So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The same reason that NY is doing better than other states.
If you have a really traumatic experience, with ambulance sirens blaring through the night, and bodies stacking up in morgues, then people take social distancing seriously.
Plus the virus has already killed the most susceptible, and more of those who remain have some level of immunity.
Think of it as a bring-out-yer-dead-cat bounce.
I doubt this is true. Some of the most susceptible have died, for sure, but the vast majority have survived wave 1 and are still at serious risk.
What is true, I believe, is that the most susceptible are much better protected now, due to better awareness and less risk taking by that group.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Clegg has as much to answer for. His overconfident performance in the debate with Farage did a lot to reinforce the framing of Remain as disingenuous and shifty.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Who is this "Sean" character? Was he that influential in the referendum that Cameron should have had him silenced? Are you suggesting this "Sean" dude should have been quietly offed, alla Putinesca?
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
We were always away from "the mainstream of Europe" thank goodness.
Blair was incapable of dragging us down to the mainstream.
Why "thank goodness"? Do you think Germany is so badly run?
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Fair point.
I voted Remain, but PBers who demanded a referendum, voted Leave, then criticise Cameron for losing the referendum are a deeply odd, if not uncommon, breed.
I don't criticise Cameron for losing the referendum.
I do criticise Cameron for failing in his renegotiations with the EU and then recommending a terrible, meaningless renegotiation as grounds for Remaining in the EU. He'd have been more honest to simply say he always thought the EU was worth remaining in, or actually getting reform if he felt it needed reform. Trying and failing to reform the EU just showed up the EU and his efforts as a failure.
I criticise Cameron for not triggering Article 50 straightaway, like he promised. We would already be in the post-Brexit "new normal" by now.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
We were always away from "the mainstream of Europe" thank goodness.
Blair was incapable of dragging us down to the mainstream.
Why "thank goodness"? Do you think Germany is so badly run?
Germany is ran fine for Germany.
We are not Germany. Germany is not Britain.
You prefer stop-start, boom-bust economics and culture war politics?
BBC reporting Nicola has spoken to Boris and they are broadly on the same page and expect similar restrictons to be announced tomorrow pm for England and Scotland
This is going to be the worst winter in the UK since the Great Heathen Army overwintered in Thetford in 865AD.
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The answer seems to be the Italians are scarred from earlier this year so are still obeying the rules.
Plus social conformity is more real there.
Yep. Everyone takes it seriously, everywhere. Probably 20% of people wear masks outdoors all the time, and everyone wears them when they are required.
The only incongruity I have seen so far is Valery Gergiev pitching up in town yesterday with the Marinsky Orchestra for a well attended Mendlessohn evening. Very strange to see crowds coming out from a cultural event once again.
And Italy’s testing is pretty sharp (see the ITV news story from last week).
And Italy doesn’t have the drinking clubbing culture of the UK or Spanish resorts, and nightclubs and the like remain closed.
But the Italians are big huggers and kissers, they go to church, they have multi-generational families in one home, and they do congregate in cafes in big numbers. And the kids do like British style pubs.
I can understand why, say, Lombardy is reacting like New York: they had a terrible first wave and everyone is scared. But Italy seems to be doing much better than France or Spain, nationwide, even in places like Sardinia or Sicily or Trentino which barely had a first wave (compared to Milan).
Church is a bit of a myth, nowadays. Lip service at best, actual attendance is mainly the old folks. I haven’t seen much hugging and kissing at all here, period. Sardinia - you can’t even go there now without a negative test.
Anyhow tomorrow I leave the Alps for Covid Centro, aka Bergamo, wish me luck...
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Clegg wanted an in/out referendum.
Indeed. It was all over Lib Dem literature. An in/out referendum! Time to choose! And then, laughably, outrageously, they tried to have the in/out referendum annulled, because it said Out, on the grounds that we should not have had an in/out referendum as it was all too complex.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
We were always away from "the mainstream of Europe" thank goodness.
Blair was incapable of dragging us down to the mainstream.
Why "thank goodness"? Do you think Germany is so badly run?
Germany is ran fine for Germany.
We are not Germany. Germany is not Britain.
You prefer stop-start, boom-bust economics and culture war politics?
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
He could have won it, he only narrowly lost it.
His renegotiation was a sham, quickly signed off without much fuss and without getting anything of what he had said he was seeking really. It was all meaningless nonsense and was the final straw for a lot of previously moderate Remainers like myself who came to realise the EU was unreformable.
Especially since Cameron had given himself until the end of 2017 to have the referendum, swiftly signing off a meaningless deal in early 2016 just showed it to be very, very weak. Which is why he never really mentioned it again after he signed it.
He could have put more effort into the renegotiation - or having failed in his renegotiation he could have said with reluctance he had to recommend Leave. He could have threatened to do that in his renegotiation.
I agree, and had he delivered on his Bloomberg speech even I would have voted Remain.
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The same reason that NY is doing better than other states.
If you have a really traumatic experience, with ambulance sirens blaring through the night, and bodies stacking up in morgues, then people take social distancing seriously.
Do Italy have a ‘disco capital’ that attracts hoards of young people, are they prevalent in seaside resorts?
Probably Rimini is the closest. But nothing like the Costas. And people don’t come to Italy for party tourism, so what there is is home grown.
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The answer seems to be the Italians are scarred from earlier this year so are still obeying the rules.
Plus social conformity is more real there.
Yep. Everyone takes it seriously, everywhere. Probably 20% of people wear masks outdoors all the time, and everyone wears them when they are required.
The only incongruity I have seen so far is Valery Gergiev pitching up in town yesterday with the Marinsky Orchestra for a well attended Mendlessohn evening. Very strange to see crowds coming out from a cultural event once again.
And Italy’s testing is pretty sharp (see the ITV news story from last week).
And Italy doesn’t have the drinking clubbing culture of the UK or Spanish resorts, and nightclubs and the like remain closed.
But the Italians are big huggers and kissers, they go to church, they have multi-generational families in one home, and they do congregate in cafes in big numbers. And the kids do like British style pubs.
I can understand why, say, Lombardy is reacting like New York: they had a terrible first wave and everyone is scared. But Italy seems to be doing much better than France or Spain, nationwide, even in places like Sardinia or Sicily or Trentino which barely had a first wave (compared to Milan).
Church is a bit of a myth, nowadays. Lip service at best, actual attendance is mainly the old folks. I haven’t seen much hugging and kissing at all here, period. Sardinia - you can’t even go there now without a negative test.
Anyhow tomorrow I leave the Alps for Covid Centro, aka Bergamo, wish me luck...
72% of Italians say religion is important to them, 25% not, more than in any other Western nation
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The same reason that NY is doing better than other states.
If you have a really traumatic experience, with ambulance sirens blaring through the night, and bodies stacking up in morgues, then people take social distancing seriously.
Plus the virus has already killed the most susceptible, and more of those who remain have some level of immunity.
Think of it as a bring-out-yer-dead-cat bounce.
I doubt this is true. Some of the most susceptible have died, for sure, but the vast majority have survived wave 1 and are still at serious risk.
What is true, I believe, is that the most susceptible are much better protected now, due to better awareness and less risk taking by that group.
Also worth noting that Italy has a culture of looking after grandparents in the home (often, that they own). There aren’t so many care homes as in the UK, or Spain.
"How patriotic Labour could crush Boris If Keir Starmer can steer clear of identity politics and close the values gap, his party will reclaim lost ground BY TIM BALE"
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Or, we should have had a vote on Lisbon. Like many of us were arguing for at the time.
One couldn't be deferred/ignored forever and the longer it was left the worse it would have got.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
Less testing? Their deaths figures aren't any different to ours. Fundamentally, in the grand scheme of things and relative to size of countries, all the numbers are pretty small. When only 1-2% of people having tests are testing positive, chaos in testing is not a function of virus prevalence but a function of numbers seeking tests.
Italy has done more tests per m population than France
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The same reason that NY is doing better than other states.
If you have a really traumatic experience, with ambulance sirens blaring through the night, and bodies stacking up in morgues, then people take social distancing seriously.
Plus the virus has already killed the most susceptible, and more of those who remain have some level of immunity.
Think of it as a bring-out-yer-dead-cat bounce.
