly enough to frighten the virus away
I don't know precisely what's going on with the spread of this thing. Nobody does. But one strongly suspects that the only mechanism that's really effective against it is complete social isolation, and that's off the table because if we try to go through another total lockdown the economy will completely collapse and it will cause vastly more damage even than the first one, the effects of which I remain completely convinced will kill far more people than Covid itself.
The only way we can maintain effective suppression of Covid for however many years or decades - we've no bloody idea how long it will be - for the thing to be beaten into submission by drugs and vaccines is through social distancing measures radical enough to kill the economy and precipitate societal collapse. So we HAVE to work out how to live with it and desist from all these hokey-cokey travel embargoes, complex rules with pages of exemptions about social contact, deploying "Covid marshals" to herd people around town centres with cattle prods, and all the rest of this bollocks. Oh, and chuck these fairytale plans for umpteen million tests a day in the waste paper bin and set them on fire whilst we're at it.
The only thing that stands a fighting chance of success - as evidenced by the fact that positive cases haven't started to rise (yet) amongst predominantly cautious older people - is segmentation, and that (unlike the preposterous Moonshot nonsense) is something that could realistically be encouraged and maintained by a big national effort. Reactivate the shielding programme, and widen it to envelop the morbidly obese and everybody over 60, then throw money at local authorities and supermarket chains to recruit even more staff from amongst the legions of newly unemployed to deliver their shopping and their medicine.
Then designate specific hospitals to take Covid patients, utilising the capacity in the Nightingales if necessary, clear them all out of the others so that the healthcare system can continue to function, and just lift restrictions on the rest of the population by as much as the capacity to treat the Covid cases will allow. Given that the rate of serious illness amongst younger people with this disease is low, the fit segment of the population can spread the disease amongst themselves gradually, either until medicine can deal with it effectively or something approximating to herd immunity is achieved.
Pleading with, cajoling and frightening the old and the vulnerable into self-isolating for the common good isn't an ideal solution. In fact it's bloody rotten - it's simply that it seems less rotten than all the apparent alternatives. Does anyone have any better suggestions?
After fraudulently getting an 80 seat majority on the back of his oven ready deal he waits to now to suddenly bring up apparent state aid issues with NI .
Clearly he wouldn’t have got that majority on a no deal platform . The current government is the most corrupt and despicable of recent times.
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
No Deal in the middle of the worst of the virus lockdown? Shelves empty. Chaos at Dover. Job losses on top of covid job losses.
The Tories will be out of power for a generation after 2024.
They will fall behind Labour in the polls in the new year and they will not recover the lead again.
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
To claim the EU is intentionally cutting off food supplies, presumably so Northern Ireland starves, is surely more than a passive aggressive tantrum?
[Leaving aside the inconvenient fact that the Irish Sea border was entirely his decision and not one his predecessor countenanced]
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
That would have been a sure fire winner if they just walked away blaming the EU but they then decided to be too clever and bring in the bill and then had Brandon Lewis stand there admitting it broke international law. The fact that some Brexiters have come out against the bill spoils their narrative somewhat .
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
No Deal in the middle of the worst of the virus lockdown? Shelves empty. Chaos at Dover. Job losses on top of covid job losses.
The Tories will be out of power for a generation after 2024.
They will fall behind Labour in the polls in the new year and they will not recover the lead again.
Perhaps Starmer is a lucky general.
I forsee New Year will be brought in not by fireworks, but rather by covid marshalls rounding up Faragists in Trafalgar Square for gathering in a group of more than six.
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
No Deal in the middle of the worst of the virus lockdown? Shelves empty. Chaos at Dover. Job losses on top of covid job losses.
The Tories will be out of power for a generation after 2024.
They will fall behind Labour in the polls in the new year and they will not recover the lead again.
Perhaps Starmer is a lucky general.
I forsee New Year will be brought in not by fireworks, but rather by covid marshalls rounding up Faragists in Trafalgar Square for gathering in a group of more than six.
And a message from the PM. "2020 was a great year for the UK. We will go even better in 2021!!"
Yes. Johnson has been a liar on everything, not just the EU, and morally degenerate. Difference now - this is Hitler in his bunker stuff. He's insane.
