Isn’t the only real way to avoid IHT completely, assuming you’re over the nil-rate band, to “dispose” of your assets, be it into trust or gift, at least 7 years prior to death?
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
Voters prefer tax rises to spending cuts by 59% to 16%.
However while 57% support increasing tobacco duty and 55% back a corporation tax rise and 37% back increasing CGT or alcohol duty only 20% back increasing income tax, just 12% back increasing inheritance tax and only 9% back increasing national insurance and a tiny 7% want a fuel tax rise or VAT rise.
People hate inheritance tax, don't they? For me, this is a close psychological fit to our attachment to private schools. In both cases it goes way beyond those who pay IHT or use private schools. And for me it also explains why it is next to impossible for Labour to win power here unless they abandon any serious ambitions to fight inequality. The fact is, we value other things far higher than that. Sad face.
People spend their whole lives building up assets - it represents their life's work.
They don't want to see the whole lot confiscated by the State when they die.
They want to choose how to leave their own legacy instead.
Nevertheless a world where everyone started off without any financial inheritance would probably be a better one.
No it would be a world where all our assets we worked for were returned to the state on death
As I was saying. Making possible a more true meritocracy
No, meritocracy in reality just mainly reflects inherited IQ, it just means an expanded state and less private wealth
Utter rubbish. You can have a high IQ and yet still be extremely lazy.
To be a doctor, lawyer, software engineer ie the highest paid jobs, you need a high IQ.
Have you met a lot of Premiership footballers?
Having a high skill in football is also a form of intelligence and as the likes of Jamie Redknapp or Frank Lampard show in some cases inherited too
Yeah, but it is not “IQ”, which is what you were talking about.
Mean IQ of US welfare recipients 92, mean IQ of the median American 100, mean IQ of US self-made millionaires 118, mean IQ of US Decamillionaires 118, mean IQ of US billionaires 133.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Religious services exempt
LOL
'so home secretary, you see ten paratroopers marching in the street together to commemorate comrades who died fighting for freedom...do you ring the police....??''
Isn’t the only real way to avoid IHT completely, assuming you’re over the nil-rate band, to “dispose” of your assets, be it into trust or gift, at least 7 years prior to death?
Come on: assets are everything - they are freedom, and they are power. That's why the Left, the Right, and everyone in between is utterly obsessed with them.
If you are utterly obsessed with assets, I'm glad I do not know you personally.
Most people I know work to have a comfortable life. I do not know many people at all who are "utterly obsessed with assets".
If you're going to insist on misunderstanding my points, there's not much I can do.
To put it as succinctly as possible: accumulating assets and leaving them to your kids is not just Scrooge-McDuck-style narcissicism. It's an act of love - those children will have the very obvious advantages of comfort, opportunity, and freedom from stress that a material cushion provides. People who've earned their money through hard graft and menial labour feel this emotion just as strongly as privileged plutocrats do - often more so, because they know what life is like without those advantages. That's why IHT polls so disastrously across the population.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
If it is in fact cancelled, are you honestly arguing that symbolic occasions - extremely important as I agree they are - should determine public health policy? That our desire to honour the dead should risk creating more dead unnecessarily? Including the elderly veterans who attend the march in their hundreds and thousands and are most at risk? Come on, it's just not rational.
Voters prefer tax rises to spending cuts by 59% to 16%.
However while 57% support increasing tobacco duty and 55% back a corporation tax rise and 37% back increasing CGT or alcohol duty only 20% back increasing income tax, just 12% back increasing inheritance tax and only 9% back increasing national insurance and a tiny 7% want a fuel tax rise or VAT rise.
People hate inheritance tax, don't they? For me, this is a close psychological fit to our attachment to private schools. In both cases it goes way beyond those who pay IHT or use private schools. And for me it also explains why it is next to impossible for Labour to win power here unless they abandon any serious ambitions to fight inequality. The fact is, we value other things far higher than that. Sad face.
People spend their whole lives building up assets - it represents their life's work.
They don't want to see the whole lot confiscated by the State when they die.
They want to choose how to leave their own legacy instead.
Nevertheless a world where everyone started off without any financial inheritance would probably be a better one.
No it would be a world where all our assets we worked for were returned to the state on death
As I was saying. Making possible a more true meritocracy
No, meritocracy in reality just mainly reflects inherited IQ, it just means an expanded state and less private wealth
Utter rubbish. You can have a high IQ and yet still be extremely lazy.
To be a doctor, lawyer, software engineer ie the highest paid jobs, you need a high IQ.
Have you met a lot of Premiership footballers?
Having a high skill in football is also a form of intelligence and as the likes of Jamie Redknapp or Frank Lampard show in some cases inherited too
Yeah, but it is not “IQ”, which is what you were talking about.
Mean IQ of US welfare recipients 92, mean IQ of the median American 100, mean IQ of US self-made millionaires 118, mean IQ of US Decamillionaires 118, mean IQ of US billionaires 133.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
But mass protests are ok, if they fill in a risk assessment....
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Are you honestly arguing that symbolic occasions - extremely important as I agree they are - should determine public health policy? That our desire to honour the dead should risk creating more dead unnecessarily? Including the elderly veterans who attend the march in their hundreds and thousands and are most at risk? Come on, it's just not rational.
Of course.
The exact same thing happened with the 75th Anniversary of VE Day.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Voters prefer tax rises to spending cuts by 59% to 16%.
However while 57% support increasing tobacco duty and 55% back a corporation tax rise and 37% back increasing CGT or alcohol duty only 20% back increasing income tax, just 12% back increasing inheritance tax and only 9% back increasing national insurance and a tiny 7% want a fuel tax rise or VAT rise.
People hate inheritance tax, don't they? For me, this is a close psychological fit to our attachment to private schools. In both cases it goes way beyond those who pay IHT or use private schools. And for me it also explains why it is next to impossible for Labour to win power here unless they abandon any serious ambitions to fight inequality. The fact is, we value other things far higher than that. Sad face.
People spend their whole lives building up assets - it represents their life's work.
They don't want to see the whole lot confiscated by the State when they die.
They want to choose how to leave their own legacy instead.
Nevertheless a world where everyone started off without any financial inheritance would probably be a better one.
No it would be a world where all our assets we worked for were returned to the state on death
As I was saying. Making possible a more true meritocracy
No, meritocracy in reality just mainly reflects inherited IQ, it just means an expanded state and less private wealth
Utter rubbish. You can have a high IQ and yet still be extremely lazy.
To be a doctor, lawyer, software engineer ie the highest paid jobs, you need a high IQ.
Have you met a lot of Premiership footballers?
Having a high skill in football is also a form of intelligence and as the likes of Jamie Redknapp or Frank Lampard show in some cases inherited too
Yeah, but it is not “IQ”, which is what you were talking about.
Mean IQ of US welfare recipients 92, mean IQ of the median American 100, mean IQ of US self-made millionaires 118, mean IQ of US Decamillionaires 118, mean IQ of US billionaires 133.
In a blow* to the treasury, my Spoons bound on Thursday group has decided its too much of a risk, and one is hosting a BBQ instead.
The only shops we visit these days are the supermarkets. We are not Eating Out to Help Out, we are not going to pubs, cinemas or coffee shops.
Why not?
Because there is a pandemic. Pubs and restaurants are known to be higher risk so we just minimised all that sort of thing and we just socialise at a distance with people. No one gets invites to come round to ours and we do not visit their place.
Wow. From my circle, that's a fairly rare position. How long do you expect to continue to live in that way? I would go mad.
Voters prefer tax rises to spending cuts by 59% to 16%.
However while 57% support increasing tobacco duty and 55% back a corporation tax rise and 37% back increasing CGT or alcohol duty only 20% back increasing income tax, just 12% back increasing inheritance tax and only 9% back increasing national insurance and a tiny 7% want a fuel tax rise or VAT rise.
People hate inheritance tax, don't they? For me, this is a close psychological fit to our attachment to private schools. In both cases it goes way beyond those who pay IHT or use private schools. And for me it also explains why it is next to impossible for Labour to win power here unless they abandon any serious ambitions to fight inequality. The fact is, we value other things far higher than that. Sad face.