I doubt this is true. Some of the most susceptible have died, for sure, but the vast majority have survived wave 1 and are still at serious risk.
What is true, I believe, is that the most susceptible are much better protected now, due to better awareness and less risk taking by that group.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
He could have won it, he only narrowly lost it.
His renegotiation was a sham, quickly signed off without much fuss and without getting anything of what he had said he was seeking really. It was all meaningless nonsense and was the final straw for a lot of previously moderate Remainers like myself who came to realise the EU was unreformable.
Especially since Cameron had given himself until the end of 2017 to have the referendum, swiftly signing off a meaningless deal in early 2016 just showed it to be very, very weak. Which is why he never really mentioned it again after he signed it.
He could have put more effort into the renegotiation - or having failed in his renegotiation he could have said with reluctance he had to recommend Leave. He could have threatened to do that in his renegotiation.
I agree, and had he delivered on his Bloomberg speech even I would have voted Remain.
Most of us weren't Leavers 8 years ago.
This shows the extent of Cameron's failure. He led a large number of Conservatives into a position that deep down, they don't want to be in, and now cannot escape from.
Maybe he can redeem himself through a Falklands War or a Princess Diana moment, where he brings the country together, but I doubt it. He is just too narcissistic and divisive.
To date, the worst by a country mile and I can't see it getting better.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
All because American airports couldn't be bothered to carry out basic security checks on passengers for internal flights, as most other Western countries did.
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The answer seems to be the Italians are scarred from earlier this year so are still obeying the rules.
Plus social conformity is more real there.
Yep. Everyone takes it seriously, everywhere. Probably 20% of people wear masks outdoors all the time, and everyone wears them when they are required.
The only incongruity I have seen so far is Valery Gergiev pitching up in town yesterday with the Marinsky Orchestra for a well attended Mendlessohn evening. Very strange to see crowds coming out from a cultural event once again.
And Italy’s testing is pretty sharp (see the ITV news story from last week).
And Italy doesn’t have the drinking clubbing culture of the UK or Spanish resorts, and nightclubs and the like remain closed.
But the Italians are big huggers and kissers, they go to church, they have multi-generational families in one home, and they do congregate in cafes in big numbers. And the kids do like British style pubs.
I can understand why, say, Lombardy is reacting like New York: they had a terrible first wave and everyone is scared. But Italy seems to be doing much better than France or Spain, nationwide, even in places like Sardinia or Sicily or Trentino which barely had a first wave (compared to Milan).
Church is a bit of a myth, nowadays. Lip service at best, actual attendance is mainly the old folks. I haven’t seen much hugging and kissing at all here, period. Sardinia - you can’t even go there now without a negative test.
Anyhow tomorrow I leave the Alps for Covid Centro, aka Bergamo, wish me luck...
72% of Italians say religion is important to them, 25% not, more than in any other Western nation
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The same reason that NY is doing better than other states.
If you have a really traumatic experience, with ambulance sirens blaring through the night, and bodies stacking up in morgues, then people take social distancing seriously.
Do Italy have a ‘disco capital’ that attracts hoards of young people, are they prevalent in seaside resorts?
Probably Rimini is the closest. But nothing like the Costas. And people don’t come to Italy for party tourism, so what there is is home grown.
The Costa Smeralda is a big clubbing region: and there they HAVE had a cluster. Including Silvio Bunga Bunga himself
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
In the end it was always inevitable that once China shifted from Communism with a population of 1.4 billion it would always overtake the USA, with a population of 328 million, as the world's largest economy, 9/11 or not.
India too with a population of 1.3 billion is projected to join the USA and China to round off the top 3 largest economies by 2050, though if you include the EU that rounds up the current top 3
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
Blair actually took the position that the UK needed to be close to Europe, unlike the Eurosceptic right but also have a strong relationship with the USA, unlike the Anti American left, ie a bridge between the EU and USA however if we go to no deal Brexit under Boris and Biden becomes US president we will end up with a good relationship with neither and Boris will have to try and get what he can with the Commonwealth and build on his trade deal with Japan.
You may not like Blair but he was our strongest PM on the international stage after Thatcher since Churchill
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
In retrospect 9/11 was also the last good chance to bring Russia in from the cold, but it was squandered because of US unilateralism.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Or, we should have had a vote on Lisbon. Like many of us were arguing for at the time.
One couldn't be deferred/ignored forever and the longer it was left the worse it would have got.
That was the fatal error made by arrogant Remainers. Not granting a vote on the Constitution/Lisbon, as promised by all major parties.
We would have voted it down (like France and Holland) and our vote would have had to be respected, and the UK would have negotiated a looser arrangement WITHIN the EU over time. And eurosceptic anger would have been safely vented.
By overriding eurosceptic democracy in that appalling way - denying us a vote then - Remainers heaped up the pyre of total disaster, further down the line.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
Blair actually took the position that the UK needed to be close to Europe, unlike the Eurosceptic right but also have a strong relationship with the USA, unlike the Anti American left, ie a bridge between the EU and USA however if we go to no deal Brexit under Boris and Biden becomes US president we will end up with a good relationship with neither and Boris will have to try and get what he can with the Commonwealth and build on his trade deal with Japan.
You may not like Blair but he was our strongest PM on the international stage after Thatcher since Churchill
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
But there were two tiers already defined by being inside or outside the Eurozone. You had the chance to vote for what you claim you want, and you turned it down because Cameron had led you to expect too much.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
Blair actually took the position that the UK needed to be close to Europe, unlike the Eurosceptic right but also have a strong relationship with the USA, unlike the Anti American left, ie a bridge between the EU and USA however if we go to no deal Brexit under Boris and Biden becomes US president we will end up with a good relationship with neither and Boris will have to try and get what he can with the Commonwealth and build on his trade deal with Japan.
You may not like Blair but he was our strongest PM on the international stage after Thatcher since Churchill
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
We pretty much had that already, outside the Euro and with our stack of opt outs.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
I don't know how you figure that.
He wanted us to join the Euro and sign the EU constitution.
He couldn't deliver because, even then, his views came up hard against the realities of domestic UK politics.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
My view is such events merely beat with a stick underlying trends that are already there.
But, it suits our need for neatness and drama to think it's far simpler than that.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
I think he still comes second to the Black Hand of Serbia in the terrorists changing the world stakes.
"How patriotic Labour could crush Boris If Keir Starmer can steer clear of identity politics and close the values gap, his party will reclaim lost ground BY TIM BALE"
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
He could have won it, he only narrowly lost it.
His renegotiation was a sham, quickly signed off without much fuss and without getting anything of what he had said he was seeking really. It was all meaningless nonsense and was the final straw for a lot of previously moderate Remainers like myself who came to realise the EU was unreformable.
Especially since Cameron had given himself until the end of 2017 to have the referendum, swiftly signing off a meaningless deal in early 2016 just showed it to be very, very weak. Which is why he never really mentioned it again after he signed it.
He could have put more effort into the renegotiation - or having failed in his renegotiation he could have said with reluctance he had to recommend Leave. He could have threatened to do that in his renegotiation.
I agree, and had he delivered on his Bloomberg speech even I would have voted Remain.
Most of us weren't Leavers 8 years ago.
This shows the extent of Cameron's failure. He led a large number of Conservatives into a position that deep down, they don't want to be in, and now cannot escape from.
You think we're all suffering from some form of European false consciousness.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Or, we should have had a vote on Lisbon. Like many of us were arguing for at the time.
One couldn't be deferred/ignored forever and the longer it was left the worse it would have got.
That was the fatal error made by arrogant Remainers. Not granting a vote on the Constitution/Lisbon, as promised by all major parties.
We would have voted it down (like France and Holland) and our vote would have had to be respected, and the UK would have negotiated a looser arrangement WITHIN the EU over time. And eurosceptic anger would have been safely vented.
By overriding eurosceptic democracy in that appalling way - denying us a vote then - Remainers heaped up the pyre of total disaster, further down the line.
FWIW, some thoughts on how the Democrats are positioning their message. I'm sure I'll be accused of pushing a pro-Trump line but hey ho.
