Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
Last Monday, on the first day back at school, my youngest grandson developed a cough and was sent home. No other symptoms. His older brother, in the same school, was called out of his form and sent home also. He had no symptoms at all. My daughter could not book a test for them anywhere. She received a home testing kit on Thursday and returned it straight away. She is waiting for the result. They have already lost a week schooling. She has no idea when she'll get the result of the home tests.
This is why the government is so keen on their "moonshot" idea. A test that you get the result of in 20 minutes would have had both of your grandchildren back in class for the next period (or isolated if the test was +ve). It would be transformative, if it works.
Absolutely. But it bears a strong resemblance to "Boris Island", the "bridge to Northern Ireland" and other grand projects that have the experts in the background shuffling their feet and saying "Well, that would be nice, but..." It requires a scientific breakthrough which AFAIK is not even currently being researched, as well as a remarkable amount of money, as well as an awesome administrative effort dwarfing the not notably successful Track and Trace system. We should all be delighted if it comes about, but it would be quite ludicrously unsafe to rely on it.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
Yes again you demonstrate adherence to the contemptible view that the law is not what is written is statute or precedent, but whatever one can get away with.
Then again since this appears to be the view of the Attorney General, you appear to be in good company.
It is a bit of a mystery why the Government should even have an Attorney General to offer legal advice in relation to International Law if all they are doing is advising on whether they can get away with it.
I'm sure that Lord Goldsmith would have found things a lot easier at the time of the Iraq War, if his role had been limited not to finding contortions to state that the actions taken were legal, but merely to say if there would be any enforcement action taken if they were not without any responsibility to resign for any law breaking taken in defiance of his advice.
It won't happen in the next year or so as Boris will block it
He can't.
Nippy can call a referendum that is illegal only in specific and limited ways, and BoZo can sit and spin...
Boris can, as Madrid showed when the Catalan government held an illegal independence referendum, illegal referendums can be ignored. Just as in the Catalan referendum Unionists would be told to boycott it as well
You really are both delusional and confident beyond your understanding of how things work.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
Yes again you demonstrate adherence to the contemptible view that the law is not what is written is statute or precedent, but whatever one can get away with.
Then again since this appears to be the view of the Attorney General, you appear to be in good company.
It is a bit of a mystery why the Government should even have an Attorney General to offer legal advice in relation to International Law if all they are doing is advising on whether they can get away with it.
I'm sure that Lord Goldsmith would have found things a lot easier at the time of the Iraq War, if his role had been limited not to finding contortions to state that the actions taken were legal, but merely to say if there would be any enforcement action taken if they were not without any responsibility to resign for any law breaking taken in defiance of his advice.
No my view is that the law is what is written in statute and precedent . . . and that we have an established mechanism for changing statutes.
If Parliament votes to change statute and it gets Royal Assent then that is the new statute.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
In raw political terms. I agree with you. But the rule of law overseen by an independent judiciary is the foundation stone of all democracies. Once that is removed the building becomes unsafe.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
The government is willing to allow it. Its changing the law, its not changing the way courts operate or stacking the judiciary.
Presumably he's consulted the businesses of Northern Ireland about the issue of whether they would like to stay in the Single Market thank you very much?
And anyway, a large part of the issue with the Internal Markets Bill is that it is seeking to abrogate from the obligation for NI to align with EU regulation (eg. State Aid)
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
The government is willing to allow it. Its changing the law, its not changing the way courts operate or stacking the judiciary.
It won't happen in the next year or so as Boris will block it
He can't.
Nippy can call a referendum that is illegal only in specific and limited ways, and BoZo can sit and spin...
Boris can, as Madrid showed when the Catalan government held an illegal independence referendum, illegal referendums can be ignored. Just as in the Catalan referendum Unionists would be told to boycott it as well
You really are both delusional and confident beyond your understanding of how things work.
How things work is since the 1707 Act of Union Westminster has been the supreme lawmaker in the UK, Holyrood was only created by Westminster in 1998 and legally Westminster could scrap Holyood or suspend it next year as Madrid suspended the Catalan parliament after the illegal indyref there.
That may not be advisable but constitutionally it is possible and Westminster consent is needed for a legal indyref as it was needed in 2014
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
What material for the fences?
L7A2 GPMG. You can't fence the buggers in indefinitely, just funnel them into the Killing Zone.
Visions of codgers dribbling earth from the bottoms of their stained cavalry twills on their daily constitutional. Decades of watching The Great Escape and The Wooden Horse will come in useful after all.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
What material for the fences?
L7A2 GPMG. You can't fence the buggers in indefinitely, just funnel them into the Killing Zone.
Mmm. I think this idea of the old and vulnerable (metaphorically) locked up while everybody else buzzes around and forgets both them and the virus is both impractical and borderline dystopian.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
The government is willing to allow it. Its changing the law, its not changing the way courts operate or stacking the judiciary.