People spend their whole lives building up assets - it represents their life's work.
They don't want to see the whole lot confiscated by the State when they die.
They want to choose how to leave their own legacy instead.
Nevertheless a world where everyone started off without any financial inheritance would probably be a better one.
No it would be a world where all our assets we worked for were returned to the state on death
As I was saying. Making possible a more true meritocracy
No, meritocracy in reality just mainly reflects inherited IQ, it just means an expanded state and less private wealth
Utter rubbish. You can have a high IQ and yet still be extremely lazy.
To be a doctor, lawyer, software engineer ie the highest paid jobs, you need a high IQ.
Have you met a lot of Premiership footballers?
Having a high skill in football is also a form of intelligence and as the likes of Jamie Redknapp or Frank Lampard show in some cases inherited too
Yeah, but it is not “IQ”, which is what you were talking about.
Mean IQ of US welfare recipients 92, mean IQ of the median American 100, mean IQ of US self-made millionaires 118, mean IQ of US Decamillionaires 118, mean IQ of US billionaires 133.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Are you honestly arguing that symbolic occasions - extremely important as I agree they are - should determine public health policy? That our desire to honour the dead should risk creating more dead unnecessarily? Including the elderly veterans who attend the march in their hundreds and thousands and are most at risk? Come on, it's just not rational.
Why is that a decision for you to make? who on earth do you think you are?
if elderly veterans choose to risk their lives to remember their fallen comrades, who died for their freedom after all, why shouldn;t they? especially when the risk has been shown to be, for most people, to be pretty low. That's their choice, as free men,
Having fought for our freedoms, if anybody has that choice, they do.
After a couple of weeks, I walked the quarter mile to my primary school, 5 to 7. From 7 to 11 I walked a good mile each way, on my own. Through snow drifts sometimes.
I will leave it to others to decide whether this has had any lasting harm.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Given how old so many of the attendees are, it might well be murder to go ahead with it.
An iht free environment would also be disastrous for the heirs of the rich. There's lots of elderly toffs who hate everyone including their own children but just hate the tax man that little bit more. Without a bit of iht in the mix their incentive to disgorge any of the loot pre-death vanishes.
Come on: assets are everything - they are freedom, and they are power. That's why the Left, the Right, and everyone in between is utterly obsessed with them.
If you are utterly obsessed with assets, I'm glad I do not know you personally.
Most people I know work to have a comfortable life. I do not know many people at all who are "utterly obsessed with assets".
If you're going to insist on misunderstanding my points, there's not much I can do.
To put it as succinctly as possible: accumulating assets and leaving them to your kids is not just Scrooge-McDuck-style narcissicism. It's an act of love - those children will have the very obvious advantages of comfort, opportunity, and freedom from stress that a material cushion provides. People who've earned their money through hard graft and menial labour feel this emotion just as strongly as privileged plutocrats do - often more so, because they know what life is like without those advantages. That's why IHT polls so disastrously across the population.
Leaving assets to your children is an act of love? The time you spend with your children is sooo much more important than leaving them assets.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Given how old so many of the attendees are, it might well be murder to go ahead with it.
Its their choice. Not yours. They earned it. They know the risks. I reckon many will still want to honour the fallen.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
Isn’t the only real way to avoid IHT completely, assuming you’re over the nil-rate band, to “dispose” of your assets, be it into trust or gift, at least 7 years prior to death?
The late Spike Milligan, in Puckoon, reckoned that the thing to do was leave your money to yourself. Provided employment for lawyer for years. Practically up with Jarndyce v Jarndyce.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
The MSM, the mail aside, are streets behind on this. Streets. Brexit isn't yesterday's news its the day before yesterday's news.
Trouble is, the government knows labour are to the left of them so they can do what they like.
Come on: assets are everything - they are freedom, and they are power. That's why the Left, the Right, and everyone in between is utterly obsessed with them.
If you are utterly obsessed with assets, I'm glad I do not know you personally.
Most people I know work to have a comfortable life. I do not know many people at all who are "utterly obsessed with assets".
If you're going to insist on misunderstanding my points, there's not much I can do.
To put it as succinctly as possible: accumulating assets and leaving them to your kids is not just Scrooge-McDuck-style narcissicism. It's an act of love - those children will have the very obvious advantages of comfort, opportunity, and freedom from stress that a material cushion provides. People who've earned their money through hard graft and menial labour feel this emotion just as strongly as privileged plutocrats do - often more so, because they know what life is like without those advantages. That's why IHT polls so disastrously across the population.
Leaving assets to your children is an act of love? The time you spend with your children is sooo much more important than leaving them assets.
In a blow* to the treasury, my Spoons bound on Thursday group has decided its too much of a risk, and one is hosting a BBQ instead.
The only shops we visit these days are the supermarkets. We are not Eating Out to Help Out, we are not going to pubs, cinemas or coffee shops.
Why not?
Because there is a pandemic. Pubs and restaurants are known to be higher risk so we just minimised all that sort of thing and we just socialise at a distance with people. No one gets invites to come round to ours and we do not visit their place.
Wow. From my circle, that's a fairly rare position. How long do you expect to continue to live in that way? I would go mad.
Isn’t the only real way to avoid IHT completely, assuming you’re over the nil-rate band, to “dispose” of your assets, be it into trust or gift, at least 7 years prior to death?
Which is fine for the genuinely rich. The merely well off need their assets to live on, and in.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
In a blow* to the treasury, my Spoons bound on Thursday group has decided its too much of a risk, and one is hosting a BBQ instead.
The only shops we visit these days are the supermarkets. We are not Eating Out to Help Out, we are not going to pubs, cinemas or coffee shops.
Why not?
Because there is a pandemic. Pubs and restaurants are known to be higher risk so we just minimised all that sort of thing and we just socialise at a distance with people. No one gets invites to come round to ours and we do not visit their place.
Wow. From my circle, that's a fairly rare position. How long do you expect to continue to live in that way? I would go mad.
Voters prefer tax rises to spending cuts by 59% to 16%.
However while 57% support increasing tobacco duty and 55% back a corporation tax rise and 37% back increasing CGT or alcohol duty only 20% back increasing income tax, just 12% back increasing inheritance tax and only 9% back increasing national insurance and a tiny 7% want a fuel tax rise or VAT rise.
People hate inheritance tax, don't they? For me, this is a close psychological fit to our attachment to private schools. In both cases it goes way beyond those who pay IHT or use private schools. And for me it also explains why it is next to impossible for Labour to win power here unless they abandon any serious ambitions to fight inequality. The fact is, we value other things far higher than that. Sad face.
People spend their whole lives building up assets - it represents their life's work.
They don't want to see the whole lot confiscated by the State when they die.
They want to choose how to leave their own legacy instead.
Nevertheless a world where everyone started off without any financial inheritance would probably be a better one.
No it would be a world where all our assets we worked for were returned to the state on death
As I was saying. Making possible a more true meritocracy
No, meritocracy in reality just mainly reflects inherited IQ, it just means an expanded state and less private wealth
Utter rubbish. You can have a high IQ and yet still be extremely lazy.
To be a doctor, lawyer, software engineer ie the highest paid jobs, you need a high IQ.
Have you met a lot of Premiership footballers?
Having a high skill in football is also a form of intelligence and as the likes of Jamie Redknapp or Frank Lampard show in some cases inherited too
The much valued "great football brain".
But on the issue -
Yes, families are important, people naturally prioritize their own and their family's interests over the common good, but this doesn't mean this preference should be validated by the tax system. The opposite if anything. The tax system should be based on collectivist principles. If people could choose how their taxes were spent, for example, we would not be able to move for children's cancer centres but there would be a dearth of traffic wardens.
Come on: assets are everything - they are freedom, and they are power. That's why the Left, the Right, and everyone in between is utterly obsessed with them.
If you are utterly obsessed with assets, I'm glad I do not know you personally.
Most people I know work to have a comfortable life. I do not know many people at all who are "utterly obsessed with assets".
If you're going to insist on misunderstanding my points, there's not much I can do.