(1) The Biden campaign seems to be relying heavily on TV adverts. Now TV advertising can be very effective but it works best when you are trying to establish a brand and widen its market (which is why many online companies use it) or keep things "ticking over" to remind people why you are there (eg Price Comparison Websites). Neither of those uses seem as though they would be useful for Biden. Trump's "brand" is already well known, as is Biden. You might say he could use it to promote Harris but that runs the risk of a Biden Administration being seen as a Harris one. In effect, Biden isn't putting his warchest advantage to good use.
Trump has two advantages here on the advertising front despite the shortfall. First, he has been effectively campaigning for re-election for four years so he has already established and tent-poled his brand. Second, he gets a lot of earned media i.e. his events, words, tweets etc generate a lot of free publicity as they are reported online, on news programmes etc. Biden has to work harder for his airtime.
(2) I do think the Democrats have fallen into Trump's trap on the whole SC justice position by threatening to go nuclear if they win the Senate and Presidency. What that has given the Republican campaign for the Senate is a handy message to deter ticket splitters. There are a number of states where Trump's chances of winning are higher than the existing Republican Senators - Montana is an obvious one, but so is Arizona, Iowa and North Carolina (Georgia may also fall into that category). Fine, that strategy works against the GOP in Colorado and you would probably put Maine at more risk (but you could give Collins a get out clause by allowing her to abstain) but, on balance, it probably favours the GOP to tie the Senate elections into Trump's
I agree completely that the Biden campaign is a bit old fashioned compared to the Trump one, although I think the sidelining of Parscale might well end up costing them badly.
I'm less convinced by your argument about the Supreme Court. Simply: I don't know whether the issue has the same resonance as 2016. Firstly, attitudes towards abortion continue to soften in the US, and the number of irreligious people is rising. (The statistics here are truly astonishing.) Secondly, in 2016 Republicans were up in arms at the prospect of Scalia being replaced by a liberal.
Now, it's possible that it has some resonance in Arizona (which has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the US), albeit a bare majority of Arizonans are favour of legal abortion. But Iowa I think had already slipped from a toss up to a lean Republican, and nothing much changes here.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
I intend no offence, but you seem to have the same thumbprint as SeanT, for he has avowed the same thought many times over the last few years.
Since we’re on Iraq, I was immediately struck today by the parallels when that ridiculous “this is not a prediction” prediction graph was put up. Embarrassed shuffling from the presenters just like Powell at the UN when he was talking about the VX ice cream vans. Immediate amplifying by the media of a clearly hyperbolic message just like the 45-minute claim, exactly as intended by a morally bankrupt and dishonest government.
And of course on the eve of invasion, the action was supported by 54-38 in the UK. Don’t get many now admitting that. I suspect when the dust settles, this will be the same.
To those who obtusely shriek “what is this lockdown you rail against, you can’t even tell me what you want you ignorant fool!”. It’s like pornography to Justice Potter Stewart, you know it when you see it. Committing an unlawful act by inviting family into your own home is lockdown, of the unacceptable and ultimately self defeating type. Especially when combined with the snitching charter. Wearing a mask on a train carriage on the other hand is an irritant but acceptable to all but the fringe.
So if we're "3-4 weeks behind France and Spain" (why always France and Spain?) i assume based on today's figures that we can look forward to big drops in numbers in a few weeks...
One big question is: why is Italy doing so much better than Spain or France, given that Italy started from a worse position?
The answer seems to be the Italians are scarred from earlier this year so are still obeying the rules.
Plus social conformity is more real there.
Yep. Everyone takes it seriously, everywhere. Probably 20% of people wear masks outdoors all the time, and everyone wears them when they are required.
The only incongruity I have seen so far is Valery Gergiev pitching up in town yesterday with the Marinsky Orchestra for a well attended Mendlessohn evening. Very strange to see crowds coming out from a cultural event once again.
And Italy’s testing is pretty sharp (see the ITV news story from last week).
And Italy doesn’t have the drinking clubbing culture of the UK or Spanish resorts, and nightclubs and the like remain closed.
But the Italians are big huggers and kissers, they go to church, they have multi-generational families in one home, and they do congregate in cafes in big numbers. And the kids do like British style pubs.
I can understand why, say, Lombardy is reacting like New York: they had a terrible first wave and everyone is scared. But Italy seems to be doing much better than France or Spain, nationwide, even in places like Sardinia or Sicily or Trentino which barely had a first wave (compared to Milan).
Church is a bit of a myth, nowadays. Lip service at best, actual attendance is mainly the old folks. I haven’t seen much hugging and kissing at all here, period. Sardinia - you can’t even go there now without a negative test.
Anyhow tomorrow I leave the Alps for Covid Centro, aka Bergamo, wish me luck...
72% of Italians say religion is important to them, 25% not, more than in any other Western nation
Only a third of those regard themselves as “religiously active”, which makes my point.
Anyhow I think we can safely put answering an option poll question down as lip service.
Even the 37% of Italian Christians who attend Church once a week is still the second highest in the West after the USA and far higher than the 11% of Christians who attend church weekly in the UK
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
The crazies will never completely go away, Corbyn was there when Blair was PM. But they can be defeated.
If as I hope Biden not just wins but wins a landslide then the GOP will run away from Trump faster than you can say failure.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
Blair actually took the position that the UK needed to be close to Europe, unlike the Eurosceptic right but also have a strong relationship with the USA, unlike the Anti American left, ie a bridge between the EU and USA however if we go to no deal Brexit under Boris and Biden becomes US president we will end up with a good relationship with neither and Boris will have to try and get what he can with the Commonwealth and build on his trade deal with Japan.
You may not like Blair but he was our strongest PM on the international stage after Thatcher since Churchill
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
I think opinions can be changed. It's hard and slow, but it can be done, but the pro-EU politicians weren't as good at it as the anti.
Blair wanted to join the Euro, but he wasn't prepared to put the effort in to convince people. There are politicians who have campaigned single-mindedly since 1988 (at least) to take us out, and they're now reaping the reward of those decades of labour.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
Indeed, if Biden wins Pence will likely be GOP candidate in 2024 and constitutionally Trump could even run again.
If Starmer becomes PM the likeliest Tory leader of the opposition would probably be Priti Patel
Only a third of those regard themselves as “religiously active”, which makes my point.
Anyhow I think we can safely put answering an option poll question down as lip service.
Although we are drifting into religion here, my wife is staunch CoE. I am a staunch atheist. I go to church because my wife goes to church (though not at the moment due to it still being closed).
My daughter goes to a local CoE school that you can only get in by church attendence. We attended. We STILL attend, five years later. Of those other parents who attended 'religiously' (oh the pun) during my daughters Nursery year, not one of them now attend.
Despite 'official' figures suggesting atheism is only running at about 10-15%, I'd strongly suggest religion doesn't really feature in many people's lives anymore, until they're older and its something to do and because they then fear their own mortality and think that suddenly getting back to church will somehow see them in heaven.
People are a lot less religious than they say they are.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Or, we should have had a vote on Lisbon. Like many of us were arguing for at the time.
One couldn't be deferred/ignored forever and the longer it was left the worse it would have got.
That was the fatal error made by arrogant Remainers. Not granting a vote on the Constitution/Lisbon, as promised by all major parties.
We would have voted it down (like France and Holland) and our vote would have had to be respected, and the UK would have negotiated a looser arrangement WITHIN the EU over time. And eurosceptic anger would have been safely vented.
By overriding eurosceptic democracy in that appalling way - denying us a vote then - Remainers heaped up the pyre of total disaster, further down the line.
Remainers are not to blame for Brexit. That is the fault of those who voted for it. Indeed it is an interesting recurring passive aggressive theme for Leavers to blame anyone but themselves. And yes, it will be a pyre of total disaster.
BBC reporting Nicola has spoken to Boris and they are broadly on the same page and expect similar restrictons to be announced tomorrow pm for England and Scotland
This is going to be the worst winter in the UK since the Great Heathen Army overwintered in Thetford in 865AD.
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
I don't disagree with much of this - whether cultural, historical or geographical, our attitudes to Europe have never been as some in Europe might have hoped. We only got interested after Suez exposed our imperial ambitions as being insufficient in the bi-polar world where Washington and Moscow mattered and London did not (or not as much as it had previously).