Yes it is. The Internal Markets will is explicitly authorising Government ministers to over-ride national law with no possibility for parliamentary or judicial oversight.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
The government is willing to allow it. Its changing the law, its not changing the way courts operate or stacking the judiciary.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
So, OK, say I bet you today £100 that Biden will win the US election. By the beginning of November it is clear that his dementia rules him out and Trump has a 15 point lead in the polls. I cancel the bet. People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen. When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
Cummings is going to smash the UK into a ruinous No Deal so that he can invest in tech companies, yet they can't even save one of the few UK success stories in the UK.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
So, OK, say I bet you today £100 that Biden will win the US election. By the beginning of November it is clear that his dementia rules him out and Trump has a 15 point lead in the polls. I cancel the bet. People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen. When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
The government is willing to allow it. Its changing the law, its not changing the way courts operate or stacking the judiciary.
See section 45g of the Internal Market Bill.
That would be statute and law.
The Lord Chancellor made clear today that he believes there are acceptable ways to break the rule of law. A government that believes this has no commitment to democracy. You support such a government.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Last Monday, on the first day back at school, my youngest grandson developed a cough and was sent home. No other symptoms. His older brother, in the same school, was called out of his form and sent home also. He had no symptoms at all. My daughter could not book a test for them anywhere. She received a home testing kit on Thursday and returned it straight away. She is waiting for the result. They have already lost a week schooling. She has no idea when she'll get the result of the home tests.
This is why the government is so keen on their "moonshot" idea. A test that you get the result of in 20 minutes would have had both of your grandchildren back in class for the next period (or isolated if the test was +ve). It would be transformative, if it works.
If it works and is delivered fairly soon. It would be brilliant.
But the technology doesn't exist yet. It allegedly will cost £100 billion. The government track record in introducing technology solutions is woeful. No wonder that Hancock was laughed at in the Commons when he spoke about it. Moonshot is a good name for it.
So you're right. It would be transformative, if it works. But I'm not holding my breath. We'll have a vaccine before then. Let's hope not too much of the £100 billion is spent and wasted. We've spent £0.5 billion on it so far.
It is utter wank. Although our overall virus outcome would (imo) only be marginally better with a competent government instead of this one, we would at least be subjected to 90% less bullshit.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
The government is willing to allow it. Its changing the law, its not changing the way courts operate or stacking the judiciary.
See section 45g of the Internal Market Bill.
That would be statute and law.
So you say the Government are not stacking the judiciary. If the Government wrote a bill giving it the power to dismiss all existing members of the Supreme Court and replace them with alternatives of its choosing, and whipped Parliament to vote it through, and they did, would you simply respond
"Well that would be statute and law".
Or might you perhaps query whether they should be doing this in advance and strongly argue for MPs and peers to reject the legislation?
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
That QC’s opinion is incredible niche. You’re acting like an anti-vaxer carefully selecting the “scientific papers” that agree with your point of view.
Johnson is a lying charlatan and a cad of the highest order. God alone knows how the Tories have ended up supporting this scoundrel. They are becoming like GOP - beholden to someone who, if they are ever honest with themselves, doesn't remotely hold their own values.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
In reality it is thus:
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 3 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 4 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 5 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 6 - Start to feel better, “oh it’s probably not COVID” Day 7 - Infect others
Isn’t it more along the lines of:
Day 1 - Get infected. Day 2 - infect others Day 3 - infect others Day 4 - infect others Day 5 - infect others; start to develop symptoms Day 6 - self-isolate, try to book test, are unable Day 7 - self isolate, try to book test, are unable Day 8 - self isolate, try to book test, offered one a hundred miles away Day 9 - drag yourself a hundred miles (or get driven there by family member, increasing their exposure), take test Day 10 - self isolate, await test result Day 11 - self isolate, starting to feel better (hopefully) receive test result
By Day 12, the test result may be of historical benefit only. The pushback against non-symptomatics getting tests seems barking mad to me: it’s the pre-symptomatic period that’s the biggest danger (most people will self-isolate when they get symptoms, and, in any case, will probably not be up to wandering in to work, going to restaurants, getting dragged around the shops, etc). If you have reason to suspect you’ve been exposed but haven’t yet developed symptoms, surely you should be the top priority for testing?
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
What material for the fences?
L7A2 GPMG. You can't fence the buggers in indefinitely, just funnel them into the Killing Zone.
Mmm. I think this idea of the old and vulnerable (metaphorically) locked up while everybody else buzzes around and forgets both them and the virus is both impractical and borderline dystopian.
Many people already do that, bang them in a home and forget about them
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
The government is willing to allow it. Its changing the law, its not changing the way courts operate or stacking the judiciary.
See section 45g of the Internal Market Bill.
That would be statute and law.
The Lord Chancellor made clear today that he believes there are acceptable ways to break the rule of law. A government that believes this has no commitment to democracy. You support such a government.
I supported the Canadians doing the same last year too.
What is happening in the UK right now is truly staggering and would have been unimaginable before Boris Johnson became PM. We looked at countries like Hungary and Poland, and thought it could never happen here. But it has. And all in plain sight.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
Spot on, this is primarily about the government welching on both the electorate and the EU. Probably deliberately and with complete foresight given Johnson's conversations about the NI trade forms that would never happen.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
Spent all morning on phone trying to find out if the test I half booked (website crashed) is good. It wasn't (would have been rip from Herts - bognor so suboptimal!). One of the kids has sniffles after first week at school. Pretty sure its not covid. Although one year at the school is already out after +ve test. Situation is mundane and entirely predictable -there must be a LOT of people in similar situation. Yet actually guidance is totally unclear and contradictory wrt work, school, other clubs... What a shambles basically.