To put it as succinctly as possible: accumulating assets and leaving them to your kids is not just Scrooge-McDuck-style narcissicism. It's an act of love - those children will have the very obvious advantages of comfort, opportunity, and freedom from stress that a material cushion provides. People who've earned their money through hard graft and menial labour feel this emotion just as strongly as privileged plutocrats do - often more so, because they know what life is like without those advantages. That's why IHT polls so disastrously across the population.
Leaving assets to your children is an act of love? The time you spend with your children is sooo much more important than leaving them assets.
It's not an either/or.
But BluestBlue claimed that we are all "obsessed with assests". I do not consider leaving assets as an "act of love", useful and practical yes, but an "act of love"?
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Given how old so many of the attendees are, it might well be murder to go ahead with it.
Its their choice. Not yours. They earned it. They know the risks. I reckon many will still want to honour the fallen.
I stood to attention when I read that post. How many of them do you think actually know the risks, dementia being what it is, and how many more do you think are going to feel constrained to attend if there is a thing to attend, when they wouldn't if there wasn't?
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
I would be very, very loath indeed to snitch on any of my neighbours. In a relatively small community anyone doing that would soon become known and I'm sure there'd be the odd unfortunate minor accident.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Are you honestly arguing that symbolic occasions - extremely important as I agree they are - should determine public health policy? That our desire to honour the dead should risk creating more dead unnecessarily? Including the elderly veterans who attend the march in their hundreds and thousands and are most at risk? Come on, it's just not rational.
Why is that a decision for you to make? who on earth do you think you are?
if elderly veterans choose to risk their lives to remember their fallen comrades, who died for their freedom after all, why shouldn;t they? especially when the risk has been shown to be, for most people, to be pretty low. That's their choice, as free men,
Having fought for our freedoms, if anybody has that choice, they do.
Fortunately I'm not the one making the decision - the elected government is, after taking the advice of people who have advanced degrees and decades of academic and professional experience in the subject.
If it's at all possible to hold it safely - what we know tells us that outdoor events are much safer than indoors - then I'm sure they'll want it to go ahead. But if it's not safe, it would be grossly irresponsible to expose a lot of elderly people to a disease that is particularly dangerous to them.
Voters prefer tax rises to spending cuts by 59% to 16%.
However while 57% support increasing tobacco duty and 55% back a corporation tax rise and 37% back increasing CGT or alcohol duty only 20% back increasing income tax, just 12% back increasing inheritance tax and only 9% back increasing national insurance and a tiny 7% want a fuel tax rise or VAT rise.
People hate inheritance tax, don't they? For me, this is a close psychological fit to our attachment to private schools. In both cases it goes way beyond those who pay IHT or use private schools. And for me it also explains why it is next to impossible for Labour to win power here unless they abandon any serious ambitions to fight inequality. The fact is, we value other things far higher than that. Sad face.
People spend their whole lives building up assets - it represents their life's work.
They don't want to see the whole lot confiscated by the State when they die.
They want to choose how to leave their own legacy instead.
Nevertheless a world where everyone started off without any financial inheritance would probably be a better one.
No it would be a world where all our assets we worked for were returned to the state on death
As I was saying. Making possible a more true meritocracy
No, meritocracy in reality just mainly reflects inherited IQ, it just means an expanded state and less private wealth
Utter rubbish. You can have a high IQ and yet still be extremely lazy.
To be a doctor, lawyer, software engineer ie the highest paid jobs, you need a high IQ.
Have you met a lot of Premiership footballers?
Having a high skill in football is also a form of intelligence and as the likes of Jamie Redknapp or Frank Lampard show in some cases inherited too
The much valued "great football brain".
But on the issue -
Yes, families are important, people naturally prioritize their own and their family's interests over the common good, but this doesn't mean this preference should be validated by the tax system. The opposite if anything. The tax system should be based on collectivist principles. If people could choose how their taxes were spent, for example, we would not be able to move for children's cancer centres but there would be a dearth of traffic wardens.
Hence you are a socialist/social democrat and want to tax more and I am a Tory and believe in preservation of assets as well as income, liberals more preservation of income than assets.
Plus how taxes are spent is not the same as how they are raised
The messaging missing from mask wearing is a) it isnt an invincibility shield, b) how to wear it properly and c) not to keep bloody taking off and on again.
From observation my guestimates are that 20% of people are simply not wearing masks when they should, and about another 20% more are either wearing them wrong or continually farting around with them. I've not really noticed any particular demographic differences. Flouting the rules or being an idiot seems to cut across all ages, classes, etc.
When it comes to social distancing I think maybe half of people are obeying the rules, a lot of the etiquette there seems to have stopped.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
The MSM, the mail aside, are streets behind on this. Streets. Brexit isn't yesterday's news its the day before yesterday's news.
Trouble is, the government knows labour are to the left of them so they can do what they like.
Voters prefer tax rises to spending cuts by 59% to 16%.
However while 57% support increasing tobacco duty and 55% back a corporation tax rise and 37% back increasing CGT or alcohol duty only 20% back increasing income tax, just 12% back increasing inheritance tax and only 9% back increasing national insurance and a tiny 7% want a fuel tax rise or VAT rise.
People hate inheritance tax, don't they? For me, this is a close psychological fit to our attachment to private schools. In both cases it goes way beyond those who pay IHT or use private schools. And for me it also explains why it is next to impossible for Labour to win power here unless they abandon any serious ambitions to fight inequality. The fact is, we value other things far higher than that. Sad face.
People spend their whole lives building up assets - it represents their life's work.
They don't want to see the whole lot confiscated by the State when they die.
They want to choose how to leave their own legacy instead.
Nevertheless a world where everyone started off without any financial inheritance would probably be a better one.
No it would be a world where all our assets we worked for were returned to the state on death
As I was saying. Making possible a more true meritocracy
No, meritocracy in reality just mainly reflects inherited IQ, it just means an expanded state and less private wealth
Utter rubbish. You can have a high IQ and yet still be extremely lazy.
To be a doctor, lawyer, software engineer ie the highest paid jobs, you need a high IQ.
Have you met a lot of Premiership footballers?
Having a high skill in football is also a form of intelligence and as the likes of Jamie Redknapp or Frank Lampard show in some cases inherited too
The much valued "great football brain".
But on the issue -
Yes, families are important, people naturally prioritize their own and their family's interests over the common good, but this doesn't mean this preference should be validated by the tax system. The opposite if anything. The tax system should be based on collectivist principles. If people could choose how their taxes were spent, for example, we would not be able to move for children's cancer centres but there would be a dearth of traffic wardens.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
The MSM, the mail aside, are streets behind on this. Streets. Brexit isn't yesterday's news its the day before yesterday's news.
Trouble is, the government knows labour are to the left of them so they can do what they like.
And they can, for now....
Not a left-right issue, not at all.
It pisses me off when people cast it thus.
I dont think any left wing politicians are critical though are they? Or journo's/commentators
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
Or its another set up of trying to make it look like the Lords are being deliberately trying to stop Brexit.
For me the ‘fun’ thing is that even if the government is right, the Salisbury-Addison convention still gives the Lords a year to delay the bill. Now this bill needs to be law by the 31st of December, so something has to give.
Or its another set up of trying to make it look like the Lords are being deliberately trying to stop Brexit.
For me the ‘fun’ thing is that even if the government is right, the Salisbury-Addison convention still gives the Lords a year to delay the bill. Now this bill needs to be law by the 31st of December, so something has to give.
What does HM's diary look like? She might need to give a couple of speeches this year.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Are you honestly arguing that symbolic occasions - extremely important as I agree they are - should determine public health policy? That our desire to honour the dead should risk creating more dead unnecessarily? Including the elderly veterans who attend the march in their hundreds and thousands and are most at risk? Come on, it's just not rational.
Why is that a decision for you to make? who on earth do you think you are?
if elderly veterans choose to risk their lives to remember their fallen comrades, who died for their freedom after all, why shouldn;t they? especially when the risk has been shown to be, for most people, to be pretty low. That's their choice, as free men,
Having fought for our freedoms, if anybody has that choice, they do.
