Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Nobody forced them to go into coalition. The sense of crisis was just a convenient narrative.
Political party "not forced" to go into government.
If your point is that electoral logic compelled it, then it just shows that the Tories were in the weaker negotiating position. They needed the Lib Dems.
My point is that out of government, while remaining pure, they could have achieved nothing.
It is every political party's aim to achieve things. The LDs achieved things but of course had to compromise.
Since August in Paris mask wearing has been required in all outdoor and indoor public areas. They are about to go into full lockdown because of the huge increase in cases there. How does this real world example show that mask wearing is helping?
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
How do you run an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with a hugely larger debt mountain to service? seriously, how do you do it? without collapse? to save all the 82 year olds out there?
You don't run it permanently in the way that it is being run now. No-one is advocating that. But an economy in which 50% of the population is too scared to leave the home is not one that is going to function in any meaningful way. A targeted approach to lockdowns, more financial support for those affected by them and a functioning track and trace system are the requirements for where we are now. The government is offering none of these things currently.
We are being told this is the new normal. We are being conditioned by some to accept things as they are. People who are unemployed are being told to retrain as windfarm engineers.
That's where we are. And that is where we are staying. Do you see a time when we are 'out' of this. Because I really can't.
Yes I do. There should be a vaccine, or better testing, or better treatments soon.
I don't see a return to normal without any of that. Even if the Government said "we give up, all restrictions are lifted, do what you want" the economic crisis would still be there.
I support people taking responsibility for their own actions but don't pretend it would be a return to normal. It won't. Normal isn't an option now.
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Ok - but when you're back I'd be interested to hear how big the Donald J Trump outright win odds (currently 2/1) would need to be to iyo represent a value bet.
To be fair, he'd already indicated interest in the Betfair odds on Trump Electoral Votes 270-299 at 9.4 If you do think Trump might squeak a win, those look like exceptional value.
Of course you're not covered for the tie, which falls in the 240-269 band, but you could always look at the option of Biden 240-269.
Be aware that both markets go in play on election day, and appear to be contingent on the respective candidate contesting the election, otherwise they will be voided.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Nobody forced them to go into coalition. The sense of crisis was just a convenient narrative.
Political party "not forced" to go into government.
If your point is that electoral logic compelled it, then it just shows that the Tories were in the weaker negotiating position. They needed the Lib Dems.
My point is that out of government, while remaining pure, they could have achieved nothing.
It is every political party's aim to achieve things. The LDs achieved things but of course had to compromise.
If you think trebling tuition fees when they pledged to abolish them is a "compromise" then the message to voters is if you don't want compromises like that then vote for a party that can win a majority.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
How do you run an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with a hugely larger debt mountain to service? seriously, how do you do it? without collapse? to save all the 82 year olds out there?
You don't run it permanently in the way that it is being run now. No-one is advocating that. But an economy in which 50% of the population is too scared to leave the home is not one that is going to function in any meaningful way. A targeted approach to lockdowns, more financial support for those affected by them and a functioning track and trace system are the requirements for where we are now. The government is offering none of these things currently.
This looks relevant; lockdown is bad (nobody is pretending it isn't bad) but lots of cases of the Rona is worse;
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
"[Research] shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5."
Sun
So it is virtually indistinguishable from any other disease as far as median age at death is concerned. So your point is what?
Seriously you can't see the point? really? we are destroying countless young lives for this for decades, young people between the ages of 16 and 35 face the worst outlook since our boys went over the top at the Somme. and you can't see the point?
We expect these people to have a rotten terrible youth and still pay for our retirements? what are they, children or bloody slaves?
Sure, but what does the information that this is not a disease which disproportionately kills the elderly to a significant extent add to the argument?
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Thats the lack of foreign tourists. Its not just sun-starved Brits deprived of their ability to go to Magaluf thats the problem, its absurdly expensive jumper-starved fat Americans
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
"[Research] shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5."
Sun
So it is virtually indistinguishable from any other disease as far as median age at death is concerned. So your point is what?
Seriously you can't see the point? really? we are destroying countless young lives for this for decades, young people between the ages of 16 and 35 face the worst outlook since our boys went over the top at the Somme. and you can't see the point?
We expect these people to have a rotten terrible youth and still pay for our retirements? what are they, children or bloody slaves?
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
"[Research] shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5."
Sun
So it is virtually indistinguishable from any other disease as far as median age at death is concerned. So your point is what?