Liberal Democrats are planning a four-year drive to woo “soft conservatives” repulsed by the “thuggish” values of the Tories under Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, the party’s new campaigning chief has revealed.
This could be an absolute game changer, well done LDs
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Yes - and in the absence oi a written constitution they depend on the government's willingness to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rights of courts to protect us and the UK itself from unlawful government action. This government is not willing to allow it.
The government is willing to allow it. Its changing the law, its not changing the way courts operate or stacking the judiciary.
See section 45g of the Internal Market Bill.
That would be statute and law.
The Lord Chancellor made clear today that he believes there are acceptable ways to break the rule of law. A government that believes this has no commitment to democracy. You support such a government.
I supported the Canadians doing the same last year too.
Do you have any quotes from the Canadian Justice Minister stating that he believes there are acceptable ways to break the rule of law?
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The capital markets have already indicated which way they’re thinking. The arbitration will be what risk premium should be applied to Britain keeping to its commitments in the future, amongst other things.
What is happening in the UK right now is truly staggering and would have been unimaginable before Boris Johnson became PM. We looked at countries like Hungary and Poland, and thought it could never happen here. But it has. And all in plain sight.
What did you say last year when Canada did the same thing? Or Australia?
Brexiteers have been happy to compare us to Canada and Australia.
Telegraph says Khan is not far ahead of Bailey, which completely contradicts recent other polls
The idea that CCHQ wouldn't be triumphantly releasing this 'internal polling' is fcuking laughable. Their problem isn't 'complacency among Conservative supporters', it's unmotivated ones.
It is a strategy based on her experience in St Albans, where she provided the only point of light for the party on a dismal election night by overturning an 11 per cent Tory lead to romp home by more than 6,000 votes in a constituency last held by Liberals in 1904.
It is a strategy based on her experience in St Albans, where she provided the only point of light for the party on a dismal election night by overturning an 11 per cent Tory lead to romp home by more than 6,000 votes in a constituency last held by Liberals in 1904.
Richmond Park was also a LD gain but yes St Albans was the only other LD gain from the Tories last year
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
When the interest rate changes, do you believe you can tear up your mortgage ?
For me the main outrage (if I'm wrong about it being just theatrics) is less the "Rule of Law" aspect but the horrific lying and abuse of our democratic process. Lie to the EU to get a deal. Lie to the public that it's a good deal. Win an election and gain power on that basis. Now say the deal is a bad one and tear it up. This is not great.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
Both are contracts. The only reason you’re differentiating them is because you’re trying to justify your ridiculous point of view. It’s just mental gymnastics of the most shameless variety.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
I note that a lot of ERG types are arguing for a ditching of the WA completely which includes ipso facto, provisions relating to the UK share of historically acquired liabilities.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
That QC’s opinion is incredible niche. You’re acting like an anti-vaxer carefully selecting the “scientific papers” that agree with your point of view.
Get a grip man.
Is there a court case that says the QC is indisputably wrong? Is there a scintilla of doubt in your mind that he could be right?
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
I note that a lot of ERG types are arguing for a ditching of the WA completely which includes ipso facto, provisions relating to the UK share of historically acquired liabilities.
Once the rest of the Brexiteers join them there, they will want reparations from the EU. They can only exist by being more extreme and unreasonable than the mainstream Brexiteers. It cannot end well.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
In reality it is thus:
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 3 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 4 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 5 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 6 - Start to feel better, “oh it’s probably not COVID” Day 7 - Infect others
Isn’t it more along the lines of:
Day 1 - Get infected. Day 2 - infect others Day 3 - infect others Day 4 - infect others Day 5 - infect others; start to develop symptoms Day 6 - self-isolate, try to book test, are unable Day 7 - self isolate, try to book test, are unable Day 8 - self isolate, try to book test, offered one a hundred miles away Day 9 - drag yourself a hundred miles (or get driven there by family member, increasing their exposure), take test Day 10 - self isolate, await test result Day 11 - self isolate, starting to feel better (hopefully) receive test result
By Day 12, the test result may be of historical benefit only. The pushback against non-symptomatics getting tests seems barking mad to me: it’s the pre-symptomatic period that’s the biggest danger (most people will self-isolate when they get symptoms, and, in any case, will probably not be up to wandering in to work, going to restaurants, getting dragged around the shops, etc). If you have reason to suspect you’ve been exposed but haven’t yet developed symptoms, surely you should be the top priority for testing?
Correct. A mass testing regime which was only 70% accurate, but was used and gave results immediately on your ‘day 1’ would catch a far higher proportion of those who were actually infectious. Such technology already exists (& is probably a lot better than 70% sensitive in detecting those actually infectious, as opposed to PCR positive).
We could probably run a large scale regional trial of it for £100m, not £100bn.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
Indeed.
The Liberal government in Canada deliberately chose to break international law in legalising cannabis. They decided to do that in full knowledge they were breaking past treaties knowing both that they couldn't get all parties signed up to the treaties to agree to change them and that they thought they were doing the wrong thing.
Funny how when that happened the talk was by and large whether it was sensible to legalise cannabis or not ... And not the fact that in doing so Canada was throwing away the rule of law.