Johnson, Gove and Cummings all have complementary psychological flaws that have unfortunately coalesced. The political version of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady.
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
To claim the EU is intentionally cutting off food supplies, presumably so Northern Ireland starves, is surely more than a passive aggressive tantrum?
[Leaving aside the inconvenient fact that the Irish Sea border was entirely his decision and not one his predecessor countenanced]
It just feels contrived. Maybe there is actually some amazing scientific data and rationale and modelling behind it. But it really just feels more like desperation, a need to create policy to be seen to be trying everything at your disposal.
I don't know precisely what's going on with the spread of this thing. Nobody does. But one strongly suspects that the only mechanism that's really effective against it is complete social isolation, and that's off the table because if we try to go through another total lockdown the economy will completely collapse and it will cause vastly more damage even than the first one, the effects of which I remain completely convinced will kill far more people than Covid itself.
Pleading with, cajoling and frightening the old and the vulnerable into self-isolating for the common good isn't an ideal solution. In fact it's bloody rotten - it's simply that it seems less rotten than all the apparent alternatives. Does anyone have any better suggestions?
On your first point above, I couldn't agree more. It seems to be the reality that no government is willing to admit. Instead, blame everyone for not washing their hands enough, seems to be about the size of it, rather than accepting that basically only full lockdown will see a sufficiently consistent and sustained period of R < 1. Everything else is only playing around at the margins.
I think what we are going to see is a progressive societal shutdown over the next 3-4 months into the heart of winter. Each time the new restrictions will prove wholly insufficient, warranting yet more, the test and trace system will eventually break down as contacts grow too high and so they will work the way in stages through all the bits that can be fiddled with on the edge, then limiting the pub hours and curfews, then closing them completely, then reclosing the cinemas and gyms and swimming pools, reducing the number of people on trains again etc. all the way up to looking at the schools last and hoping that basically shutting down everything else in stages is enough to keep them open (I don't believe it will be). And then another 3 months of progressive reopening heading back out to the spring.
I hope I'm wrong, but it feels too much of a logical progression.
"His Instagram account shows him lying in a pool with three girls and another clip shows him having champagne poured down a girl into his mouth on a party boat."
Given that, they will be calling up to play for England shortly.
Interesting polling thinks government has panicked....i bet if they hadnt announced any new restrictions and we got 3500 positive tests the question would have been why hasn't the government reacted.
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
Lots of potential for an anti lockdown candidate. Starmer would just lock us up in a more orderly fashion and Davey would be snitching on anyone going to the pub. We’re back to the coalition years in terms of choice for 20-25% of voters on the big issue of the day
Lots of potential for an anti lockdown candidate. Starmer would just lock us up in a more orderly fashion and Davey would be snitching on anyone going to the pub. We’re back to the coalition years in terms of choice for 20-25% of voters on the big issue of the day
Split that Tory vote, we can then have the Tories out. I welcome you standing
This, according to David Frost, is a negotiating strategy to get the EU around to the UK position. Men in white coats, not grey suits, are needed now...
The whole point of the Bill is to crash the negotiations and go to No Deal, but throw enough shit around that the Brexiteers can blame everybody but themselves. EU, Labour, SNP, Lords, Activist Lawyers, Judges, even faint hearted Tory grandees.
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
No Deal in the middle of the worst of the virus lockdown? Shelves empty. Chaos at Dover. Job losses on top of covid job losses.
The Tories will be out of power for a generation after 2024.
They will fall behind Labour in the polls in the new year and they will not recover the lead again.
Perhaps Starmer is a lucky general.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Lots of potential for an anti lockdown candidate. Starmer would just lock us up in a more orderly fashion and Davey would be snitching on anyone going to the pub. We’re back to the coalition years in terms of choice for 20-25% of voters on the big issue of the day
With no GE for 4 years, it is highly likely to be history by then.
Not that i agree with it, but that isn't terrible polling for the move. Time and time again anything EU related, always get 40% opposing government / brexit policy.
Brexit supporters at worst don't seem to care about this move, unlike the a decent amount of brexit supporters in parliament.