Fortunately I'm not the one making the decision - the elected government is, after taking the advice of people who have advanced degrees and decades of academic and professional experience in the subject.
If it's at all possible to hold it safely - what we know tells us that outdoor events are much safer than indoors - then I'm sure they'll want it to go ahead. But if it's not safe, it would be grossly irresponsible to expose a lot of elderly people to a disease that is particularly dangerous to them.
Simply not true. I guess you overlooked the criticisms of your group of scientists by another group of scientists in the conservative Spectator magazine. A dad's army of highly paid people with little experience? don;t give me the experts argument please.
And I missed the part in the conservative manifesto where the party said they would try to drastically curtail our freedoms on a flimsy pretext that is manifestly disputed by scientists. And not even the government. A small part of the government, supported by an unelected and unnacountable group of shadowy academics. By decree, with no debate and no vote.
If you’re unmarried you only have a nil-rate band of £325,000 to play with.
Not quite. It's a bit more complicated than that, otherwise there wouldn't be any Inheritance Tax lawyers and accountants. Which there are. See, for example,
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
A small-stakes bet on Mogul to win the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at 25/1 with William Hill (generally 14s elsewhere) is worth considering now he has *not* been included amongst those being quarantined for Australia. Mogul was Derby favourite earlier in the season but disappointed in the big race, but on Sunday won his Arc trial in a time fast enough to have taken most Arcs. It has still not been confirmed Mogul will run in the Arc (and you lose your stake if not) but the signs are auspicious.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Given how old so many of the attendees are, it might well be murder to go ahead with it.
Its their choice. Not yours. They earned it. They know the risks. I reckon many will still want to honour the fallen.
I stood to attention when I read that post. How many of them do you think actually know the risks, dementia being what it is, and how many more do you think are going to feel constrained to attend if there is a thing to attend, when they wouldn't if there wasn't?
My wife and I will probably go. We'll keep away from people we don't know, of course, although that's a bit difficult in our community and we'll wear masks.I expect a lot of others will do the same.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Given how old so many of the attendees are, it might well be murder to go ahead with it.
Its their choice. Not yours. They earned it. They know the risks. I reckon many will still want to honour the fallen.
I stood to attention when I read that post. How many of them do you think actually know the risks, dementia being what it is, and how many more do you think are going to feel constrained to attend if there is a thing to attend, when they wouldn't if there wasn't?
I would have thought that if there was one demographic that thought "sod it" and wanted to march, it would be those that wanted to march.
And I get the part about being compos mentis but it is their choice. Because if someone else decides that X is too dangerous for them, why not Y and Z also? Where Y and Z are....
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
I choose not to be dead and I ponder that very often as I approach the Black Cat roundabout. Or go skiing. Or jump on a Boris bike to cycle through Central London.
The second part of your post contained too many "if"s for me.
The messaging missing from mask wearing is a) it isnt an invincibility shield, b) how to wear it properly and c) not to keep bloody taking off and on again.
From observation my guestimates are that 20% of people are simply not wearing masks when they should, and about another 20% more are either wearing them wrong or continually farting around with them. I've not really noticed any particular demographic differences. Flouting the rules or being an idiot seems to cut across all ages, classes, etc.
When it comes to social distancing I think maybe half of people are obeying the rules, a lot of the etiquette there seems to have stopped.
These two posts encompass why mask wearing in the general public was not encouraged by the WHO until political pressure made them change their viewpoint. People do not wear them correctly, they think they are invincible and do not social distance anymore.
Israel is the lastet in a long line of countries where, following enforced mask wearing, cases has gone up massively, so much so that they have had to lockdown
The opposition in the Lords should release a statement saying they can’t pass the Bill as it breaks the Tory manifesto and that would be breaking the Salisbury Convention.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
This is what I was saying to you this morning. The "Rule of Six" and "Hands Face Space" is essentially just the government messaging a clear and simple recommended "MO" for people for the next few months. They've done this because they know the virus will remain a threat until vaccine - having prioritized schools - and they do not want to keep chopping and changing and setting, and then resetting, different rules for various people in a multitude of different situations. Folk get confused. We've seen that.
But there WILL be mass disobedience, as you say. Of course there will. And that is factored in. It's expected and will be totally tolerated. The key point is that the restrictions will not be seriously policed. People will not be dobbing in their neighbours for having 7 round for tea. The hope - which I think is perfectly reasonable - is that most people will behave in a way that is appropriate to their risk and their circumstances. It's all a big nudge, not some sort of police state.
And I agree with you it's not a left v right issue. Plus I will change my mind and agree with you that it's an assault on liberty if it turns out I'm wrong and it IS seriously policed, with lots of informing and lots of fines handed out.
Voters prefer tax rises to spending cuts by 59% to 16%.
However while 57% support increasing tobacco duty and 55% back a corporation tax rise and 37% back increasing CGT or alcohol duty only 20% back increasing income tax, just 12% back increasing inheritance tax and only 9% back increasing national insurance and a tiny 7% want a fuel tax rise or VAT rise.
People hate inheritance tax, don't they? For me, this is a close psychological fit to our attachment to private schools. In both cases it goes way beyond those who pay IHT or use private schools. And for me it also explains why it is next to impossible for Labour to win power here unless they abandon any serious ambitions to fight inequality. The fact is, we value other things far higher than that. Sad face.
People spend their whole lives building up assets - it represents their life's work.
They don't want to see the whole lot confiscated by the State when they die.
They want to choose how to leave their own legacy instead.
Nevertheless a world where everyone started off without any financial inheritance would probably be a better one.
No it would be a world where all our assets we worked for were returned to the state on death
As I was saying. Making possible a more true meritocracy
No, meritocracy in reality just mainly reflects inherited IQ, it just means an expanded state and less private wealth
Utter rubbish. You can have a high IQ and yet still be extremely lazy.
To be a doctor, lawyer, software engineer ie the highest paid jobs, you need a high IQ.
Have you met a lot of Premiership footballers?
Having a high skill in football is also a form of intelligence and as the likes of Jamie Redknapp or Frank Lampard show in some cases inherited too
Yeah, but it is not “IQ”, which is what you were talking about.
Mean IQ of US welfare recipients 92, mean IQ of the median American 100, mean IQ of US self-made millionaires 118, mean IQ of US Decamillionaires 118, mean IQ of US billionaires 133.
My original point, a supposedly meritocratic society is just one determined by largely inherited IQ
The bequest motive is driven by fear of mean reversion.
Inherited IQ is not additive as younsay it regresses towards the mean.
An exceptionally smart or gifted person will likely have a smarter than average kid but the kid is still likely to be less exceptional or smart than their parent. Plus if the parent has benefited from pure luck, it is unlikely that their kid will. So some mean reversion is likely. And so they seek to load the dice in their kid's favour. But as I have previously noted, a bequest to your kid when they are 60 isn't a very efficient means of doing this.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
I choose not to be dead and I ponder that very often as I approach the Black Cat roundabout. Or go skiing. Or jump on a Boris bike to cycle through Central London.
The second part of your post contained too many "if"s for me.
Let me explain my "ifs":
It is clear the epidemic in the UK is back on an exponential growth. If we want to limit that growth our only tool at the moment is social distancing. By next year there may be an effective vaccine; it won't be ready for the New Year parties. Stopping one mass event may or may not have an effect on virus spread. Point is, allowing the event to go ahead is indicative of having given up trying to control the virus, given we are also allowing a raft of other interactions. We may through choice or by default (I would prefer a conscious choice) give up control. The essentially certain outcome is a rampant epidemic with elevated death rates (although maybe a bit lower than in the Spring if we have better treatments). The vaccine will also be somewhat academic as the bulk of people will either have had the virus or will be dead.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
That's the point - they don't take responsibility - they expect the state to look after them when they fall ill and their families when they die....
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Are you honestly arguing that symbolic occasions - extremely important as I agree they are - should determine public health policy? That our desire to honour the dead should risk creating more dead unnecessarily? Including the elderly veterans who attend the march in their hundreds and thousands and are most at risk? Come on, it's just not rational.