Which treaties out of interest, and did any of the co-signatories to the treaties object?
If you can't see a fundamental difference between that and repealing the central and fundamental element (not an "absurd interpretation", as the Government are, absurdly, claiming) of a treaty signed in good faith just six months earlier, to which the counterparty strongly objects and with whom we are trying to negotiate a further treaty in which we are arguing for many aspects to be included best on an assumption of "trust" in future UK Government actions... well.
At least the honest approach would have been to repudiate the treaty in total, which would have been legal, if showing extreme bad faith.
Of course in the Canadian example, i assume the issue represented a minor issue for whatever treaties were involved, so repudiation wasn't really an issue, and seeking a derogation would be sufficient.
I should note that by refusing to repudiate the WA in total, the UK are, in effect, cherry picking the bits of the treaty that they like (such as single market access for Northern Ireland) whilst getting rid of the bad bits and responsibilities involved in protecting the border of the single market (ie. GB). At the very least it will be reasonable for the EU to insist that the UK now make further payments to reflect their level of single market access previously given away for free.
Moreover, the Canadian one was one of three main planks of their manifesto (ironically the only one they implemented) which was campaigned on and won overwhelming approval moving the Grits from a dismal third to a majority. It is exactly the opposite situation here.
For me the main outrage (if I'm wrong about it being just theatrics) is less the "Rule of Law" aspect but the horrific lying and abuse of our democratic process. Lie to the EU to get a deal. Lie to the public that it's a good deal. Win an election and gain power on that basis. Now say the deal is a bad one and tear it up. This is not great.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
It is not about changing the law. It is about defaulting on an agreement. Changing the law is a smokescreen that you are hiding behind. It is about defaulting on an agreement.
That is immoral in betting or in international relations. If morality doesn't concern you, it is also extremely unwise. You may get a short term benefit but at the cost of much greater long term pain.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
Spot on, this is primarily about the government welching on both the electorate and the EU. Probably deliberately and with complete foresight given Johnson's conversations about the NI trade forms that would never happen.
My view too. That little chat over a few glasses where Johnson said "Don't worry. No checks between us and NI" was actually a rare example of him telling the truth. Because whether this is theatrics along the way to continued close alignment (my view) or whether it really is the intention to No Deal and tear up the WA, either way the border in the Irish Sea is not happening.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
Indeed.
The Liberal government in Canada deliberately chose to break international law in legalising cannabis. They decided to do that in full knowledge they were breaking past treaties knowing both that they couldn't get all parties signed up to the treaties to agree to change them and that they thought they were doing the wrong thing.
Funny how when that happened the talk was by and large whether it was sensible to legalise cannabis or not ... And not the fact that in doing so Canada was throwing away the rule of law.
Which treaties out of interest, and did any of the co-signatories to the treaties object?
If you can't see a fundamental difference between that and repealing the central and fundamental element (not an "absurd interpretation", as the Government are, absurdly, claiming) of a treaty signed in good faith just six months earlier, to which the counterparty strongly objects and with whom we are trying to negotiate a further treaty in which we are arguing for many aspects to be included best on an assumption of "trust" in future UK Government actions... well.
At least the honest approach would have been to repudiate the treaty in total, which would have been legal, if showing extreme bad faith.
Of course in the Canadian example, i assume the issue represented a minor issue for whatever treaties were involved, so repudiation wasn't really an issue, and seeking a derogation would be sufficient.
I should note that by refusing to repudiate the WA in total, the UK are, in effect, cherry picking the bits of the treaty that they like (such as single market access for Northern Ireland) whilst getting rid of the bad bits and responsibilities involved in protecting the border of the single market (ie. GB). At the very least it will be reasonable for the EU to insist that the UK now make further payments to reflect their level of single market access previously given away for free.
Moreover, the Canadian one was one of three main planks of their manifesto (ironically the only one they implemented) which was campaigned on and won overwhelming approval moving the Grits from a dismal third to a majority. It is exactly the opposite situation here.
That's a matter of politics not law.
On the question of "the rule of law" its the exact same situation.
Johnson not the only one to think he’s above the law
United States: US President Donald Trump defied COVID-19 regulations this Sunday by holding a massive rally in Nevada, despite the fact that events that gather more than fifty people are prohibited in this state. The vast majority of attendees did not wear a mask.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
That QC’s opinion is incredible niche. You’re acting like an anti-vaxer carefully selecting the “scientific papers” that agree with your point of view.
Get a grip man.
Is there a court case that says the QC is indisputably wrong? Is there a scintilla of doubt in your mind that he could be right?
This is not about “the law”. This is about “the rule of law” which is different. There is also no definitive answer, however the weight of academic opinion agrees with Lord Bingham on this issue.
Regardless there is a court case that says the Ministerial Code that says Ministers must not “break the law” includes international law which is not made by Parliament.
What is happening in the UK right now is truly staggering and would have been unimaginable before Boris Johnson became PM. We looked at countries like Hungary and Poland, and thought it could never happen here. But it has. And all in plain sight.
What did you say last year when Canada did the same thing? Or Australia?
Brexiteers have been happy to compare us to Canada and Australia.