From 1956 to 2016 it was believed our political and economic destiny lay with Europe but we were never more than half-hearted members. We could sign up to trade and some other things but we became obsessed with rebates, opt-outs and wanted a kind of half-hearted membership which the evolving EU found frustrating,
We wanted to be in the club but we wanted to re-write the membership rules to suit us - we wanted a semi-detached membership which cost us as little as possible with all the benefits. Why we thought the rest of the club should or would do what we wanted just because we were Britain always mystified me.
The UK population never really bought in to Europe - trade, foreign holidays and a nice place in the sun was all we really wanted. We never wanted open borders, a common currency and most of all there was the notion we would somehow lose a part of what we were if we became part of a European political union with its straight bananas..
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
Blair actually took the position that the UK needed to be close to Europe, unlike the Eurosceptic right but also have a strong relationship with the USA, unlike the Anti American left, ie a bridge between the EU and USA however if we go to no deal Brexit under Boris and Biden becomes US president we will end up with a good relationship with neither and Boris will have to try and get what he can with the Commonwealth and build on his trade deal with Japan.
You may not like Blair but he was our strongest PM on the international stage after Thatcher since Churchill
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
But there were two tiers already defined by being inside or outside the Eurozone. You had the chance to vote for what you claim you want, and you turned it down because Cameron had led you to expect too much.
I expected what was laid out in the Bloomberg speech, including a mechanism to block EU initiatives and integration (not always be dragged along by them) and for power to be able to flow back to member states too. What we got was more QMV and moved to a social union and closer foreign/defence integration under EU structures.
What was offered was not what I claimed I wanted. If I was led to expect too much and the EU could never have accommodated it then I was right to vote to Leave.
Do you think the Treaty of Maastricht that moved explicitly away from a 'European Economic Area / European Community' to a European Union with separate new citizenship and a desire to pursue full federalism and statehood might have had something to do with that?
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
On paper Blair was a lopsided Europhile. In practice he was an Atlanticist who Americanised our society and pulled us away from the mainstream of Europe.
Blair actually took the position that the UK needed to be close to Europe, unlike the Eurosceptic right but also have a strong relationship with the USA, unlike the Anti American left, ie a bridge between the EU and USA however if we go to no deal Brexit under Boris and Biden becomes US president we will end up with a good relationship with neither and Boris will have to try and get what he can with the Commonwealth and build on his trade deal with Japan.
You may not like Blair but he was our strongest PM on the international stage after Thatcher since Churchill
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
But there were two tiers already defined by being inside or outside the Eurozone. You had the chance to vote for what you claim you want, and you turned it down because Cameron had led you to expect too much.
I expected what was laid out in the Bloomberg speech, including a mechanism to block EU initiatives and integration (not always be dragged along by them) and for power to be able to flow back to member states too. What we got was more QMV and moved to a social union and closer foreign/defence integration under EU structures.
What was offered was not what I claimed I wanted. If I was led to expect too much and the EU could never have accommodated it then I was right to vote to Leave.
The ability to block others from integrating isn't compatible with a two-tier approach. The only way to do that is to be at the forefront, like Germany, and to become indispensable so that the others can't proceed without you.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Or, we should have had a vote on Lisbon. Like many of us were arguing for at the time.
One couldn't be deferred/ignored forever and the longer it was left the worse it would have got.
That was the fatal error made by arrogant Remainers. Not granting a vote on the Constitution/Lisbon, as promised by all major parties.
We would have voted it down (like France and Holland) and our vote would have had to be respected, and the UK would have negotiated a looser arrangement WITHIN the EU over time. And eurosceptic anger would have been safely vented.
By overriding eurosceptic democracy in that appalling way - denying us a vote then - Remainers heaped up the pyre of total disaster, further down the line.
Remainers are not to blame for Brexit. That is the fault of those who voted for it. Indeed it is an interesting recurring passive aggressive theme for Leavers to blame anyone but themselves. And yes, it will be a pyre of total disaster.
No competition. Johnson is easily the worst in my lifetime.
David Cameron. Nearly lost the Union due to laziness, lost his own Brexit vote for the same reason. A total disaster. Johnson can be a buffoon but nothing he has done compares to Cameron's catastrophes. Remember: Cameron had to resign because he lost the referendum HE called on HIS terms at a time of HIS choosing.
However Blair is very close behind, because of Iraq.
If David Cameron was lazy then Boris Johnson is a quivering vegetable on life support.
In truth he didn't understand the zeitgeist - he was applying New Labour era social policy and international policy whilst failing to clock the shifting sands beneath him - or get the right advice - relying on such sages as Andrew Cooper who didn't like those who didn't agree with him and didn't listen to them either.
But, he was a competent Prime Minister. Very establishment but competent and capable.
He was not competent and capable. He LOST the most important referendum in modern British history, the one HE called, and which HE decided he could not possibly lose.
It's like saying Hitler was a really good leader of Germany because of the Volkswagen Beetle and the autobahns.
Who do you think could have won it?
You can't judge a PM solely on one act (Blair: Iraq, and Cameron: Brexit) you have to judge them in the round.
FWIW whilst Iraq is Blair's most popular "mistake" I don't think it was his most serious one - his constitutional reforms and lopsided Europhilia were far more damaging to the UK.
Whenever people go on about Fred West and his "mistaken" behaviour with his kids, they ignore the many decades of excellent patio-laying he did around the Gloucester area. It's really annoying. You have to judge people in the round.
There was substantial public demand for a vote on the EU. Cameron offered us one if we voted Conservative - and we did. And then we voted to Leave.
Given you were one of the ones screaming for such a vote under one of your previous monikers in the early 2010s, and then subsequently voted "Leave" when he gave you the chance, what more would you have had him do?
Exactly. He let idiots like Sean have their say, and since it has now turned into the inevitable and entirely foreseeable fiasco, they are trying to dump the blame back on him.
He should have listened to Clegg.
Or, we should have had a vote on Lisbon. Like many of us were arguing for at the time.
One couldn't be deferred/ignored forever and the longer it was left the worse it would have got.
That was the fatal error made by arrogant Remainers. Not granting a vote on the Constitution/Lisbon, as promised by all major parties.
We would have voted it down (like France and Holland) and our vote would have had to be respected, and the UK would have negotiated a looser arrangement WITHIN the EU over time. And eurosceptic anger would have been safely vented.
By overriding eurosceptic democracy in that appalling way - denying us a vote then - Remainers heaped up the pyre of total disaster, further down the line.
Remainers are not to blame for Brexit. That is the fault of those who voted for it. Indeed it is an interesting recurring passive aggressive theme for Leavers to blame anyone but themselves. And yes, it will be a pyre of total disaster.
Leavers recognising how Remainers failed isn't blaming Remainers for the situation we're in.
As a Liverpool fan I can quite happily say that Kepa's performance over the weekend was calamitous and gifted Mane our second goal. Is that me blaming Kepa rather than ourselves for the fact we scored? I don't think so. I can be glad that we scored that goal while recognising that if Kepa had handled the ball better that goal wouldn't have been possible at that time.
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
I don't disagree with much of this - whether cultural, historical or geographical, our attitudes to Europe have never been as some in Europe might have hoped. We only got interested after Suez exposed our imperial ambitions as being insufficient in the bi-polar world where Washington and Moscow mattered and London did not (or not as much as it had previously).
From 1956 to 2016 it was believed our political and economic destiny lay with Europe but we were never more than half-hearted members. We could sign up to trade and some other things but we became obsessed with rebates, opt-outs and wanted a kind of half-hearted membership which the evolving EU found frustrating,
We wanted to be in the club but we wanted to re-write the membership rules to suit us - we wanted a semi-detached membership which cost us as little as possible with all the benefits. Why we thought the rest of the club should or would do what we wanted just because we were Britain always mystified me.
The UK population never really bought in to Europe - trade, foreign holidays and a nice place in the sun was all we really wanted. We never wanted open borders, a common currency and most of all there was the notion we would somehow lose a part of what we were if we became part of a European political union with its straight bananas..
I'd say the median British voter wanted the single market, and no more.
The British political elite wanted a seat at the table - the biggest, highest and most important table there was.
Only a third of those regard themselves as “religiously active”, which makes my point.
Anyhow I think we can safely put answering an option poll question down as lip service.
Although we are drifting into religion here, my wife is staunch CoE. I am a staunch atheist. I go to church because my wife goes to church (though not at the moment due to it still being closed).