Why is that a decision for you to make? who on earth do you think you are?
if elderly veterans choose to risk their lives to remember their fallen comrades, who died for their freedom after all, why shouldn;t they? especially when the risk has been shown to be, for most people, to be pretty low. That's their choice, as free men,
Having fought for our freedoms, if anybody has that choice, they do.
Fortunately I'm not the one making the decision - the elected government is, after taking the advice of people who have advanced degrees and decades of academic and professional experience in the subject.
If it's at all possible to hold it safely - what we know tells us that outdoor events are much safer than indoors - then I'm sure they'll want it to go ahead. But if it's not safe, it would be grossly irresponsible to expose a lot of elderly people to a disease that is particularly dangerous to them.
Simply not true. I guess you overlooked the criticisms of your group of scientists by another group of scientists in the conservative Spectator magazine. A dad's army of highly paid people with little experience? don;t give me the experts argument please.
And I missed the part in the conservative manifesto where the party said they would try to drastically curtail our freedoms on a flimsy pretext that is manifestly disputed by scientists. And not even the government. A small part of the government, supported by an unelected and unnacountable group of shadowy academics. By decree, with no debate and no vote.
Well, my education didn't include any virology, so I'm not in a position to decide between one group of scientists and another, other than by reading the published papers and following their conclusions. But the UK scientific advice is in line with that followed by most of the developed world, with the exception of countries like Sweden, of course.
There wasn't anything in any party's manifesto because this is was not an event that can be easily predicted or planned for. Sometimes terrible things just turn up - plague, war, global depressions - and the poor bastards in charge have to cope with it as best they can. I take the charitable view that the governments implementing these measures aren't trying to control us nefariously - these laws aren't making them any more popular, are they? They're just trying to minimize casualties until a vaccine arrives.
They may be proven wrong or misguided in the end, but that's only something we'll know for certain with hindsight.
But if these laws and restrictions are still in place once the health crisis is over, and our civil liberties have been permanently taken away, I'll admit you were right and join you on the barricades. Fair enough?
The messaging missing from mask wearing is a) it isnt an invincibility shield, b) how to wear it properly and c) not to keep bloody taking off and on again.
From observation my guestimates are that 20% of people are simply not wearing masks when they should, and about another 20% more are either wearing them wrong or continually farting around with them. I've not really noticed any particular demographic differences. Flouting the rules or being an idiot seems to cut across all ages, classes, etc.
When it comes to social distancing I think maybe half of people are obeying the rules, a lot of the etiquette there seems to have stopped.
These two posts encompass why mask wearing in the general public was not encouraged by the WHO until political pressure made them change their viewpoint. People do not wear them correctly, they think they are invincible and do not social distance anymore.
Israel is the lastet in a long line of countries where, following enforced mask wearing, cases has gone up massively, so much so that they have had to lockdown
Your stupidity on this matter continues to amaze me.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
This is what I was saying to you this morning. The "Rule of Six" and "Hands Face Space" is essentially just the government messaging a clear and simple recommended "MO" for people for the next few months. They've done this because they know the virus will remain a threat until vaccine - having prioritized schools - and they do not want to keep chopping and changing and setting, and then resetting, different rules for various people in a multitude of different situations. Folk get confused. We've seen that.
But there WILL be mass disobedience, as you say. Of course there will. And that is factored in. It's expected and will be totally tolerated. The key point is that the restrictions will not be seriously policed. People will not be dobbing in their neighbours for having 7 round for tea. The hope - which I think is perfectly reasonable - is that most people will behave in a way that is appropriate to their risk and their circumstances. It's all a big nudge, not some sort of police state.
And I agree with you it's not a left v right issue. Plus I will change my mind and agree with you that it's an assault on liberty if it turns out I'm wrong and it IS seriously policed, with lots of informing and lots of fines handed out.
The government's COVID rule of six will mean that Remembrance Sunday will probably have to be cancelled. How could it be otherwise?
The ritual gathering to remember those who fought and died for our freedoms will be cancelled by those who are restricting those freedoms. All the while, those graphs stay flat.
The optics of that are, to say the least, not great for the tories. Or labour. Or anybody in government.
Guido reckons that nobody appears to have thought about this, including the British Legion.
One of the problems of rule by decree, I guess.
Are you honestly arguing that symbolic occasions - extremely important as I agree they are - should determine public health policy? That our desire to honour the dead should risk creating more dead unnecessarily? Including the elderly veterans who attend the march in their hundreds and thousands and are most at risk? Come on, it's just not rational.
Why is that a decision for you to make? who on earth do you think you are?
if elderly veterans choose to risk their lives to remember their fallen comrades, who died for their freedom after all, why shouldn;t they? especially when the risk has been shown to be, for most people, to be pretty low. That's their choice, as free men,
Having fought for our freedoms, if anybody has that choice, they do.
Fortunately I'm not the one making the decision - the elected government is, after taking the advice of people who have advanced degrees and decades of academic and professional experience in the subject.
If it's at all possible to hold it safely - what we know tells us that outdoor events are much safer than indoors - then I'm sure they'll want it to go ahead. But if it's not safe, it would be grossly irresponsible to expose a lot of elderly people to a disease that is particularly dangerous to them.
Simply not true. I guess you overlooked the criticisms of your group of scientists by another group of scientists in the conservative Spectator magazine. A dad's army of highly paid people with little experience? don;t give me the experts argument please.
And I missed the part in the conservative manifesto where the party said they would try to drastically curtail our freedoms on a flimsy pretext that is manifestly disputed by scientists. And not even the government. A small part of the government, supported by an unelected and unnacountable group of shadowy academics. By decree, with no debate and no vote.
Well, my education didn't include any virology, so I'm not in a position to decide between one group of scientists and another, other than by reading the published papers and following their conclusions. But the UK scientific advice is in line with that followed by most of the developed world, with the exception of countries like Sweden, of course.
There wasn't anything in any party's manifesto because this is was not an event that can be easily predicted or planned for. Sometimes terrible things just turn up - plague, war, global depressions - and the poor bastards in charge have to cope with it as best they can. I take the charitable view that the governments implementing these measures aren't trying to control us nefariously - these laws aren't making them any more popular, are they? They're just trying to minimize casualties until a vaccine arrives.
They may be proven wrong or misguided in the end, but that's only something we'll know for certain with hindsight.
But if these laws and restrictions are still in place once the health crisis is over, and our civil liberties have been permanently taken away, I'll admit you were right and join you on the barricades. Fair enough?
Absolutely fair enough....lets hope we both still have enough freedom left to get to those barricades...
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
This is what I was saying to you this morning. The "Rule of Six" and "Hands Face Space" is essentially just the government messaging a clear and simple recommended "MO" for people for the next few months. They've done this because they know the virus will remain a threat until vaccine - having prioritized schools - and they do not want to keep chopping and changing and setting, and then resetting, different rules for various people in a multitude of different situations. Folk get confused. We've seen that.
But there WILL be mass disobedience, as you say. Of course there will. And that is factored in. It's expected and will be totally tolerated. The key point is that the restrictions will not be seriously policed. People will not be dobbing in their neighbours for having 7 round for tea. The hope - which I think is perfectly reasonable - is that most people will behave in a way that is appropriate to their risk and their circumstances. It's all a big nudge, not some sort of police state.
And I agree with you it's not a left v right issue. Plus I will change my mind and agree with you that it's an assault on liberty if it turns out I'm wrong and it IS seriously policed, with lots of informing and lots of fines handed out.
If it's simply a nudge why the need to make it illegal? Why the legal minutiae on the exemptions and the prohibition on mingling out of your approved group when participating in those exemptions?
There were a lot of fines issued for breaching earlier corona-laws. There will similarly be the same this time. That does not look like a nudge to me.
These two posts encompass why mask wearing in the general public was not encouraged by the WHO until political pressure made them change their viewpoint. People do not wear them correctly, they think they are invincible and do not social distance anymore.
Israel is the lastet in a long line of countries where, following enforced mask wearing, cases has gone up massively, so much so that they have had to lockdown
Whereas this shows the weakness of the argument because it is predicated on the notion mask wearing is "enforced" and that is why cases are rising.