I have not seen either the Australian or Canadian Justice Ministers make public statements stating that they believe it is acceptable to break the rule of law. If they have done so, as you claim, can you provide evidence?
What is happening in the UK right now is truly staggering and would have been unimaginable before Boris Johnson became PM. We looked at countries like Hungary and Poland, and thought it could never happen here. But it has. And all in plain sight.
What did you say last year when Canada did the same thing? Or Australia?
Brexiteers have been happy to compare us to Canada and Australia.
I have not seen either the Australian or Canadian Justice Ministers make public statements stating that they believe it is acceptable to break the rule of law. If they have done so, as you claim, can you provide evidence?
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has acknowledged that the new cannabis law does selectively violate the treaties, although Berube said the approach "is consistent with the overarching goals of the UN drug conventions, namely to protect the health and safety of citizens."
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
It is not about changing the law. It is about defaulting on an agreement. Changing the law is a smokescreen that you are hiding behind. It is about defaulting on an agreement.
That is immoral in betting or in international relations. If morality doesn't concern you, it is also extremely unwise. You may get a short term benefit but at the cost of much greater long term pain.
In Phil's world it would be morally acceptable for the Spanish to tear up the Treaty of Utrecht and to march into Gibraltar.
Yeah, very good. There's no wriggle room. The EU tentacles wind round every issue relating to NI. A Gordian knot if ever there was one. The only way out is to cut it by walking away.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
Indeed.
The Liberal government in Canada deliberately chose to break international law in legalising cannabis. They decided to do that in full knowledge they were breaking past treaties knowing both that they couldn't get all parties signed up to the treaties to agree to change them and that they thought they were doing the wrong thing.
Funny how when that happened the talk was by and large whether it was sensible to legalise cannabis or not ... And not the fact that in doing so Canada was throwing away the rule of law.
Which treaties out of interest, and did any of the co-signatories to the treaties object?
If you can't see a fundamental difference between that and repealing the central and fundamental element (not an "absurd interpretation", as the Government are, absurdly, claiming) of a treaty signed in good faith just six months earlier, to which the counterparty strongly objects and with whom we are trying to negotiate a further treaty in which we are arguing for many aspects to be included best on an assumption of "trust" in future UK Government actions... well.
At least the honest approach would have been to repudiate the treaty in total, which would have been legal, if showing extreme bad faith.
Of course in the Canadian example, i assume the issue represented a minor issue for whatever treaties were involved, so repudiation wasn't really an issue, and seeking a derogation would be sufficient.
I should note that by refusing to repudiate the WA in total, the UK are, in effect, cherry picking the bits of the treaty that they like (such as single market access for Northern Ireland) whilst getting rid of the bad bits and responsibilities involved in protecting the border of the single market (ie. GB). At the very least it will be reasonable for the EU to insist that the UK now make further payments to reflect their level of single market access previously given away for free.
Moreover, the Canadian one was one of three main planks of their manifesto (ironically the only one they implemented) which was campaigned on and won overwhelming approval moving the Grits from a dismal third to a majority. It is exactly the opposite situation here.
That's a matter of politics not law.
On the question of "the rule of law" its the exact same situation.
No doubt. However, that does give it a rather stronger moral justification. Breaching international law with the undoubted support of the electorate. As opposed to breaching it in clear violation of the express "will of the people."
It won't happen in the next year or so as Boris will block it
He can't.
Nippy can call a referendum that is illegal only in specific and limited ways, and BoZo can sit and spin...
Boris can, as Madrid showed when the Catalan government held an illegal independence referendum, illegal referendums can be ignored. Just as in the Catalan referendum Unionists would be told to boycott it as well
You really are both delusional and confident beyond your understanding of how things work.
How things work is since the 1707 Act of Union Westminster has been the supreme lawmaker in the UK, Holyrood was only created by Westminster in 1998 and legally Westminster could scrap Holyood or suspend it next year as Madrid suspended the Catalan parliament after the illegal indyref there.
That may not be advisable but constitutionally it is possible and Westminster consent is needed for a legal indyref as it was needed in 2014
But the Scottish government - backed by a democratic mandate - would only be breaking the law in a specific and very limited way. How precisely do you envisage that this government - who backed by democratic mandate is breaking the law in a specific and very limited way - will be able to stop them?
Just because you keep saying something doesn't make it correct. As this government themselves are demonstrating the law is not an impediment to political will. They cannot apply one rule for themselves and another for everyone else, politics simply doesn't work like that.
You An intelligent man. You either (a) know it doesn't work like that but are willing to say things you know are not true out of party loyalty (a lie) or (b) you have chosen not to inform yourself in the manner that IDS didn't inform himself about the contents of the bill he was voting for saying "we don't need to read this" (ignorance).
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
What material for the fences?
L7A2 GPMG. You can't fence the buggers in indefinitely, just funnel them into the Killing Zone.
Mmm. I think this idea of the old and vulnerable (metaphorically) locked up while everybody else buzzes around and forgets both them and the virus is both impractical and borderline dystopian.