My daughter goes to a local CoE school that you can only get in by church attendence. We attended. We STILL attend, five years later. Of those other parents who attended 'religiously' (oh the pun) during my daughters Nursery year, not one of them now attend.
Despite 'official' figures suggesting atheism is only running at about 10-15%, I'd strongly suggest religion doesn't really feature in many people's lives anymore, until they're older and its something to do and because they then fear their own mortality and think that suddenly getting back to church will somehow see them in heaven.
People are a lot less religious than they say they are.
Religiously yes but I think people are culturally Christian.
Lots still get christened, married and have funerals in local churches. Many go to carol concerts. I even enjoy Good Friday and harvest festival.
I have better things to do on a Sunday morning each week though.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
The crazies will never completely go away, Corbyn was there when Blair was PM. But they can be defeated.
If as I hope Biden not just wins but wins a landslide then the GOP will run away from Trump faster than you can say failure.
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
I don't disagree with much of this - whether cultural, historical or geographical, our attitudes to Europe have never been as some in Europe might have hoped. We only got interested after Suez exposed our imperial ambitions as being insufficient in the bi-polar world where Washington and Moscow mattered and London did not (or not as much as it had previously).
From 1956 to 2016 it was believed our political and economic destiny lay with Europe but we were never more than half-hearted members. We could sign up to trade and some other things but we became obsessed with rebates, opt-outs and wanted a kind of half-hearted membership which the evolving EU found frustrating,
We wanted to be in the club but we wanted to re-write the membership rules to suit us - we wanted a semi-detached membership which cost us as little as possible with all the benefits. Why we thought the rest of the club should or would do what we wanted just because we were Britain always mystified me.
The UK population never really bought in to Europe - trade, foreign holidays and a nice place in the sun was all we really wanted. We never wanted open borders, a common currency and most of all there was the notion we would somehow lose a part of what we were if we became part of a European political union with its straight bananas..
I'd say the median British voter wanted the single market, and no more.
The British political elite wanted a seat at the table - the biggest, highest and most important table there was.
That elastic eventually snapped.
Britain never suited Europe fully. Even pre-Maastricht in the 80s it was obvious.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
The crazies will never completely go away, Corbyn was there when Blair was PM. But they can be defeated.
If as I hope Biden not just wins but wins a landslide then the GOP will run away from Trump faster than you can say failure.
A nostalgic thread. Just think what we have lost: David Cameron, the best PM (bar Maggie) for 50 years. Osborne. Cementing in our highly-advantageous semi-detached membership of the EU, with the extra safeguards Cameron negotiated - the best possible of all possible relationships with our EU ex-friends. The Union secure. The economy in great shape. Grown-ups, moderate and sensible, running the country.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
The crazies will never completely go away, Corbyn was there when Blair was PM. But they can be defeated.
If as I hope Biden not just wins but wins a landslide then the GOP will run away from Trump faster than you can say failure.
The stench of failure may hang around Trump, we can hope, though there's many a wannabe tyrant who has created a mythology around abject defeat.
Even if we accept that Republican primary voters will run away from Trump the question is still what they will run towards?
Defeating Trump is a big job, but then it will be followed by having to defeat the next head of the far-right hydra. One election defeat won't be enough on its own.
Fascinating how it's always the migrant Jocks who think that the SNP are obsessed by Bannockburn and Braveheart. Shows how long they've been away from Scotland I guess.
A nostalgic thread. Just think what we have lost: David Cameron, the best PM (bar Maggie) for 50 years. Osborne. Cementing in our highly-advantageous semi-detached membership of the EU, with the extra safeguards Cameron negotiated - the best possible of all possible relationships with our EU ex-friends. The Union secure. The economy in great shape. Grown-ups, moderate and sensible, running the country.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. However I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
The crazies will never completely go away, Corbyn was there when Blair was PM. But they can be defeated.
If as I hope Biden not just wins but wins a landslide then the GOP will run away from Trump faster than you can say failure.
Only a third of those regard themselves as “religiously active”, which makes my point.
Anyhow I think we can safely put answering an option poll question down as lip service.
Although we are drifting into religion here, my wife is staunch CoE. I am a staunch atheist. I go to church because my wife goes to church (though not at the moment due to it still being closed).
My daughter goes to a local CoE school that you can only get in by church attendence. We attended. We STILL attend, five years later. Of those other parents who attended 'religiously' (oh the pun) during my daughters Nursery year, not one of them now attend.
Despite 'official' figures suggesting atheism is only running at about 10-15%, I'd strongly suggest religion doesn't really feature in many people's lives anymore, until they're older and its something to do and because they then fear their own mortality and think that suddenly getting back to church will somehow see them in heaven.
People are a lot less religious than they say they are.
Religiously yes but I think people are culturally Christian.
Lots still get christened, married and have funerals in local churches. Many go to carol concerts. I even enjoy Good Friday and harvest festival.
I have better things to do on a Sunday morning each week though.
Perhaps, but I question why people do this. People have their child baptised because its an excuse for a party. I really don't see many carol concerts round our way, and my wife is forever scanning the papers to see what IS going on. [1] The other festivals. Easter is a good excuse to chuff a load of choccie eggs and if its mid-late April a nice barbeque in the back garden with a lot of beer. Christmas is great for presents and an excuse for Dad to fall asleep in the arm chair pretending to listen to the Queen drone on about inclusion and what character the British people have shown this year in light of the [select important event from year]. Harvest festival? Haven't seen one of those in decades. Our school and church tries to DISCOURAGE Halloween (Pagan festival). Doesn't seem to work as my daughter has been trick or treating every year since 2014.
[1] But I'm in Bootle, where everyone is a good Communist, and remembering that Religion is the opiate of the masses bit.....
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
I don't disagree with much of this - whether cultural, historical or geographical, our attitudes to Europe have never been as some in Europe might have hoped. We only got interested after Suez exposed our imperial ambitions as being insufficient in the bi-polar world where Washington and Moscow mattered and London did not (or not as much as it had previously).
From 1956 to 2016 it was believed our political and economic destiny lay with Europe but we were never more than half-hearted members. We could sign up to trade and some other things but we became obsessed with rebates, opt-outs and wanted a kind of half-hearted membership which the evolving EU found frustrating,
We wanted to be in the club but we wanted to re-write the membership rules to suit us - we wanted a semi-detached membership which cost us as little as possible with all the benefits. Why we thought the rest of the club should or would do what we wanted just because we were Britain always mystified me.
The UK population never really bought in to Europe - trade, foreign holidays and a nice place in the sun was all we really wanted. We never wanted open borders, a common currency and most of all there was the notion we would somehow lose a part of what we were if we became part of a European political union with its straight bananas..
I'd say the median British voter wanted the single market, and no more.
The British political elite wanted a seat at the table - the biggest, highest and most important table there was.
That elastic eventually snapped.
But also, the UK never really confronted the question "if the choice comes down to trade, easy holidays and a nice place in the sun with some political bits you don't like or lose the whole lot to get out of the politics, which do you prefer?"
Partly because Thatcher and Major were both able to haggle their way to opt-outs at key moments. Partly because the "love Europe hate the EU" vibe was effective, but ignored the fact that the rest of Europe was, overall, pretty chilled with the idea of the EU. And partly because "have cake and eat it" has been elevated to the central political creed of the government.
A nostalgic thread. Just think what we have lost: David Cameron, the best PM (bar Maggie) for 50 years. Osborne. Cementing in our highly-advantageous semi-detached membership of the EU, with the extra safeguards Cameron negotiated - the best possible of all possible relationships with our EU ex-friends. The Union secure. The economy in great shape. Grown-ups, moderate and sensible, running the country.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. However I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
tl;dr: Blame the people, not the Tories.
Yes, of course. Who made those decisions? Are you implying that voters are just sheep, herded by Tory swains (who in any case can't agree amongst themselves), and have no minds or responsibility of their own?
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
Indeed, if Biden wins Pence will likely be GOP candidate in 2024 and constitutionally Trump could even run again.
If Starmer becomes PM the likeliest Tory leader of the opposition would probably be Priti Patel
There's no getting around this: the full-fat model of EU membership didn't work for the UK and was politically unsustainable.