No, mask wearing is NOT being enforced - it is being widely ignored in many parts of the country, in shops and on public transport. Along with social distancing, people have "decided" (and you can dress it up in the hyperbole of personal freedom or civil liberties if you like) the law can't be enforced and for a range of reasons including vanity, convenience or laziness, people know they can get away with not wearing a mask because they won't be prevented from doing anything without one.
The current regulations are unenforceable because there is no will to enforce them. That's the problem - the Prime Minister might have to wrestle with his inner philosophical struggle but for those at risk it really can be a matter of life and death.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
I choose not to be dead and I ponder that very often as I approach the Black Cat roundabout. Or go skiing. Or jump on a Boris bike to cycle through Central London.
The second part of your post contained too many "if"s for me.
Let me explain my "ifs":
It is clear the epidemic in the UK is back on an exponential growth. If we want to limit that growth our only tool at the moment is social distancing. By next year there may be an effective vaccine; it won't be ready for the New Year parties. Stopping one mass event may or may not have an effect on virus spread. Point is, allowing the event to go ahead is indicative of having given up trying to control the virus given we are also allowing a raft of other interactions. We may through choice or by default give up (I would prefer a conscious choice) give up control, but the essentially certain outcome is a rampant epidemic with elevated death rates (although maybe a bit lower than in the Spring if we have better treatments). The vaccine will also be somewhat academic as the bulk of people will either have had the virus or will be dead.
Yes. I think our approach - keep a lid on the virus rather than let it rip within expanded NHS capacity - is informed by the expectation of a vaccine rolled out to all by (say) summer 2021. If that expectation were to be taken away for some reason, we would imo be going for herd immunity by infection with the elderly shielded. So, you know, things could be worse. They could be a lot worse. We think a vaccine is coming. Let's hope so.
The other day someone asked for an example of something that once socially acceptable, became socially unacceptable, yet might in time become socially acceptable again. We now have an answer: the books of JK Rowling.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
Maybe people will make their own decisions. However as people can't control who they infect, especially if they are choosing not to socially distance, they are literally incapable of taking responsibility for it.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
This is what I was saying to you this morning. The "Rule of Six" and "Hands Face Space" is essentially just the government messaging a clear and simple recommended "MO" for people for the next few months. They've done this because they know the virus will remain a threat until vaccine - having prioritized schools - and they do not want to keep chopping and changing and setting, and then resetting, different rules for various people in a multitude of different situations. Folk get confused. We've seen that.
But there WILL be mass disobedience, as you say. Of course there will. And that is factored in. It's expected and will be totally tolerated. The key point is that the restrictions will not be seriously policed. People will not be dobbing in their neighbours for having 7 round for tea. The hope - which I think is perfectly reasonable - is that most people will behave in a way that is appropriate to their risk and their circumstances. It's all a big nudge, not some sort of police state.
And I agree with you it's not a left v right issue. Plus I will change my mind and agree with you that it's an assault on liberty if it turns out I'm wrong and it IS seriously policed, with lots of informing and lots of fines handed out.
Your Conservative Party membership card is in the post. You are supporting the current government. As we have rehearsed on here many times, it is a legitimate charge to make that had Lab supported TMay's deal we would not be where we are now. Which I appreciate is, according to me and you, no no deal but still.
These two posts encompass why mask wearing in the general public was not encouraged by the WHO until political pressure made them change their viewpoint. People do not wear them correctly, they think they are invincible and do not social distance anymore.
Israel is the lastet in a long line of countries where, following enforced mask wearing, cases has gone up massively, so much so that they have had to lockdown
Whereas this shows the weakness of the argument because it is predicated on the notion mask wearing is "enforced" and that is why cases are rising.
No, mask wearing is NOT being enforced - it is being widely ignored in many parts of the country, in shops and on public transport. Along with social distancing, people have "decided" (and you can dress it up in the hyperbole of personal freedom or civil liberties if you like) the law can't be enforced and for a range of reasons including vanity, convenience or laziness, people know they can get away with not wearing a mask because they won't be prevented from doing anything without one.
The current regulations are unenforceable because there is no will to enforce them. That's the problem - the Prime Minister might have to wrestle with his inner philosophical struggle but for those at risk it really can be a matter of life and death.
All of which would be OK with me if the people choosing not to wear masks were also the ones respecting other people's social distancing and making a general effort to behave in a reasonable manner out of consideration. My experience is that this is not necessarily the case.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
I choose not to be dead and I ponder that very often as I approach the Black Cat roundabout. Or go skiing. Or jump on a Boris bike to cycle through Central London.
The second part of your post contained too many "if"s for me.
Let me explain my "ifs":
It is clear the epidemic in the UK is back on an exponential growth. If we want to limit that growth our only tool at the moment is social distancing. By next year there may be an effective vaccine; it won't be ready for the New Year parties. Stopping one mass event may or may not have an effect on virus spread. Point is, allowing the event to go ahead is indicative of having given up trying to control the virus, given we are also allowing a raft of other interactions. We may through choice or by default (I would prefer a conscious choice) give up control. The essentially certain outcome is a rampant epidemic with elevated death rates (although maybe a bit lower than in the Spring if we have better treatments). The vaccine will also be somewhat academic as the bulk of people will either have had the virus or will be dead.
"Essentially certain outcome".
It is a risk with absolutely no question whatsoever. But there is plenty we do in society that is a risk that we are not literally being marshalled to avoid.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
Maybe people will make their own decisions. However as people can't control who they infect, especially if they are choosing not to socially distance, they are literally incapable of taking responsibility for it.
It takes two to socially distance. One person can't not socially distance on their own.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
Maybe people will make their own decisions. However as people can't control who they infect, especially if they are choosing not to socially distance, they are literally incapable of taking responsibility for it.
Why do yo think 40% of your genome in incorporated virus DNA? was it because, down the centuries, people infected each other with viruses? yes.
And does your genomic and immune system make-up protect you and the vast majority of people from coronavirus? yes.
So people infecting each other with viruses and other bugs are not being selfish. They are doing each other the biggest service they possibly could by building up each others immune systems. They may indeed be costing a few lives. But they are saving a massive amount more.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
This is what I was saying to you this morning. The "Rule of Six" and "Hands Face Space" is essentially just the government messaging a clear and simple recommended "MO" for people for the next few months. They've done this because they know the virus will remain a threat until vaccine - having prioritized schools - and they do not want to keep chopping and changing and setting, and then resetting, different rules for various people in a multitude of different situations. Folk get confused. We've seen that.
But there WILL be mass disobedience, as you say. Of course there will. And that is factored in. It's expected and will be totally tolerated. The key point is that the restrictions will not be seriously policed. People will not be dobbing in their neighbours for having 7 round for tea. The hope - which I think is perfectly reasonable - is that most people will behave in a way that is appropriate to their risk and their circumstances. It's all a big nudge, not some sort of police state.
And I agree with you it's not a left v right issue. Plus I will change my mind and agree with you that it's an assault on liberty if it turns out I'm wrong and it IS seriously policed, with lots of informing and lots of fines handed out.
If it's simply a nudge why the need to make it illegal? Why the legal minutiae on the exemptions and the prohibition on mingling out of your approved group when participating in those exemptions?
There were a lot of fines issued for breaching earlier corona-laws. There will similarly be the same this time. That does not look like a nudge to me.
Well it's a balance. You need people taking it seriously, so there is some law there, but you don't police it rigorously. If you policed it rigorously you'd be issuing way more fines than we saw under the lockdown. Breaching these latest restrictions will as common as speeding imo and there are 6,000 speeding tickets every day even though most speeding is missed. I bet you there will be no more than 100 a day of corona tickets. It's just nothing to get so worked about as I see it. But, as I say, let's see. If I'm wrong and we get a gestapo type situation developing, people getting relentlessly stamped on by the authorities for doing little that is objectively reckless or wrong, then I will change my view.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
I choose not to be dead and I ponder that very often as I approach the Black Cat roundabout. Or go skiing. Or jump on a Boris bike to cycle through Central London.
The second part of your post contained too many "if"s for me.