If Johnson backtracks on the rule of 6 - which for children he probably should - the advice will never be followed again. After the success of "stay home protect the NHS" they have cocked up at every turn
I think what we are going to see is a progressive societal shutdown over the next 3-4 months into the heart of winter. Each time the new restrictions will prove wholly insufficient, warranting yet more, the test and trace system will eventually break down as contacts grow too high and so they will work the way in stages through all the bits that can be fiddled with on the edge, then limiting the pub hours and curfews, then closing them completely, then reclosing the cinemas and gyms and swimming pools, reducing the number of people on trains again etc. all the way up to looking at the schools last and hoping that basically shutting down everything else in stages is enough to keep them open (I don't believe it will be). And then another 3 months of progressive reopening heading back out to the spring.
I hope I'm wrong, but it feels too much of a logical progression.
I concur with your opinion. I think that the chain of events will run something like this:
*Masks in workplaces *Pleas to go back to the office quietly dumped *Curfews *Reinstatement of advice not to travel abroad *Masks whenever you leave the house, except for exercise *Elderly care homes barred to visitors *Reactivation of the shielding list, elderly advised to stay at home *Return of advice to avoid public transport *Progressive shuttering of hospitality and leisure - probably pubs first, then visitor attractions, then gyms, beauty, and finally hotels and non-takeaway restaurants *Closure of "non-essential" retail *Leaving the house forbidden except for work, exercise, food shopping, and medical and educational purposes (i.e. April plus schools, awful weather and masks everywhere) *Hope that all of this is enough to keep education running
To what extent the Government will attempt to rescue jobs and to what extent it lets entire sectors of the economy die this time, God alone knows. They could u-turn on furlough if and when they get desperate enough, but as to whether they can fund it with yet more borrowing without the money markets growing weary and refusing to lend, well...
Are Sunaks relative rankings vs his fellow cabinet members unique? Any historic comparisons where one minister is 50 points clear of the rest?
At the moment he is the drunken sailor splashing out on rounds of drinks for all. He won't be so popular when he hands over the bar tab too.
Obviously his rating differentials are unsustainable in the long run, but he is one of the very few cabinet ministers who is willing to give bad news, and can do it effectively. And the bar tab is spread over 30 years.
With these marshalls and a snitching hotline, we seem to be turning into East Germany.
Whatever else you could say about the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, they managed to run a repressive police state for the best part of 40 years. Comfortingly this current lot will be as shit at it as they are at everything else.
With these marshalls and a snitching hotline, we seem to be turning into East Germany.
Whatever else you could say about the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, they managed to run a repressive police state for the best part of 40 years. Comfortingly this current lot will be as shit at it as they are at everything else.
With these marshalls and a snitching hotline, we seem to be turning into East Germany.
When I said last year that we were on our way to becoming a dictatorship, I was told I was being
a) stupid b) hysterical
Well, it is looking more likely than ever that the UK has begun the slide into being a failed state.
I think we're going through a rough patch, but so is much of the West. The country's a mess and Johnson is a rubbish Prime Minister, but ultimately he is not a strongman and there's not one waiting in the wings to take over, either.
If the fallout from 2020 is economic disaster and a collapse of faith in this Government then the likelihood is that the Tories will get rid of him and either succeed with a better leader, or be rejected by the public in sufficient numbers for them to be replaced. Just because we are going through a period of strife rather than consensus this doesn't necessarily presage the implosion of the state.
Unfortunately, the alternative - keeping the country in suspended animation a la April indefinitely - wasn't realistic. The question now is, does the Government ruin any good that the furlough and its stimulus efforts have done by salami slicing society and business back down, until we return to something like April again? Or does it attempt to shield the vulnerable en masse and try to keep the country limping along in something resembling a functional state through the Winter?
They are incompetent, useless and in thrall to old people, so I'm not exactly optimistic.