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
I don't disagree with much of this - whether cultural, historical or geographical, our attitudes to Europe have never been as some in Europe might have hoped. We only got interested after Suez exposed our imperial ambitions as being insufficient in the bi-polar world where Washington and Moscow mattered and London did not (or not as much as it had previously).
From 1956 to 2016 it was believed our political and economic destiny lay with Europe but we were never more than half-hearted members. We could sign up to trade and some other things but we became obsessed with rebates, opt-outs and wanted a kind of half-hearted membership which the evolving EU found frustrating,
We wanted to be in the club but we wanted to re-write the membership rules to suit us - we wanted a semi-detached membership which cost us as little as possible with all the benefits. Why we thought the rest of the club should or would do what we wanted just because we were Britain always mystified me.
The UK population never really bought in to Europe - trade, foreign holidays and a nice place in the sun was all we really wanted. We never wanted open borders, a common currency and most of all there was the notion we would somehow lose a part of what we were if we became part of a European political union with its straight bananas..
I'd say the median British voter wanted the single market, and no more.
The British political elite wanted a seat at the table - the biggest, highest and most important table there was.
That elastic eventually snapped.
But also, the UK never really confronted the question "if the choice comes down to trade, easy holidays and a nice place in the sun with some political bits you don't like or lose the whole lot to get out of the politics, which do you prefer?"
Partly because Thatcher and Major were both able to haggle their way to opt-outs at key moments. Partly because the "love Europe hate the EU" vibe was effective, but ignored the fact that the rest of Europe was, overall, pretty chilled with the idea of the EU. And partly because "have cake and eat it" has been elevated to the central political creed of the government.
And so we are where we are.
And partly because its not a choice at all we need to make.
We will trade because it makes sense to trade. We will have easy holidays because it makes sense to have easy holidays. We will have a place in the sun, because those sunny places want our cash. We won't have the political bits because we'll be out.
Holidays were never at issue. I can with a British passport go almost anywhere in the entire world for a holiday. Australia, Canada, the USA, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Egypt . . . anywhere I want to go for a holiday I can without needing to buy a visa or go through some complex issues before I buy the tickets. Spain is never going to be different to that.
A nostalgic thread. Just think what we have lost: David Cameron, the best PM (bar Maggie) for 50 years. Osborne. Cementing in our highly-advantageous semi-detached membership of the EU, with the extra safeguards Cameron negotiated - the best possible of all possible relationships with our EU ex-friends. The Union secure. The economy in great shape. Grown-ups, moderate and sensible, running the country.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
Sometimes I find it hard to comprehend that I actually lived through a time when firestorms engulfed the media and politics over putting VAT on pasties.
A nostalgic thread. Just think what we have lost: David Cameron, the best PM (bar Maggie) for 50 years. Osborne. Cementing in our highly-advantageous semi-detached membership of the EU, with the extra safeguards Cameron negotiated - the best possible of all possible relationships with our EU ex-friends. The Union secure. The economy in great shape. Grown-ups, moderate and sensible, running the country.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
Sometimes I find it hard to comprehend that I actually lived through a time when firestorms engulfed the media and politics over putting VAT on pasties.
.. which was actually a perfectly sensible idea as well.
That was actually a good budget. It was a measure of how good it was that that exceptionally minor issue was the only one Balls could find to bitch about, with great assistance from Greggs, who were profiting from the loophole.
A nostalgic thread. Just think what we have lost: David Cameron, the best PM (bar Maggie) for 50 years. Osborne. Cementing in our highly-advantageous semi-detached membership of the EU, with the extra safeguards Cameron negotiated - the best possible of all possible relationships with our EU ex-friends. The Union secure. The economy in great shape. Grown-ups, moderate and sensible, running the country.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
Sometimes I find it hard to comprehend that I actually lived through a time when firestorms engulfed the media and politics over putting VAT on pasties.
.. which was actually a perfectly sensible idea as well.
That was actually a good budget. It was a measure of how good it was that that exceptionally minor issue was the only one Balls could find to bitch about, with great assistance from Greggs, who were profiting from the loophole.
It must be hard for you to come to terms with Cameron’s self inflicted total political failure. An avoidable mistake.
It still boggles my mind that the world is basically shut down because of a disease which, in actuality, kills small numbers of people
Fewer than 4,000 people died worldwide from Covid yesterday. On an average day, about 150,000 die around the world.
Social media is to blame for a lot of it, combined with the cult of safety-ism in the West summed up by the odious phrase "stay safe". I don't want to stay safe, I want to stay adventurous.
A nostalgic thread. Just think what we have lost: David Cameron, the best PM (bar Maggie) for 50 years. Osborne. Cementing in our highly-advantageous semi-detached membership of the EU, with the extra safeguards Cameron negotiated - the best possible of all possible relationships with our EU ex-friends. The Union secure. The economy in great shape. Grown-ups, moderate and sensible, running the country.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
Sometimes I find it hard to comprehend that I actually lived through a time when firestorms engulfed the media and politics over putting VAT on pasties.
.. which was actually a perfectly sensible idea as well.
That was actually a good budget. It was a measure of how good it was that that exceptionally minor issue was the only one Balls could find to bitch about, with great assistance from Greggs, who were profiting from the loophole.
It must be hard for you to come to terms with Cameron’s self inflicted total political failure. An avoidable mistake.
Not really. He is not responsible for the failure of Labour to campaign for Remain, nor for the decision of voters. He did his bit, with virtually no support from those who should have provided the support, and it's no reflection on his record as PM that voters rejected it, any more than it's a reflection of Churchill's war premiership that voters rejected his post-war vision, or of Attlee's post-war premiership that they soon rejected his. You have to look at what each leader actually did as PMs to assess their records as PMs.
If Osama had not had those planes fly into the Twin towers, there would have been no Iraq war, a stronger Blair government, a weaker financial crisis, probably no Brown, no Cameron, no Brexit and we might have had a leader capable of handling Corona. Boris and Gove would still be pundits on the BBC.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
Yes, I have had the same thought.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
The west keeps shooting itself in the foot, reloading and firing again.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
I think 'Sleepy Joe' might prove your extremes theory to be mistaken in a few weeks time.
Let’s hope so, but even Biden wins, the Maga crowd is not going away. It will be replaced by something worse.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
The crazies will never completely go away, Corbyn was there when Blair was PM. But they can be defeated.
If as I hope Biden not just wins but wins a landslide then the GOP will run away from Trump faster than you can say failure.
The stench of failure may hang around Trump, we can hope, though there's many a wannabe tyrant who has created a mythology around abject defeat.
Even if we accept that Republican primary voters will run away from Trump the question is still what they will run towards?
Defeating Trump is a big job, but then it will be followed by having to defeat the next head of the far-right hydra. One election defeat won't be enough on its own.
Not sure that's right. The GoP and Trump's Base are two very different groups. They need each other whilst clinging on to power, but if Trump falls his supporters are likely to lose interest and fall back on their 'guns and bibles'. They certainly won't drop in behind The Grand Old Partee.
I can see the GoP becoming a shell if Trump falls, and will need to rebuild itself pretty much from scratch. It may take a while.
Whatever else you think about Theresa May she is certainly a Conservative to the core of her identity. The Conservative Party should listen to her but are probably too far gone in moral turpitude. Which is one reason she is so frustrated, I think. She doesn't believe she should have to spell this stuff out.
A nostalgic thread. Just think what we have lost: David Cameron, the best PM (bar Maggie) for 50 years. Osborne. Cementing in our highly-advantageous semi-detached membership of the EU, with the extra safeguards Cameron negotiated - the best possible of all possible relationships with our EU ex-friends. The Union secure. The economy in great shape. Grown-ups, moderate and sensible, running the country.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
Sometimes I find it hard to comprehend that I actually lived through a time when firestorms engulfed the media and politics over putting VAT on pasties.
.. which was actually a perfectly sensible idea as well.
That was actually a good budget. It was a measure of how good it was that that exceptionally minor issue was the only one Balls could find to bitch about, with great assistance from Greggs, who were profiting from the loophole.
It must be hard for you to come to terms with Cameron’s self inflicted total political failure. An avoidable mistake.
Not really. He is not responsible for the failure of Labour to campaign for Remain, nor for the decision of voters. He did his bit, with virtually no support from those who should have provided the support, and it's no reflection on his record as PM that voters rejected it, any more than it's a reflection of Churchill's war premiership that voters rejected his post-war vision, or of Attlee's that they soon rejected his. You have to look at what each leader actually did as PMs to assess their records as PMs.