Let me explain my "ifs":
It is clear the epidemic in the UK is back on an exponential growth. If we want to limit that growth our only tool at the moment is social distancing. By next year there may be an effective vaccine; it won't be ready for the New Year parties. Stopping one mass event may or may not have an effect on virus spread. Point is, allowing the event to go ahead is indicative of having given up trying to control the virus, given we are also allowing a raft of other interactions. We may through choice or by default (I would prefer a conscious choice) give up control. The essentially certain outcome is a rampant epidemic with elevated death rates (although maybe a bit lower than in the Spring if we have better treatments). The vaccine will also be somewhat academic as the bulk of people will either have had the virus or will be dead.
"Essentially certain outcome".
It is a risk with absolutely no question whatsoever. But there is plenty we do in society that is a risk that we are not literally being marshalled to avoid.
Elevated death rates are about a 100% probability on current knowledge, which is the only knowledge that counts. How elevated absent public interventions is a reasonable question.
I am not particularly risk averse but I do believe in assessing risks and minimising unnecessary ones, particularly for public policy. This virus is a brute.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
This is what I was saying to you this morning. The "Rule of Six" and "Hands Face Space" is essentially just the government messaging a clear and simple recommended "MO" for people for the next few months. They've done this because they know the virus will remain a threat until vaccine - having prioritized schools - and they do not want to keep chopping and changing and setting, and then resetting, different rules for various people in a multitude of different situations. Folk get confused. We've seen that.
But there WILL be mass disobedience, as you say. Of course there will. And that is factored in. It's expected and will be totally tolerated. The key point is that the restrictions will not be seriously policed. People will not be dobbing in their neighbours for having 7 round for tea. The hope - which I think is perfectly reasonable - is that most people will behave in a way that is appropriate to their risk and their circumstances. It's all a big nudge, not some sort of police state.
And I agree with you it's not a left v right issue. Plus I will change my mind and agree with you that it's an assault on liberty if it turns out I'm wrong and it IS seriously policed, with lots of informing and lots of fines handed out.
If it's simply a nudge why the need to make it illegal? Why the legal minutiae on the exemptions and the prohibition on mingling out of your approved group when participating in those exemptions?
There were a lot of fines issued for breaching earlier corona-laws. There will similarly be the same this time. That does not look like a nudge to me.
Well it's a balance. You need people taking it seriously, so there is some law there, but you don't police it rigorously. If you policed it rigorously you'd be issuing way more fines than we saw under the lockdown. Breaching these latest restrictions will as common as speeding imo and there are 6,000 speeding tickets every day even though most speeding is missed. I bet you there will be no more than 100 a day of corona tickets. It's just nothing to get so worked about as I see it. But, as I say, let's see. If I'm wrong and we get a gestapo type situation developing, people getting relentlessly stamped on by the authorities for doing little that is objectively reckless or wrong, then I will change my view.
What is also been missed in the messaging is really you need to limiting how wide your social network is. It really isn't a good idea to keep meeting 10s / 100s of different people every week, even if you keep it to less than 6 each time.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
Maybe people will make their own decisions. However as people can't control who they infect, especially if they are choosing not to socially distance, they are literally incapable of taking responsibility for it.
It takes two to socially distance. One person can't not socially distance on their own.
I don’t think that’s true. You decide your own behaviour and can be part of a crowd or entirely on your own, accordingly solely to your own choices.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
Maybe people will make their own decisions. However as people can't control who they infect, especially if they are choosing not to socially distance, they are literally incapable of taking responsibility for it.
Why do yo think 40% of your genome in incorporated virus DNA? was it because, down the centuries, people infected each other with viruses? yes.
And does your genomic and immune system make-up protect you and the vast majority of people from coronavirus? yes.
So people infecting each other with viruses and other bugs are not being selfish. They are doing each other the biggest service they possibly could by building up each others immune systems. They may indeed be costing a few lives. But they are saving a massive amount more.
I'll exercise my freedom to reject thier kind service to me if you don't mind.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
I choose not to be dead and I ponder that very often as I approach the Black Cat roundabout. Or go skiing. Or jump on a Boris bike to cycle through Central London.
The second part of your post contained too many "if"s for me.
Let me explain my "ifs":
It is clear the epidemic in the UK is back on an exponential growth. If we want to limit that growth our only tool at the moment is social distancing. By next year there may be an effective vaccine; it won't be ready for the New Year parties. Stopping one mass event may or may not have an effect on virus spread. Point is, allowing the event to go ahead is indicative of having given up trying to control the virus, given we are also allowing a raft of other interactions. We may through choice or by default (I would prefer a conscious choice) give up control. The essentially certain outcome is a rampant epidemic with elevated death rates (although maybe a bit lower than in the Spring if we have better treatments). The vaccine will also be somewhat academic as the bulk of people will either have had the virus or will be dead.
"Essentially certain outcome".
It is a risk with absolutely no question whatsoever. But there is plenty we do in society that is a risk that we are not literally being marshalled to avoid.
Elevated death rates are about a 100% probability on current knowledge, which is the only knowledge that counts. How elevated absent public interventions is a reasonable question.
I am not particularly risk averse but I do believe in assessing risks and minimising unnecessary ones, particularly for public policy. This virus is a brute.
Yes I agree they would likely be elevated. What was the number this week?
These two posts encompass why mask wearing in the general public was not encouraged by the WHO until political pressure made them change their viewpoint. People do not wear them correctly, they think they are invincible and do not social distance anymore.
Israel is the lastet in a long line of countries where, following enforced mask wearing, cases has gone up massively, so much so that they have had to lockdown
Whereas this shows the weakness of the argument because it is predicated on the notion mask wearing is "enforced" and that is why cases are rising.
No, mask wearing is NOT being enforced - it is being widely ignored in many parts of the country, in shops and on public transport. Along with social distancing, people have "decided" (and you can dress it up in the hyperbole of personal freedom or civil liberties if you like) the law can't be enforced and for a range of reasons including vanity, convenience or laziness, people know they can get away with not wearing a mask because they won't be prevented from doing anything without one.
The current regulations are unenforceable because there is no will to enforce them. That's the problem - the Prime Minister might have to wrestle with his inner philosophical struggle but for those at risk it really can be a matter of life and death.
From my experience mask wearing in shops round here is around 98%
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
Maybe people will make their own decisions. However as people can't control who they infect, especially if they are choosing not to socially distance, they are literally incapable of taking responsibility for it.
Why do yo think 40% of your genome in incorporated virus DNA? was it because, down the centuries, people infected each other with viruses? yes.
And does your genomic and immune system make-up protect you and the vast majority of people from coronavirus? yes.
So people infecting each other with viruses and other bugs are not being selfish. They are doing each other the biggest service they possibly could by building up each others immune systems. They may indeed be costing a few lives. But they are saving a massive amount more.
I'll exercise my freedom to reject thier kind service to me if you don't mind.
Well that's your choice. If your ancestors had done that, however, you might not be with us to make that comment.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
People generally choose not to be dead. I don't know if Margaret Thatcher mentioned that...
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
If people do not choose to be dead, then nobody will go to the fireworks anyway. So why cancel them? Can't people make a decision for themselves, having weighed up all the evidence? Of which there is now a great deal.... and if they don't make the right decision, take responsibility?
Maybe people will make their own decisions. However as people can't control who they infect, especially if they are choosing not to socially distance, they are literally incapable of taking responsibility for it.
Why do yo think 40% of your genome in incorporated virus DNA? was it because, down the centuries, people infected each other with viruses? yes.
And does your genomic and immune system make-up protect you and the vast majority of people from coronavirus? yes.
So people infecting each other with viruses and other bugs are not being selfish. They are doing each other the biggest service they possibly could by building up each others immune systems. They may indeed be costing a few lives. But they are saving a massive amount more.
If you, let's say, want to infect others of like mind, be my guest. But if you are "taking responsibility" as you put it, please stay away from any supermarket I might visit. Because I want to buy some food.
Also don't bother going to any hospital if your lungs pack up. Taking responsibility means leaving the capacity for those that don't make your choice.