If Johnson backtracks on the rule of 6 - which for children he probably should - the advice will never be followed again. After the success of "stay home protect the NHS" they have cocked up at every turn
If Johnson backtracks on the rule of 6 - which for children he probably should - the advice will never be followed again. After the success of "stay home protect the NHS" they have cocked up at every turn
If Johnson backtracks on the rule of 6 - which for children he probably should - the advice will never be followed again. After the success of "stay home protect the NHS" they have cocked up at every turn
Boris needs to stick to the rule of 6
Unfortunately for Johnson, devolution has yet again torpedoed one of his Government's initiatives at the outset. The Scots and the Welsh have nominally followed suit, but have come up with their own variations that do exempt kiddlywinks, in response to which the moaning in England will be loud and continuous. Expect particular grievance over the mass ruination of English children's birthday parties.
Comments
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12647489/clubber-went-to-ibiza-sparked-covid-spike-in-bolton/
Thought not.
So you think nightclubs might act as a transmission vector?
I was reading last week about the Welsh Government's successes here but really they amounted to setting up the .wales domain; moving their web sites to the cloud; and giving all their staff new laptops. All very laudable but it's not Skynet.
And because we are naive, we will end up paying a lot of money to American cloud companies, whereas the American government, and most others, limits their support to homegrown companies.
Here's a plan for the Scottish Government. Open two datacentres somewhere cold up north, to save on cooling costs which are where the money goes these days. Set up a company to run Scot Cloud, and mandate that all Scotland's government and local government sites must be hosted there. Then open it up to the private sector and hey presto, one of those billion dollar tech companies Dominic Cummings is so keen on.
I imagine it will go to some Oxford-educated crony who talks a good game on data lakes but in five years time, not much will have happened.
Fine. You just don't qualify for free NHS care then. Deal?
According to the comments below it was Asians.
Think of it like this. Could the goverment set up a state-run Premier League football club on the cheap? No, if the players and management were any good they'd be signed up by City, United, Liverpool and the like quicker than you could count to ten.
"His Instagram account shows him lying in a pool with three girls and another clip shows him having champagne poured down a girl into his mouth on a party boat."
Maybe it's enough. Maybe it ain't....
Only, a gay former colleague used to say the difference between a straight guy and a gay guy was six pints.
https://twitter.com/MsHelicat/status/1304522904420388864
ETA: no-one is suggesting doing it on the cheap; merely that it would be more efficient in cooling costs in naturally cold places. Football is irrelevant.
https://twitter.com/BBCScotland/status/1303259531074580481
Ahh the pre Corona nostalgia.
A simpler, happier time.
-------------
1. The narcissism of small differences
2. As you say, desperation - adding extra bells and whistles to the policy in the hope that they'll clang and squeal loudly enough to frighten the virus away
I don't know precisely what's going on with the spread of this thing. Nobody does. But one strongly suspects that the only mechanism that's really effective against it is complete social isolation, and that's off the table because if we try to go through another total lockdown the economy will completely collapse and it will cause vastly more damage even than the first one, the effects of which I remain completely convinced will kill far more people than Covid itself.
The only way we can maintain effective suppression of Covid for however many years or decades - we've no bloody idea how long it will be - for the thing to be beaten into submission by drugs and vaccines is through social distancing measures radical enough to kill the economy and precipitate societal collapse. So we HAVE to work out how to live with it and desist from all these hokey-cokey travel embargoes, complex rules with pages of exemptions about social contact, deploying "Covid marshals" to herd people around town centres with cattle prods, and all the rest of this bollocks. Oh, and chuck these fairytale plans for umpteen million tests a day in the waste paper bin and set them on fire whilst we're at it.
The only thing that stands a fighting chance of success - as evidenced by the fact that positive cases haven't started to rise (yet) amongst predominantly cautious older people - is segmentation, and that (unlike the preposterous Moonshot nonsense) is something that could realistically be encouraged and maintained by a big national effort. Reactivate the shielding programme, and widen it to envelop the morbidly obese and everybody over 60, then throw money at local authorities and supermarket chains to recruit even more staff from amongst the legions of newly unemployed to deliver their shopping and their medicine.
Then designate specific hospitals to take Covid patients, utilising the capacity in the Nightingales if necessary, clear them all out of the others so that the healthcare system can continue to function, and just lift restrictions on the rest of the population by as much as the capacity to treat the Covid cases will allow. Given that the rate of serious illness amongst younger people with this disease is low, the fit segment of the population can spread the disease amongst themselves gradually, either until medicine can deal with it effectively or something approximating to herd immunity is achieved.