Seriously you can't see the point? really? we are destroying countless young lives for this for decades, young people between the ages of 16 and 35 face the worst outlook since our boys went over the top at the Somme. and you can't see the point?
We expect these people to have a rotten terrible youth and still pay for our retirements? what are they, children or bloody slaves?
Sure, but what does the information that this is not a disease which disproportionately kills the elderly to a significant extent add to the argument?
Pretty much every disease out there disproportionately kills the elderly. Up til no we have not allowed this fact to affect the futures of our young people. Or expected them to change their behaviour.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Nobody forced them to go into coalition. The sense of crisis was just a convenient narrative.
Political party "not forced" to go into government.
If your point is that electoral logic compelled it, then it just shows that the Tories were in the weaker negotiating position. They needed the Lib Dems.
Initially people like Ashdown saw the shortcomings, but Clegg (a classic Heathite Tory) spied his fifteen minutes of fame, and sold them all a pup.
The irony is that the tuition fee regime post coalition is much more progressive than the old regime.
I paid the 3k fees (I think I was the last year), and I would have been much better off paying the 9k fees.
For the vast majority of people, the new system is just a graduate tax. Those who do end up earning big bucks, it places a caps on their total repayments.
ONS estimating 17,200 cases per day in the week to 1 October. Test and Trace was finding roughly 3/4 of that, so should we estimate that we're finding the majority of cases with Testing?
Given asymptomatic spread it seems unlikely for us to be finding the majority of cases?
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
"[Research] shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5."
Sun
So it is virtually indistinguishable from any other disease as far as median age at death is concerned. So your point is what?
Seriously you can't see the point? really? we are destroying countless young lives for this for decades, young people between the ages of 16 and 35 face the worst outlook since our boys went over the top at the Somme. and you can't see the point?
We expect these people to have a rotten terrible youth and still pay for our retirements? what are they, children or bloody slaves?
Cuckoo
That the best you got? from the lunatic asylum that is the Scottish government?
The problem with having the army throw a temporary bridge across the Thames, is some parent getting uppity about the hight of the handrails and the spacing of bars, the first time some horseplaying kid has to get fished out of the drink by the coast guard. Putting a big sign up saying “temporary military bridge, cross at your own risk” isn’t allowed in 2020.
The modular BR90s aren't built to last. The longer spans are only designed to have 150 vehicles cross them before they are fucked. They have to be relatively light, and hence not durable, to be able to transported and placed quickly while being shot at by bad bastards.
Which is why it would only be a pedestrian bridge.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Thats the lack of foreign tourists. Its not just sun-starved Brits deprived of their ability to go to Magaluf thats the problem, its absurdly expensive jumper-starved fat Americans
Also, oldies buy from there, who have spent most of the last 6 months hiding in their homes.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Thats the lack of foreign tourists. Its not just sun-starved Brits deprived of their ability to go to Magaluf thats the problem, its absurdly expensive jumper-starved fat Americans
We're going to have a lot of wind farm technician trainees at this rate.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Nobody forced them to go into coalition. The sense of crisis was just a convenient narrative.
Political party "not forced" to go into government.
If your point is that electoral logic compelled it, then it just shows that the Tories were in the weaker negotiating position. They needed the Lib Dems.
My point is that out of government, while remaining pure, they could have achieved nothing.
It is every political party's aim to achieve things. The LDs achieved things but of course had to compromise.
You're absolutely right. But they chose the wrong thing on which to compromise - and it entirely compromised their credibility for a large number of their supporters.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
It is absolutely farcical because his stock of ideas don't even need to work, since they won't be tested unless they're adopted by the Government. He has a blank cheque to write whatever alternative proposals he wants to make, what has he got to lose? If the Government adopts the ideas he can say that he was leading the way first. If the Government adopts them and they fail he can blame Government implementation. If the Government doesn't adopt them he has an alternative to point to saying "you should be doing this".
Madness. All I can think is that Starmer is is afraid of putting anything out.
He seems terribly afraid to say anything which might allow him to be associated with any policy choice - as evidenced by the abstentions in Parliament. He doesn’t want to vote for anything that might turn out to be bad, and doesn’t want to vote against anything that might turn out to be good.
The irony is that the tuition fee regime post coalition is much more progressive than the old regime.
I paid the 3k fees (I think I was the last year), and I would have been much better off paying the 9k fees.
For the vast majority of people, the new system is just a graduate tax. Those who do end up earning big bucks, it places a caps on their total repayments.