UPDATE: Guido now hears Sadiq Khan will announce within weeks that there’ll be no spectators at this year’s New Years Eve display, though the capitals firework display will go ahead.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
Brexit schmexit. The MSM are wrong again.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
If my WhatsApp groups are anything to go by, the rule of 6 is going down like a bucket of cold sick with those with have kids. Brexit game playing doesn't feature.
I cant believe anyone would comply with it - it wouldn't cross my mind to not meet up with a couple of my mates, their wives and kids
I said at the time there will be mass disobedience, and I stand by that view.
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
This is what I was saying to you this morning. The "Rule of Six" and "Hands Face Space" is essentially just the government messaging a clear and simple recommended "MO" for people for the next few months. They've done this because they know the virus will remain a threat until vaccine - having prioritized schools - and they do not want to keep chopping and changing and setting, and then resetting, different rules for various people in a multitude of different situations. Folk get confused. We've seen that.
But there WILL be mass disobedience, as you say. Of course there will. And that is factored in. It's expected and will be totally tolerated. The key point is that the restrictions will not be seriously policed. People will not be dobbing in their neighbours for having 7 round for tea. The hope - which I think is perfectly reasonable - is that most people will behave in a way that is appropriate to their risk and their circumstances. It's all a big nudge, not some sort of police state.
And I agree with you it's not a left v right issue. Plus I will change my mind and agree with you that it's an assault on liberty if it turns out I'm wrong and it IS seriously policed, with lots of informing and lots of fines handed out.
Your Conservative Party membership card is in the post. You are supporting the current government. As we have rehearsed on here many times, it is a legitimate charge to make that had Lab supported TMay's deal we would not be where we are now. Which I appreciate is, according to me and you, no no deal but still.
I realize I am and it's not a comfortable position for me to take. But, you know, my objectivity is legendary. And yes, that May deal. Fabulous piece of work in the circs. On the No Deal "WTO" Brexit I have moved it's probability up from 1% to 2%.
Comments
'so home secretary, you see ten paratroopers marching in the street together to commemorate comrades who died fighting for freedom...do you ring the police....??''
The exact same thing happened with the 75th Anniversary of VE Day.
So that's Christmas and New Year cancelled. People, rightly or wrongly, are going to be really pissed off.
If someone of high IQ marries someone of high IQ and their children do the same their elite status will almost certainly continue down the generations
if elderly veterans choose to risk their lives to remember their fallen comrades, who died for their freedom after all, why shouldn;t they? especially when the risk has been shown to be, for most people, to be pretty low. That's their choice, as free men,
Having fought for our freedoms, if anybody has that choice, they do.
https://twitter.com/AndrewSparrow/status/1305857243502596097
The time you spend with your children is sooo much more important than leaving them assets.
This is going to be a huge, huge story.
As Margaret Thatcher observed, when people have freedom to choose, they choose freedom.
Practically up with Jarndyce v Jarndyce.
Trouble is, the government knows labour are to the left of them so they can do what they like.
And they can, for now....
People will take their chances with a £100 fine – many will be happy to risk a ton to discover beyond any reasonable doubt which of their neighbours are absolute twats.
https://twitter.com/cabinetofficeuk/status/1305843111080361985?s=21
But on the issue -
Yes, families are important, people naturally prioritize their own and their family's interests over the common good, but this doesn't mean this preference should be validated by the tax system. The opposite if anything. The tax system should be based on collectivist principles. If people could choose how their taxes were spent, for example, we would not be able to move for children's cancer centres but there would be a dearth of traffic wardens.
If it's at all possible to hold it safely - what we know tells us that outdoor events are much safer than indoors - then I'm sure they'll want it to go ahead. But if it's not safe, it would be grossly irresponsible to expose a lot of elderly people to a disease that is particularly dangerous to them.
Very few plebs pay IHT, as they don't normally have much assets.
Plus how taxes are spent is not the same as how they are raised
When it comes to social distancing I think maybe half of people are obeying the rules, a lot of the etiquette there seems to have stopped.
It pisses me off when people cast it thus.
If the New Year celebrations do go ahead as normal, it will likely be in the context of an epidemic that has gone out of all control and no-one is bothering to prevent infection any more. That may happen. It would be grim and I think there would be a reaction.
https://twitter.com/themandalorian/status/1305868996965625858?s=19
And I missed the part in the conservative manifesto where the party said they would try to drastically curtail our freedoms on a flimsy pretext that is manifestly disputed by scientists. And not even the government. A small part of the government, supported by an unelected and unnacountable group of shadowy academics. By decree, with no debate and no vote.
https://www.mileiq.com/en-gb/blog/inheritance-tax-uk/
and that is not to mention agricultural land.......
And I get the part about being compos mentis but it is their choice. Because if someone else decides that X is too dangerous for them, why not Y and Z also? Where Y and Z are....
The second part of your post contained too many "if"s for me.
Israel is the lastet in a long line of countries where, following enforced mask wearing, cases has gone up massively, so much so that they have had to lockdown
The opposition in the Lords should release a statement saying they can’t pass the Bill as it breaks the Tory manifesto and that would be breaking the Salisbury Convention.
But there WILL be mass disobedience, as you say. Of course there will. And that is factored in. It's expected and will be totally tolerated. The key point is that the restrictions will not be seriously policed. People will not be dobbing in their neighbours for having 7 round for tea. The hope - which I think is perfectly reasonable - is that most people will behave in a way that is appropriate to their risk and their circumstances. It's all a big nudge, not some sort of police state.
And I agree with you it's not a left v right issue. Plus I will change my mind and agree with you that it's an assault on liberty if it turns out I'm wrong and it IS seriously policed, with lots of informing and lots of fines handed out.
It is clear the epidemic in the UK is back on an exponential growth. If we want to limit that growth our only tool at the moment is social distancing. By next year there may be an effective vaccine; it won't be ready for the New Year parties. Stopping one mass event may or may not have an effect on virus spread. Point is, allowing the event to go ahead is indicative of having given up trying to control the virus, given we are also allowing a raft of other interactions. We may through choice or by default (I would prefer a conscious choice) give up control. The essentially certain outcome is a rampant epidemic with elevated death rates (although maybe a bit lower than in the Spring if we have better treatments). The vaccine will also be somewhat academic as the bulk of people will either have had the virus or will be dead.
There wasn't anything in any party's manifesto because this is was not an event that can be easily predicted or planned for. Sometimes terrible things just turn up - plague, war, global depressions - and the poor bastards in charge have to cope with it as best they can. I take the charitable view that the governments implementing these measures aren't trying to control us nefariously - these laws aren't making them any more popular, are they? They're just trying to minimize casualties until a vaccine arrives.
They may be proven wrong or misguided in the end, but that's only something we'll know for certain with hindsight.
But if these laws and restrictions are still in place once the health crisis is over, and our civil liberties have been permanently taken away, I'll admit you were right and join you on the barricades. Fair enough?
FCA won.
There were a lot of fines issued for breaching earlier corona-laws. There will similarly be the same this time. That does not look like a nudge to me.
No, mask wearing is NOT being enforced - it is being widely ignored in many parts of the country, in shops and on public transport. Along with social distancing, people have "decided" (and you can dress it up in the hyperbole of personal freedom or civil liberties if you like) the law can't be enforced and for a range of reasons including vanity, convenience or laziness, people know they can get away with not wearing a mask because they won't be prevented from doing anything without one.
The current regulations are unenforceable because there is no will to enforce them. That's the problem - the Prime Minister might have to wrestle with his inner philosophical struggle but for those at risk it really can be a matter of life and death.
My experience is that this is not necessarily the case.
It is a risk with absolutely no question whatsoever. But there is plenty we do in society that is a risk that we are not literally being marshalled to avoid.
And does your genomic and immune system make-up protect you and the vast majority of people from coronavirus? yes.
So people infecting each other with viruses and other bugs are not being selfish. They are doing each other the biggest service they possibly could by building up each others immune systems. They may indeed be costing a few lives. But they are saving a massive amount more.
I am not particularly risk averse but I do believe in assessing risks and minimising unnecessary ones, particularly for public policy. This virus is a brute.
And of course think about granny.
Also don't bother going to any hospital if your lungs pack up. Taking responsibility means leaving the capacity for those that don't make your choice.