Pleading with, cajoling and frightening the old and the vulnerable into self-isolating for the common good isn't an ideal solution. In fact it's bloody rotten - it's simply that it seems less rotten than all the apparent alternatives. Does anyone have any better suggestions?
https://twitter.com/MsHelicat/status/1304525084166586370/photo/1
After fraudulently getting an 80 seat majority on the back of his oven ready deal he waits to now to suddenly bring up apparent state aid issues with NI .
Clearly he wouldn’t have got that majority on a no deal platform . The current government is the most corrupt and despicable of recent times.
https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1304531518979739648
It is the ultimate passive aggressive tantrum. "Now look what you've made me do..."
The Tories will be out of power for a generation after 2024.
They will fall behind Labour in the polls in the new year and they will not recover the lead again.
Perhaps Starmer is a lucky general.
[Leaving aside the inconvenient fact that the Irish Sea border was entirely his decision and not one his predecessor countenanced]
Equal on best leader
"2020 was a great year for the UK.
We will go even better in 2021!!"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit-no-prime-minister-could-agree-to-divide-with-northern-ireland-may-says-stt0fwhhw
For all the noise from the libertarians.
Moonshot has failed to get past the second floor, mind.
I think what we are going to see is a progressive societal shutdown over the next 3-4 months into the heart of winter. Each time the new restrictions will prove wholly insufficient, warranting yet more, the test and trace system will eventually break down as contacts grow too high and so they will work the way in stages through all the bits that can be fiddled with on the edge, then limiting the pub hours and curfews, then closing them completely, then reclosing the cinemas and gyms and swimming pools, reducing the number of people on trains again etc. all the way up to looking at the schools last and hoping that basically shutting down everything else in stages is enough to keep them open (I don't believe it will be). And then another 3 months of progressive reopening heading back out to the spring.
I hope I'm wrong, but it feels too much of a logical progression.
The Tories are slowly crashing and burning.
Future PM
I wonder if people that got into politics whilst Brexit was in danger, will continue to be involved
Reminds me of the cones hotline
If it isn't gone by then...
Brexit supporters at worst don't seem to care about this move, unlike the a decent amount of brexit supporters in parliament.
He saw the Tory elephant trap a mile away and refused to fall into it.
*Masks in workplaces
*Pleas to go back to the office quietly dumped
*Curfews
*Reinstatement of advice not to travel abroad
*Masks whenever you leave the house, except for exercise
*Elderly care homes barred to visitors
*Reactivation of the shielding list, elderly advised to stay at home
*Return of advice to avoid public transport
*Progressive shuttering of hospitality and leisure - probably pubs first, then visitor attractions, then gyms, beauty, and finally hotels and non-takeaway restaurants
*Closure of "non-essential" retail
*Leaving the house forbidden except for work, exercise, food shopping, and medical and educational purposes (i.e. April plus schools, awful weather and masks everywhere)
*Hope that all of this is enough to keep education running
To what extent the Government will attempt to rescue jobs and to what extent it lets entire sectors of the economy die this time, God alone knows. They could u-turn on furlough if and when they get desperate enough, but as to whether they can fund it with yet more borrowing without the money markets growing weary and refusing to lend, well...
a) stupid
b) hysterical
Well, it is looking more likely than ever that the UK has begun the slide into being a failed state.
If the fallout from 2020 is economic disaster and a collapse of faith in this Government then the likelihood is that the Tories will get rid of him and either succeed with a better leader, or be rejected by the public in sufficient numbers for them to be replaced. Just because we are going through a period of strife rather than consensus this doesn't necessarily presage the implosion of the state.
https://www.itv.com/news/central/2020-09-10/central-lobby-bringing-you-the-big-political-stories-from-across-the-midlands
The EU outright accused of operating in "bad faith". If the EU have operated in bad faith then it is fair enough for the UK to walk away.
https://twitter.com/foxinsoxuk/status/1304254529215647750?s=19
They are incompetent, useless and in thrall to old people, so I'm not exactly optimistic.