Yup. I'm unlikely to pay off my student loan, so for all intents and purposes it's a graduate tax.
Under plan 1 I was paying off around £80 a month of my "student loan".
Under plan 2 I would have been paying off around £25 a month. Thus I'd have an extra £55 disposal income per month. That's a night out!
I have a lot of sympathy with those who point out that the economic cost of trying (unsuccessfully at that) to stop this virus is worse than the cure; that our young will have serious damage to their economic prospects; to their education and will be paying higher taxes throughout their lives to repay the debt taken on to protect our elderly.
My reservation is essentially Long Covid. A statistically significant number of younger people are suffering long term consequences from this virus including damaged lungs, organ failures and general exhaustion. I fear that the sequelae of this virus are going to be significant ongoing health costs. What I have not seen is an indication of how common this is but death is not the only consequence.
I am wondering how the Tories have impressed so much as to add two points to their tally. Perhaps I haven't been paying attention enough.
There does not seem to be a reason but how on earth Starmer has not achieved a substantial crossover is a mystery
And who is Ed Davey
A very successful former energy an climate Change minister, probably with more intelligence than the Entire Tory front bench.
A very low bar indeed , and I suspect he only just scrapes over it, Lib Dumbs is a far better and more accurate description , they are not Liberal and are not democratic for sure.
I have a lot of sympathy with those who point out that the economic cost of trying (unsuccessfully at that) to stop this virus is worse than the cure; that our young will have serious damage to their economic prospects; to their education and will be paying higher taxes throughout their lives to repay the debt taken on to protect our elderly.
My reservation is essentially Long Covid. A statistically significant number of younger people are suffering long term consequences from this virus including damaged lungs, organ failures and general exhaustion. I fear that the sequelae of this virus are going to be significant ongoing health costs. What I have not seen is an indication of how common this is but death is not the only consequence.
Im sure its a thing, but do not underestimate the psychological factors here. If relentless propaganda tells a person a disease is serious, they are surely much more likely to see it as such.
The average age of those infected in the second wave already rises to 60 years. The head of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology at the Vall d'Hebron Hospital, Magda Campins, has expressed her concern this Friday that the average age of people infected by coronavirus rises and is already at 60 years. In an interview on RAC-1, Campins asked all people over 60 years of age or with underlying pathologies to get vaccinated against the flu since "infection by both viruses can represent a higher excess mortality, especially in people over 70 ".
Various new articles stating that the Trump campaign is pulling ads from mid west states and focusing elsewhere because their data (on the ground campaigning) is looking good. Democrats are saying its tosh and they are short of money.
All the evidence says this is tosh by the GOP, but....
Convince me not to worry please.
I won't reassure you but I will outline what has been their media strategies
- Trump has focused on digital, Biden on TV. That has been the way through the campaign; - Some of the articles about Biden putting money into TV in places like TX have been around for weeks. Because of the nature of US TV buying, especially ahead of elections, you have to buy in advance. So he is not "suddenly" spending money in TX; - Yes, the Trump campaign have focused on the ground effort and new registrations - I posted this link yesterday by an outfit who use AI and claim that domination of the news is more important than polling (https://www.mediaelection.com/#volume)
Now, having put further doubt in your mind, Kamski et al will reassure you and let you know I am totally wrong and speaking out of my a*se. And it really is my last post of the day
Ok - but when you're back I'd be interested to hear how big the Donald J Trump outright win odds (currently 2/1) would need to be to iyo represent a value bet.
To be fair, he'd already indicated interest in the Betfair odds on Trump Electoral Votes 270-299 at 9.4 If you do think Trump might squeak a win, those look like exceptional value.
Of course you're not covered for the tie, which falls in the 240-269 band, but you could always look at the option of Biden 240-269.
Be aware that both markets go in play on election day, and appear to be contingent on the respective candidate contesting the election, otherwise they will be voided.
My hedges are -
Exchange back of Trump EC 270 to 329 Sell of SPIN Biden win with Handicap -110 Exchange back of Reps to hold Florida.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
How do you run an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with a hugely larger debt mountain to service? seriously, how do you do it? without collapse? to save all the 82 year olds out there?
You don't run it permanently in the way that it is being run now. No-one is advocating that. But an economy in which 50% of the population is too scared to leave the home is not one that is going to function in any meaningful way. A targeted approach to lockdowns, more financial support for those affected by them and a functioning track and trace system are the requirements for where we are now. The government is offering none of these things currently.