Many people already do that, bang them in a home and forget about them
Yes, I know, and it's sad. I hope it doesn't happen as often as some say it does. I personally have no direct experience of all this and I recognize how fortunate I am to be able to say that.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
In reality it is thus:
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 3 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 4 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 5 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 6 - Start to feel better, “oh it’s probably not COVID” Day 7 - Infect others
Isn’t it more along the lines of:
Day 1 - Get infected. Day 2 - infect others Day 3 - infect others Day 4 - infect others Day 5 - infect others; start to develop symptoms Day 6 - self-isolate, try to book test, are unable Day 7 - self isolate, try to book test, are unable Day 8 - self isolate, try to book test, offered one a hundred miles away Day 9 - drag yourself a hundred miles (or get driven there by family member, increasing their exposure), take test Day 10 - self isolate, await test result Day 11 - self isolate, starting to feel better (hopefully) receive test result
By Day 12, the test result may be of historical benefit only. The pushback against non-symptomatics getting tests seems barking mad to me: it’s the pre-symptomatic period that’s the biggest danger (most people will self-isolate when they get symptoms, and, in any case, will probably not be up to wandering in to work, going to restaurants, getting dragged around the shops, etc). If you have reason to suspect you’ve been exposed but haven’t yet developed symptoms, surely you should be the top priority for testing?
Correct. A mass testing regime which was only 70% accurate, but was used and gave results immediately on your ‘day 1’ would catch a far higher proportion of those who were actually infectious. Such technology already exists (& is probably a lot better than 70% sensitive in detecting those actually infectious, as opposed to PCR positive).
We could probably run a large scale regional trial of it for £100m, not £100bn.
The idea with contact tracing is that you can do the tracing and testing faster than the virus can spread, and so you can chase the virus and locate where it is and isolate those infectious, and ultimately contacts before they are infectious.
So your first case might not have a test result until day 10 of the infection, but then you drive that down for contacts, and contacts of contacts, and so on. Unfortunately our test and trace system has never reached that level of capability.
Johnson not the only one to think he’s above the law
United States: US President Donald Trump defied COVID-19 regulations this Sunday by holding a massive rally in Nevada, despite the fact that events that gather more than fifty people are prohibited in this state. The vast majority of attendees did not wear a mask.
Interesting that he went to Nevada. Must think it's still in play.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
It is not about changing the law. It is about defaulting on an agreement. Changing the law is a smokescreen that you are hiding behind. It is about defaulting on an agreement.
That is immoral in betting or in international relations. If morality doesn't concern you, it is also extremely unwise. You may get a short term benefit but at the cost of much greater long term pain.
In Phil's world it would be morally acceptable for the Spanish to tear up the Treaty of Utrecht and to march into Gibraltar.
In Phil's world if the Spanish thought they could get away with tearing up the Treaty of Utrecht and marching into Gibraltar they would.
In Phil's world what defends Gibraltar from that is the threat of the military not the threat of lawyers.
With Ed Davey as Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Daisy Cooper as Deputy Leader, the Lib Dems now have two of their top campaigners in key positions.
But surely they are not simply setting out to pick up "Soft Conservative" voters? They are aiming to gather in everybody who shares Liberal values, and who is horrified by the antics and nonsense and recklessness of the Johnson regime.
In many constituencies, this will mean people who have traditionally identified with the Labour Party; but they too now need to think through their historic allegiance and focus instead on the outcomes they want to see.
It won't happen in the next year or so as Boris will block it
He can't.
Nippy can call a referendum that is illegal only in specific and limited ways, and BoZo can sit and spin...
Boris can, as Madrid showed when the Catalan government held an illegal independence referendum, illegal referendums can be ignored. Just as in the Catalan referendum Unionists would be told to boycott it as well
You really are both delusional and confident beyond your understanding of how things work.
How things work is since the 1707 Act of Union Westminster has been the supreme lawmaker in the UK, Holyrood was only created by Westminster in 1998 and legally Westminster could scrap Holyood or suspend it next year as Madrid suspended the Catalan parliament after the illegal indyref there.
That may not be advisable but constitutionally it is possible and Westminster consent is needed for a legal indyref as it was needed in 2014
But the Scottish government - backed by a democratic mandate - would only be breaking the law in a specific and very limited way. How precisely do you envisage that this government - who backed by democratic mandate is breaking the law in a specific and very limited way - will be able to stop them?
Just because you keep saying something doesn't make it correct. As this government themselves are demonstrating the law is now an impediment to political will. They cannot apply one rule for themselves and another for everyone else, politics simply doesn't work like that.
You An intelligent man. You either (a) know it doesn't work like that but are willing to say things you know are not true out of party loyalty (a lie) or (b) you have chosen not to inform yourself in the manner that IDS didn't inform himself about the contents of the bill he was voting for saying "we don't need to read this" (ignorance).
Which is it?
The issue the Scots have is that while the UK Parliament is sovereign, the Scottish Parliament is not.
Forcing the point on this issue though would be suicide for unionists.
Gibraltar is a political distraction for politicians who want the focus removed from domestic events, they would have no need to march in, just close the boarder. But why shoot yourself in the foot many Spaniards work in Gibraltar and it’s mutually advantageous as it stands.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
It is not about changing the law. It is about defaulting on an agreement. Changing the law is a smokescreen that you are hiding behind. It is about defaulting on an agreement.
That is immoral in betting or in international relations. If morality doesn't concern you, it is also extremely unwise. You may get a short term benefit but at the cost of much greater long term pain.