Cameron’s fatal error was he believed his own hype. He thought his personal endorsement was enough to win the vote. He rushed the referendum, he should never have called, to get it out the way.
Cameron is an undoubted failure, defeated by his own hubris. A tragic figure who unlocked the misery that followed.
Cameron’s fatal error was he believed his own hype. He thought his personal endorsement was enough to win the vote. He rushed the referendum, he should never have called, to get it out the way.
Cameron is an undoubted failure, defeated by his own hubris. A tragic figure who unlocked the misery that followed.
Poppycock. He thought his coalition of the entire political establishment, apart from a few loons in his own party and a few even bigger loons in UKIP, combined with the point that the economic arguments were so overwhelming, was enough to win the vote. A mistake, as it turned out, not least because after he committed to the referendum Labour was taken over by an anti-EU cabal, who obstructed the Remain campaign at every stage.
Blaming Cameron for decisions taken by almost everyone except Cameron is dishonest in the extreme. He was virtually the only one visibly campaigning for Remain.
Cameron’s fatal error was he believed his own hype. He thought his personal endorsement was enough to win the vote. He rushed the referendum, he should never have called, to get it out the way.
Cameron is an undoubted failure, defeated by his own hubris. A tragic figure who unlocked the misery that followed.
Poppycock. He thought his coalition of the entire political establishment, apart from a few loons in his own party and a few even bigger loons in UKIP, combined with the point that the economic arguments were so overwhelming, was enough to win the vote. A mistake, as it turned out, not least because after he committed to the referendum Labour was taken over by an anti-EU cabal, who obstructed the Remain campaign at every stage.
Blaming Cameron for decisions taken by almost everyone except Cameron is dishonest in the extreme. He was virtually the only one visibly campaigning for Remain.
We will have to agree to disagree. Cameron’s failures are obvious. The ship ran aground on his watch. He is responsible.
He steered us towards the rocks, he unleashed forces he couldn’t control and couldn’t rescue it in the campaign.
Whatever else you think about Theresa May she is certainly a Conservative to the core of her identity. The Conservative Party should listen to her but are probably too far gone in moral turpitude. Which is one reason she is so frustrated, I think. She doesn't believe she should have to spell this stuff out.
It must be incredibly frustrating for her. She put a huge amount of effort into trying to find a way through the mess she had inherited, including reconciling the contradictory promises the Leave campaign had made as best she could, and above all finding a way through the Irish conundrum, on which she managed - against the odds - to get the EU to agree a solution. Admittedly she failed miserably in bringing others with her in that, but it must still be a real wrench to see all that sacrificed in the interests of the career of Boris Johnson, who has belatedly now discovered what a disaster his own 'oven-ready' variant of her carefully-constructed deal is.
Cameron’s fatal error was he believed his own hype. He thought his personal endorsement was enough to win the vote. He rushed the referendum, he should never have called, to get it out the way.
Cameron is an undoubted failure, defeated by his own hubris. A tragic figure who unlocked the misery that followed.
Poppycock. He thought his coalition of the entire political establishment, apart from a few loons in his own party and a few even bigger loons in UKIP, combined with the point that the economic arguments were so overwhelming, was enough to win the vote. A mistake, as it turned out, not least because after he committed to the referendum Labour was taken over by an anti-EU cabal, who obstructed the Remain campaign at every stage.
Blaming Cameron for decisions taken by almost everyone except Cameron is dishonest in the extreme. He was virtually the only one visibly campaigning for Remain.
We will have to agree to disagree. Cameron’s failures are obvious. The ship ran aground on his watch. He is responsible.
He steered us towards the rocks, he unleashed forces he couldn’t control and couldn’t rescue it in the campaign.
One essay crisis too many.
I think the forces were already unleashed. I honestly can't see any counterfactual where he could have avoided calling the referendum.
Cameron’s fatal error was he believed his own hype. He thought his personal endorsement was enough to win the vote. He rushed the referendum, he should never have called, to get it out the way.
Cameron is an undoubted failure, defeated by his own hubris. A tragic figure who unlocked the misery that followed.
Poppycock. He thought his coalition of the entire political establishment, apart from a few loons in his own party and a few even bigger loons in UKIP, combined with the point that the economic arguments were so overwhelming, was enough to win the vote. A mistake, as it turned out, not least because after he committed to the referendum Labour was taken over by an anti-EU cabal, who obstructed the Remain campaign at every stage.
Blaming Cameron for decisions taken by almost everyone except Cameron is dishonest in the extreme. He was virtually the only one visibly campaigning for Remain.
We will have to agree to disagree. Cameron’s failures are obvious. The ship ran aground on his watch. He is responsible.
He steered us towards the rocks, he unleashed forces he couldn’t control and couldn’t rescue it in the campaign.
One essay crisis too many.
I think the forces were already unleashed. I honestly can't see any counterfactual where he could have avoided calling the referendum.
Do you think he could have avoided botching the renegotiation as he did though?
If he thought the EU was fine as it was he should have said so rather than appearing ashamed of the EU and adamant that it needed reform. If he thought the EU needed reform he should have got some meaningful reforms.
Instead he did the worst of both worlds. He failed to get any reforms, and failed to promote what was good about the EU in any real sense.
Do you think he could have avoided botching the renegotiation as he did though?
If he thought the EU was fine as it was he should have said so rather than appearing ashamed of the EU and adamant that it needed reform. If he thought the EU needed reform he should have got some meaningful reforms.
Instead he did the worst of both worlds. He failed to get any reforms, and failed to promote what was good about the EU in any real sense.
He didn't 'botch' the negotiations. He got some very useful concessions, notably on the City - the most important, objectively - and on the commitment to 'ever closer union'. Although symbolic, the latter was a really big deal, which would have cemented our favourable semi-detached relationship for a generation. He didn't manage to get much on immigration, it is true, but the Brexiteers tell us that was never an important issue.
What he did get was the best available overall. As we are now finding, that was a hell of a lot better than his successors could manage; indeed, only Maggie has ever done better - and she had the leverage of veto powers which he didn't have.
Comments
What is true, I believe, is that the most susceptible are much better protected now, due to better awareness and less risk taking by that group.
We are not Germany. Germany is not Britain.
*I'm not even going to mention the Winter of Discontent. (Ooops.)
Anyhow tomorrow I leave the Alps for Covid Centro, aka Bergamo, wish me luck...
The Lib Dems are just scum.
He changed the world. Food for thought.
I prefer competition.
Most of us weren't Leavers 8 years ago.
https://twitter.com/UKLabour/status/1308125021563428864?s=20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_country
If Keir Starmer can steer clear of identity politics and close the values gap, his party will reclaim lost ground
BY TIM BALE"
https://unherd.com/2020/09/how-patriotic-labour-could-crush-boris/
One couldn't be deferred/ignored forever and the longer it was left the worse it would have got.
Looking back, the attack on the Twin Towers was THE pivotal moment when hegemonic power began shifting from America to China, from the West to the East, and the movement is now so obvious and profound it will not be reversed for many decades, if ever.
A lot of this was due to dumb bad luck or western misjudgements - especially Iraq - but 9/11 will be seen as the hinge, in retrospect.
Maybe he can redeem himself through a Falklands War or a Princess Diana moment, where he brings the country together, but I doubt it. He is just too narcissistic and divisive.
To date, the worst by a country mile and I can't see it getting better.
Anyhow I think we can safely put answering an option poll question down as lip service.
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/dd545405-2947-49ba-ab18-f9cbe718a153
India too with a population of 1.3 billion is projected to join the USA and China to round off the top 3 largest economies by 2050, though if you include the EU that rounds up the current top 3
There is a minority of the electorate here who still dug it but number no more than 20-25% of the electorate.
This is as obvious as fuck to most normal level-headed people but there are plenty who still don't get it - mainly because they don't want to.
Two tier reform of the EU should have been discussed and agreed within the organisation a long time ago rather than trying to force by hook & crook everyone into the same model.
The other pivotal moment was the rise of social media and its algorithms that destruction of moderate politics and handed the whip hand to the extremes. We live in the age of the shouty nutter.