This looks relevant; lockdown is bad (nobody is pretending it isn't bad) but lots of cases of the Rona is worse;
Finally, international organisations trying to work out the relative merits of different approaches in different countries. We need much more of this sort of research, to feed into policy making over the winter.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
It is absolutely farcical because his stock of ideas don't even need to work, since they won't be tested unless they're adopted by the Government. He has a blank cheque to write whatever alternative proposals he wants to make, what has he got to lose? If the Government adopts the ideas he can say that he was leading the way first. If the Government adopts them and they fail he can blame Government implementation. If the Government doesn't adopt them he has an alternative to point to saying "you should be doing this".
Madness. All I can think is that Starmer is is afraid of putting anything out.
He seems terribly afraid to say anything which might allow him to be associated with any policy choice - as evidenced by the abstentions in Parliament. He doesn’t want to vote for anything that might turn out to be bad, and doesn’t want to vote against anything that might turn out to be good.
Absolutely which might work if the Government loses support on a "Governments lose elections" basis but not if they don't.
So far the Tories despite the past year are still over 40%.
If the Tories collapse then Starmer is basically stood on the sidelines saying I'm here if you need me.
If by this time next year the health crisis is behind us, Brexit negotiations are behind us and the economy is growing then what will Starmer have?
I have a lot of sympathy with those who point out that the economic cost of trying (unsuccessfully at that) to stop this virus is worse than the cure; that our young will have serious damage to their economic prospects; to their education and will be paying higher taxes throughout their lives to repay the debt taken on to protect our elderly.
My reservation is essentially Long Covid. A statistically significant number of younger people are suffering long term consequences from this virus including damaged lungs, organ failures and general exhaustion. I fear that the sequelae of this virus are going to be significant ongoing health costs. What I have not seen is an indication of how common this is but death is not the only consequence.
Im sure its a thing, but do not underestimate the psychological factors here. If relentless propaganda tells a person a disease is serious, they are surely much more likely to see it as such.
I don't think that is it but I certainly don't discount the mental health consequences of lockdown, lack of socialisation and unemployment. Once again the young will bear a completely disproportionate share of the cost for very little of the benefit.
@malcolmg was right, I would be back but I think it's an important one
@kinabalu on the Trump odds, I think he will get more of a pounding in the polls in the next week or so, so I am looking for 5/2 or even 3/1 but I will take 2/1
I mentioned a few days back that one big thing to look out for was the audience numbers for the VP debate and whether they followed the same trends as the Presidential debate, which was down 13% from 2016. My point was that, if the VP trends did significantly better, it would suggests that the public was taking a lot more interest in the VP candidates as potential Presidents and therefore this was not just a Trump vs Biden race but would broaden to a greater focus on Pence and Harris as possible Presidents.
Well, the audience numbers have come in and the uplift from 2016 has been huge - so far, 59m have been counted as watching the VP debate, making it the 2nd most watched VP debate since 1976 and over 50% higher than the 2016 VP debate. It is even more remarkable when you consider that TV audiences have been declining across the board over the past several years and that the Presidential debate this time only generated a 70m audience.
My read on this is that punters are now only going to have to think about what voters are thinking about Trump and Biden, but put an important weighting to voters' views on Pence and Harris. My personal view - which many will disagree with - is that Pence is somewhat of a known entity, the interesting one will be how many undecideds will be comfortable with the prospect of a President Harris.
Again, there is polling on that! @HYUFD has posted plenty of it.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
It is absolutely farcical because his stock of ideas don't even need to work, since they won't be tested unless they're adopted by the Government. He has a blank cheque to write whatever alternative proposals he wants to make, what has he got to lose? If the Government adopts the ideas he can say that he was leading the way first. If the Government adopts them and they fail he can blame Government implementation. If the Government doesn't adopt them he has an alternative to point to saying "you should be doing this".
Madness. All I can think is that Starmer is is afraid of putting anything out.
He seems terribly afraid to say anything which might allow him to be associated with any policy choice - as evidenced by the abstentions in Parliament. He doesn’t want to vote for anything that might turn out to be bad, and doesn’t want to vote against anything that might turn out to be good.