In Phil's world it would be morally acceptable for the Spanish to tear up the Treaty of Utrecht and to march into Gibraltar.
In Phil's world if the Spanish thought they could get away with tearing up the Treaty of Utrecht and marching into Gibraltar they would.
In Phil's world what defends Gibraltar from that is the threat of the military not the threat of lawyers.
Nobody is talking about lawyers so I’m not sure why you are. The “rule of law” has very little to do with lawyers.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
In reality it is thus:
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 3 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 4 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 5 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 6 - Start to feel better, “oh it’s probably not COVID” Day 7 - Infect others
Isn’t it more along the lines of:
Day 1 - Get infected. Day 2 - infect others Day 3 - infect others Day 4 - infect others Day 5 - infect others; start to develop symptoms Day 6 - self-isolate, try to book test, are unable Day 7 - self isolate, try to book test, are unable Day 8 - self isolate, try to book test, offered one a hundred miles away Day 9 - drag yourself a hundred miles (or get driven there by family member, increasing their exposure), take test Day 10 - self isolate, await test result Day 11 - self isolate, starting to feel better (hopefully) receive test result
By Day 12, the test result may be of historical benefit only. The pushback against non-symptomatics getting tests seems barking mad to me: it’s the pre-symptomatic period that’s the biggest danger (most people will self-isolate when they get symptoms, and, in any case, will probably not be up to wandering in to work, going to restaurants, getting dragged around the shops, etc). If you have reason to suspect you’ve been exposed but haven’t yet developed symptoms, surely you should be the top priority for testing?
Correct. A mass testing regime which was only 70% accurate, but was used and gave results immediately on your ‘day 1’ would catch a far higher proportion of those who were actually infectious. Such technology already exists (& is probably a lot better than 70% sensitive in detecting those actually infectious, as opposed to PCR positive).
We could probably run a large scale regional trial of it for £100m, not £100bn.
The idea with contact tracing is that you can do the tracing and testing faster than the virus can spread, and so you can chase the virus and locate where it is and isolate those infectious, and ultimately contacts before they are infectious.
So your first case might not have a test result until day 10 of the infection, but then you drive that down for contacts, and contacts of contacts, and so on. Unfortunately our test and trace system has never reached that level of capability.
What this means is that, if it takes 5 days from acquiring the infection to becoming infectious then the whole end-to-end process of contact tracing has to take less time than that, and you have to pursue all the way down to contacts of contacts of contacts of...
Where this is working it tends to be with large teams of local people trusted by the local population, not the over-centralised system we have.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
We have all been sold a tremendous dummy by being persuaded to focus on this nebulous concept of "the rule of law" when the question is the brutally simple one, should governments act honourably and stand by their word? If Mozambique said it would do something in a treaty with the UK, and then that it had changed its mind, I don't see anyone being impressed by learned Mozambiquean counsel boring on about the validity of the move in Mozambique law.
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
You agree a bet you think you are going to win. You lose. The facts have changed. So you renege on it. That's realpolitik. That is a power play that you think you can get away with.
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
No, absolutely not. That's completely different.
You said, in defence of Johnson "People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
The two are not comparable.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
It is not about changing the law. It is about defaulting on an agreement. Changing the law is a smokescreen that you are hiding behind. It is about defaulting on an agreement.
That is immoral in betting or in international relations. If morality doesn't concern you, it is also extremely unwise. You may get a short term benefit but at the cost of much greater long term pain.
In Phil's world it would be morally acceptable for the Spanish to tear up the Treaty of Utrecht and to march into Gibraltar.
In Phil's world if the Spanish thought they could get away with tearing up the Treaty of Utrecht and marching into Gibraltar they would.
In Phil's world what defends Gibraltar from that is the threat of the military not the threat of lawyers.
So in Phil's world, what defends him when welshing on a bet is his heavies? Not a world I share.
The fact that real politik is the only thing stopping Spain from violating the rule of law regarding Gibraltar is neither here nor there. It doesn’t change anything.
Comments
PS The use of here's why" in a headline is an infallible c--t indicator.
https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/1305082794213888001?s=20
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
Yes again you demonstrate adherence to the contemptible view that the law is not what is written is statute or precedent, but whatever one can get away with.
Then again since this appears to be the view of the Attorney General, you appear to be in good company.
It is a bit of a mystery why the Government should even have an Attorney General to offer legal advice in relation to International Law if all they are doing is advising on whether they can get away with it.
I'm sure that Lord Goldsmith would have found things a lot easier at the time of the Iraq War, if his role had been limited not to finding contortions to state that the actions taken were legal, but merely to say if there would be any enforcement action taken if they were not without any responsibility to resign for any law breaking taken in defiance of his advice.
If Parliament votes to change statute and it gets Royal Assent then that is the new statute.
And anyway, a large part of the issue with the Internal Markets Bill is that it is seeking to abrogate from the obligation for NI to align with EU regulation (eg. State Aid)
That may not be advisable but constitutionally it is possible and Westminster consent is needed for a legal indyref as it was needed in 2014
Do you think that is wise? Do you think that it is OK?
Keir has played a blinder
Nvidia buyout of ARM is imminent, report claims – so watch out AMD and Intel
https://www.techradar.com/amp/news/nvidia-buyout-of-arm-is-imminent-report-claims-so-watch-out-amd-and-intel
Happy with that?