Brexit was not possible without it.
We would have voted it down (like France and Holland) and our vote would have had to be respected, and the UK would have negotiated a looser arrangement WITHIN the EU over time. And eurosceptic anger would have been safely vented.
By overriding eurosceptic democracy in that appalling way - denying us a vote then - Remainers heaped up the pyre of total disaster, further down the line.
He wanted us to join the Euro and sign the EU constitution.
He couldn't deliver because, even then, his views came up hard against the realities of domestic UK politics.
Mass is now done with everybody wearing masks leaving one seat free between attendees. The priest gives the communion wearing gloves.
It is something like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkNyRisrrM0
But, it suits our need for neatness and drama to think it's far simpler than that.
If he does that many new soft Tories will peel away from both Boris and The Brexit Party.
Fewer than 4,000 people died worldwide from Covid yesterday. On an average day, about 150,000 die around the world.
It really is quite barking, William.
I'm less convinced by your argument about the Supreme Court. Simply: I don't know whether the issue has the same resonance as 2016. Firstly, attitudes towards abortion continue to soften in the US, and the number of irreligious people is rising. (The statistics here are truly astonishing.) Secondly, in 2016 Republicans were up in arms at the prospect of Scalia being replaced by a liberal.
Now, it's possible that it has some resonance in Arizona (which has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the US), albeit a bare majority of Arizonans are favour of legal abortion. But Iowa I think had already slipped from a toss up to a lean Republican, and nothing much changes here.
Closer to home, even if the nationalists, the Brexit ultras or far left are defeated and we elect a moderate government they will not go away.
And of course on the eve of invasion, the action was supported by 54-38 in the UK. Don’t get many now admitting that. I suspect when the dust settles, this will be the same.
To those who obtusely shriek “what is this lockdown you rail against, you can’t even tell me what you want you ignorant fool!”. It’s like pornography to Justice Potter Stewart, you know it when you see it. Committing an unlawful act by inviting family into your own home is lockdown, of the unacceptable and ultimately self defeating type. Especially when combined with the snitching charter. Wearing a mask on a train carriage on the other hand is an irritant but acceptable to all but the fringe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_attendance
If as I hope Biden not just wins but wins a landslide then the GOP will run away from Trump faster than you can say failure.
Blair wanted to join the Euro, but he wasn't prepared to put the effort in to convince people. There are politicians who have campaigned single-mindedly since 1988 (at least) to take us out, and they're now reaping the reward of those decades of labour.
If Starmer becomes PM the likeliest Tory leader of the opposition would probably be Priti Patel
My daughter goes to a local CoE school that you can only get in by church attendence. We attended. We STILL attend, five years later.
Of those other parents who attended 'religiously' (oh the pun) during my daughters Nursery year, not one of them now attend.
Despite 'official' figures suggesting atheism is only running at about 10-15%, I'd strongly suggest religion doesn't really feature in many people's lives anymore, until they're older and its something to do and because they then fear their own mortality and think that suddenly getting back to church will somehow see them in heaven.
People are a lot less religious than they say they are.
https://twitter.com/miketatarski/status/1307540595422818304?s=20
From 1956 to 2016 it was believed our political and economic destiny lay with Europe but we were never more than half-hearted members. We could sign up to trade and some other things but we became obsessed with rebates, opt-outs and wanted a kind of half-hearted membership which the evolving EU found frustrating,
We wanted to be in the club but we wanted to re-write the membership rules to suit us - we wanted a semi-detached membership which cost us as little as possible with all the benefits. Why we thought the rest of the club should or would do what we wanted just because we were Britain always mystified me.
The UK population never really bought in to Europe - trade, foreign holidays and a nice place in the sun was all we really wanted. We never wanted open borders, a common currency and most of all there was the notion we would somehow lose a part of what we were if we became part of a European political union with its straight bananas..
What was offered was not what I claimed I wanted. If I was led to expect too much and the EU could never have accommodated it then I was right to vote to Leave.
Do you think the Treaty of Maastricht that moved explicitly away from a 'European Economic Area / European Community' to a European Union with separate new citizenship and a desire to pursue full federalism and statehood might have had something to do with that?
I fear the only way out of this spiral is a catastrophe.
As a Liverpool fan I can quite happily say that Kepa's performance over the weekend was calamitous and gifted Mane our second goal. Is that me blaming Kepa rather than ourselves for the fact we scored? I don't think so. I can be glad that we scored that goal while recognising that if Kepa had handled the ball better that goal wouldn't have been possible at that time.
The British political elite wanted a seat at the table - the biggest, highest and most important table there was.
That elastic eventually snapped.
Lots still get christened, married and have funerals in local churches. Many go to carol concerts. I even enjoy Good Friday and harvest festival.
I have better things to do on a Sunday morning each week though.
https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1294045129834213382?s=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE
The will embrace QAnon fully.
It will be utter disaster.
All lost - and for what? Every successive decision the UK has made since the catastrophic blunder of 23rd June 2016 has been worse and worse. I think the biggest blunder of all wasn't actually the referendum itself, but the failure to give Theresa May the majority she needed to make it work. That really was the worst of all possible worlds. We are seeing the aftershocks now, but there's worse to come.
Even if we accept that Republican primary voters will run away from Trump the question is still what they will run towards?
Defeating Trump is a big job, but then it will be followed by having to defeat the next head of the far-right hydra. One election defeat won't be enough on its own.
If Corbyn had only narrowly lost in 2019 then RLB or Laura Pidcock would have taken over not Starmer.
People have their child baptised because its an excuse for a party.
I really don't see many carol concerts round our way, and my wife is forever scanning the papers to see what IS going on. [1]
The other festivals. Easter is a good excuse to chuff a load of choccie eggs and if its mid-late April a nice barbeque in the back garden with a lot of beer.
Christmas is great for presents and an excuse for Dad to fall asleep in the arm chair pretending to listen to the Queen drone on about inclusion and what character the British people have shown this year in light of the [select important event from year].
Harvest festival? Haven't seen one of those in decades.
Our school and church tries to DISCOURAGE Halloween (Pagan festival). Doesn't seem to work as my daughter has been trick or treating every year since 2014.
[1] But I'm in Bootle, where everyone is a good Communist, and remembering that Religion is the opiate of the masses bit.....
Partly because Thatcher and Major were both able to haggle their way to opt-outs at key moments. Partly because the "love Europe hate the EU" vibe was effective, but ignored the fact that the rest of Europe was, overall, pretty chilled with the idea of the EU. And partly because "have cake and eat it" has been elevated to the central political creed of the government.
And so we are where we are.
Come to think of it you might be right...
We will trade because it makes sense to trade.
We will have easy holidays because it makes sense to have easy holidays.
We will have a place in the sun, because those sunny places want our cash.
We won't have the political bits because we'll be out.
Holidays were never at issue. I can with a British passport go almost anywhere in the entire world for a holiday. Australia, Canada, the USA, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Egypt . . . anywhere I want to go for a holiday I can without needing to buy a visa or go through some complex issues before I buy the tickets. Spain is never going to be different to that.
That was actually a good budget. It was a measure of how good it was that that exceptionally minor issue was the only one Balls could find to bitch about, with great assistance from Greggs, who were profiting from the loophole.
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1308152458301014016
I can see the GoP becoming a shell if Trump falls, and will need to rebuild itself pretty much from scratch. It may take a while.
Cameron is an undoubted failure, defeated by his own hubris. A tragic figure who unlocked the misery that followed.
Blaming Cameron for decisions taken by almost everyone except Cameron is dishonest in the extreme. He was virtually the only one visibly campaigning for Remain.
He steered us towards the rocks, he unleashed forces he couldn’t control and couldn’t rescue it in the campaign.
One essay crisis too many.
Its a shame she didn't follow the path of other ex-PMs in recent years and step down from politics at the next election.
If he thought the EU was fine as it was he should have said so rather than appearing ashamed of the EU and adamant that it needed reform.
If he thought the EU needed reform he should have got some meaningful reforms.
Instead he did the worst of both worlds. He failed to get any reforms, and failed to promote what was good about the EU in any real sense.
What he did get was the best available overall. As we are now finding, that was a hell of a lot better than his successors could manage; indeed, only Maggie has ever done better - and she had the leverage of veto powers which he didn't have.