Yes. Starmer is beginning to look utterly pointless. Being less crazy than Crazy-F*ck Jezbollah Corbyn can only get you so far. And it has got Starmer this far. But as every passes and he seems entirely clueless as to what to do about the pandemiic, other than say Oh I wouldn't do it like that- strongly resembling the asinine Harry Enfield character - Starmer's "popularity" will fall away.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
It is absolutely farcical because his stock of ideas don't even need to work, since they won't be tested unless they're adopted by the Government. He has a blank cheque to write whatever alternative proposals he wants to make, what has he got to lose? If the Government adopts the ideas he can say that he was leading the way first. If the Government adopts them and they fail he can blame Government implementation. If the Government doesn't adopt them he has an alternative to point to saying "you should be doing this".
Madness. All I can think is that Starmer is is afraid of putting anything out.
He seems terribly afraid to say anything which might allow him to be associated with any policy choice - as evidenced by the abstentions in Parliament. He doesn’t want to vote for anything that might turn out to be bad, and doesn’t want to vote against anything that might turn out to be good.
He's at some risk of making Gordon Brown look decisive.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
With hindsight, the coalition was a massive political mistake by Clegg. He should have screwed the Tories with a one year confidence and supply agreement and then forced an election when it suited the Lib Dems. They chose office over power.
An election at whatever time would likely not have delivered a majority to the LDs. They had a chance, they took it. And they did contribute a lot.
They took a chance and sold their supporters down the river. Why should they ever be trusted again?
They committed to abolishing tuition fees and trebled them instead. The consequences were inevitable, why on earth they agreed to that is a question for the ages. They should have made that the reddest of red lines but the simple fact is they were pandering to students but didn't really care about them - they did care about electoral reform so made that their priority instead.
The mask came off the LDs and they showed their true colours.
That's ridiculous hyperbole. The simple fact is that the influence of a junior coalition partner is very limited and compromises have to be made. Any rational thinker understands this.
When your number one commitment at the election is to abolish tuition fees then how is trebling tuition fees a "compromise"?
A tuition fee freeze would have been a compromise. Trebling tuition fees was not a compromise in any stretch of the imagination.
If the Lib Dems had had a majority, then they could have abolished or frozen tuition fees. But the electorate didn't give them a majority, therefore they were not in a position to implement all of their policies. That's how democracy works. The LDs were able to implement some of their policies: pupil premiums, green energy initiatives, AV vote, but at the cost of allowing the Tories to triple tuition fees. That was the compromise.
Nobody forced them to go into coalition. The sense of crisis was just a convenient narrative.
Political party "not forced" to go into government.
If your point is that electoral logic compelled it, then it just shows that the Tories were in the weaker negotiating position. They needed the Lib Dems.
My point is that out of government, while remaining pure, they could have achieved nothing.
It is every political party's aim to achieve things. The LDs achieved things but of course had to compromise.
If you think trebling tuition fees when they pledged to abolish them is a "compromise" then the message to voters is if you don't want compromises like that then vote for a party that can win a majority.
Which is exactly what happened in 2015!
The mistake, as you and others have said, was immediately deciding that tuition fees, the single issue on which they’d based the majority of their campaign, was not as important as electoral reform. That they made the decision on fees before the AV referendum, turned the latter into a referendum on Nick Clegg and his about-turn on fees.
Then, in 2015, they tried to distance themselves from all their good achievements during the previous five years in government.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Thats the lack of foreign tourists. Its not just sun-starved Brits deprived of their ability to go to Magaluf thats the problem, its absurdly expensive jumper-starved fat Americans
Also, oldies buy from there, who have spent most of the last 6 months hiding in their homes.
Us oldies must be sitting on a cash mountain, how should we spend it?
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
Donald Trump plans to hold a rally on SATURDAY in Florida
Super spreader in Chief going to expose a load more people this weekend.
The self isolation period after a positive test in some European countries is 7 days and 10 days here. That seems to be 9 days that he's going out so probably not a good idea, but it wouldn't be questioned in other countries. I would expect him to test negative prior to attending though, although this is Trump we're talking about.
I have a lot of sympathy with those who point out that the economic cost of trying (unsuccessfully at that) to stop this virus is worse than the cure; that our young will have serious damage to their economic prospects; to their education and will be paying higher taxes throughout their lives to repay the debt taken on to protect our elderly.
My reservation is essentially Long Covid. A statistically significant number of younger people are suffering long term consequences from this virus including damaged lungs, organ failures and general exhaustion. I fear that the sequelae of this virus are going to be significant ongoing health costs. What I have not seen is an indication of how common this is but death is not the only consequence.