Pathetic.
"Well that would be statute and law".
Or might you perhaps query whether they should be doing this in advance and strongly argue for MPs and peers to reject the legislation?
Get a grip man.
Day 1 - Get infected.
Day 2 - infect others
Day 3 - infect others
Day 4 - infect others
Day 5 - infect others; start to develop symptoms
Day 6 - self-isolate, try to book test, are unable
Day 7 - self isolate, try to book test, are unable
Day 8 - self isolate, try to book test, offered one a hundred miles away
Day 9 - drag yourself a hundred miles (or get driven there by family member, increasing their exposure), take test
Day 10 - self isolate, await test result
Day 11 - self isolate, starting to feel better (hopefully) receive test result
By Day 12, the test result may be of historical benefit only. The pushback against non-symptomatics getting tests seems barking mad to me: it’s the pre-symptomatic period that’s the biggest danger (most people will self-isolate when they get symptoms, and, in any case, will probably not be up to wandering in to work, going to restaurants, getting dragged around the shops, etc). If you have reason to suspect you’ve been exposed but haven’t yet developed symptoms, surely you should be the top priority for testing?
https://twitter.com/libdemdaisy/status/1305083693103566849?s=20
"People are entitled to change their minds. It is a u-turn, u-turns happen.
When facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
I showed you with a practical example, close to home, the implication of that line of argument.
You said "No, absolutely not." You felt, in that example, the disgust most of us feel with Johnson's behaviour. Does that help you see it from our point of view? At heart, it is a moral question, not a legal one.
Situation is mundane and entirely predictable -there must be a LOT of people in similar situation. Yet actually guidance is totally unclear and contradictory wrt work, school, other clubs...
What a shambles basically.
This could be an absolute game changer, well done LDs
The arbitration will be what risk premium should be applied to Britain keeping to its commitments in the future, amongst other things.
Brexiteers have been happy to compare us to Canada and Australia.
Changing the law is not comparable to defaulting on a debt. The comparable thing would be eg a sovereign debt default which is not something the UK has ever done or that I would support.
Question 1, you don't support BLM do you.. do you not accept racism, yadda yadda yadda for basically the 20 min interview.
Question 2, you are an Islmaphobe aren't you.
The interviewer clearly sees Sam Harris a better spoken Tommy Robinson.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8726733/Boris-Johnson-opt-major-European-human-rights-laws.html
A mass testing regime which was only 70% accurate, but was used and gave results immediately on your ‘day 1’ would catch a far higher proportion of those who were actually infectious.
Such technology already exists (& is probably a lot better than 70% sensitive in detecting those actually infectious, as opposed to PCR positive).
We could probably run a large scale regional trial of it for £100m, not £100bn.
It is exactly the opposite situation here.
That's why they wanted BoZo as leader.
It's a feature, not a bug.
That is immoral in betting or in international relations. If morality doesn't concern you, it is also extremely unwise. You may get a short term benefit but at the cost of much greater long term pain.
On the question of "the rule of law" its the exact same situation.
United States: US President Donald Trump defied COVID-19 regulations this Sunday by holding a massive rally in Nevada, despite the fact that events that gather more than fifty people are prohibited in this state. The vast majority of attendees did not wear a mask.
Regardless there is a court case that says the Ministerial Code that says Ministers must not “break the law” includes international law which is not made by Parliament.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has acknowledged that the new cannabis law does selectively violate the treaties, although Berube said the approach "is consistent with the overarching goals of the UN drug conventions, namely to protect the health and safety of citizens."
Sound familiar?
Breaching international law with the undoubted support of the electorate.
As opposed to breaching it in clear violation of the express "will of the people."
Just because you keep saying something doesn't make it correct. As this government themselves are demonstrating the law is not an impediment to political will. They cannot apply one rule for themselves and another for everyone else, politics simply doesn't work like that.
You An intelligent man. You either (a) know it doesn't work like that but are willing to say things you know are not true out of party loyalty (a lie) or (b) you have chosen not to inform yourself in the manner that IDS didn't inform himself about the contents of the bill he was voting for saying "we don't need to read this" (ignorance).
Which is it?
So your first case might not have a test result until day 10 of the infection, but then you drive that down for contacts, and contacts of contacts, and so on. Unfortunately our test and trace system has never reached that level of capability.
In Phil's world what defends Gibraltar from that is the threat of the military not the threat of lawyers.
But surely they are not simply setting out to pick up "Soft Conservative" voters? They are aiming to gather in everybody who shares Liberal values, and who is horrified by the antics and nonsense and recklessness of the Johnson regime.
In many constituencies, this will mean people who have traditionally identified with the Labour Party; but they too now need to think through their historic allegiance and focus instead on the outcomes they want to see.
https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1305047757695184896
https://twitter.com/LASDHQ/status/1304975945376305153?s=19
Forcing the point on this issue though would be suicide for unionists.
Where this is working it tends to be with large teams of local people trusted by the local population, not the over-centralised system we have.
Is this the Russian arms dealer with links to Putin and a £1bn plus deal that he wanted the govt to approve?
Hope the old establishment Tories one day wake up, see what is happening and say no more.