Im sure its a thing, but do not underestimate the psychological factors here. If relentless propaganda tells a person a disease is serious, they are surely much more likely to see it as such.
The Lib Dems problem is I don't think anybody knows what they stand for now other than Stop Brexit.
Not even that any more, Davey has shifted from Stop Brexit to a close relationship with Europe post Brexit.
Other than that they are now basically the fiscally conservative, socially liberal party which is no surprise as all but 2 of the top 20 LD target seats are now Tory seats and all but 4 are in London and the South and mainly voted Remain
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
How do you run an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with a hugely larger debt mountain to service? seriously, how do you do it? without collapse? to save all the 82 year olds out there?
You don't run it permanently in the way that it is being run now. No-one is advocating that. But an economy in which 50% of the population is too scared to leave the home is not one that is going to function in any meaningful way. A targeted approach to lockdowns, more financial support for those affected by them and a functioning track and trace system are the requirements for where we are now. The government is offering none of these things currently.
We are being told this is the new normal. We are being conditioned by some to accept things as they are. People who are unemployed are being told to retrain as windfarm engineers.
That's where we are. And that is where we are staying. Do you see a time when we are 'out' of this. Because I really can't.
Yes I do. There should be a vaccine, or better testing, or better treatments soon.
I don't see a return to normal without any of that. Even if the Government said "we give up, all restrictions are lifted, do what you want" the economic crisis would still be there.
I support people taking responsibility for their own actions but don't pretend it would be a return to normal. It won't. Normal isn't an option now.
Surely normal for you is just sitting behind a keyboard typing uninformed nonsense on PB 24/7? With a vaccine or without, very little will change for you. You are indeed blessed in your rather strange self imposed bubble! Or perhaps not!
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Thats the lack of foreign tourists. Its not just sun-starved Brits deprived of their ability to go to Magaluf thats the problem, its absurdly expensive jumper-starved fat Americans
Also, oldies buy from there, who have spent most of the last 6 months hiding in their homes.
Us oldies must be sitting on a cash mountain, how should we spend it?
Employ young people. Seriously. Gardeners, home improvements, car care, takeaways from Deliveroo, whatever you can afford. Its a moral responsibility right now.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
Given the ONS figures this is one of the only times that the term "decimated" is literally correct at the moment.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I disagree with this. It was not because the LDs formed a government with the Conservatives that led to their collapse. It was that they caputilated to the Tories and signed on the dotted line in under a week.
They ended up being light blues and the Ministers and MPs were actively supporting the Conservative policies. Once they started acting like Tories, they lost most of their support from the centre and centre left.
That one week undid thirty years of steady progress. Thirty years to finally get a shot at negotiating a proper coalition agreement, and they roll over in a few days.
LOL. QED.
They emerged from a 30-yr fantasy cocoon and were given a shot at power which they grasped. And of course, as junior members of a coalition they got turned over on occasion. But they also contributed a lot that they wouldn't have been able to had they stayed pure and out of government.
Your post reads a lot like those from the Corbynistas.
They were leading in the polls just a few weeks previously and people were talking about Clegg as PM. The power play would not have been to sign up to being a junior coalition partner but to exploit the hung parliament and aim to win a majority. With more ruthless leadership and better strategy, there could have been a Lib Dem PM in 2012.
Could there bollocks. There could have been a long term and effective bloc which held a Tory minority government hostage. And maybe later a Labour one too. But they chose not to.
In an alternative world, the UKIPification of the Tories would have seen them lose 100+ seats to the Lib Dems. They had the ideal baseline to work from in 2010 but then threw it away thinking that was the best they could do.
Nick Clegg got the Liberals into government for the first time since Lloyd George, he had far more power and influence on the direction of this country than Charles Kennedy for example even though Charles Kennedy won more LD seats in 2005 than Clegg did in 2010
Cardiff based Peacocks stores are shutting. Potential loss of 24,000 jobs, nationally.
Paging Boris supporters, any retraining ideas?
That's the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, the EWM is parent of a lot of different brands.
A lot of shops on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh seem to be either them or virtually identikit tourist tat retail that all seem to stock the same stuff - are those them too?
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
You think that we're going to be decimated, that is 1 in 10 lose their jobs? Such foolish optimism is worthy of the SNP itself.
The problem with having the army throw a temporary bridge across the Thames, is some parent getting uppity about the hight of the handrails and the spacing of bars, the first time some horseplaying kid has to get fished out of the drink by the coast guard. Putting a big sign up saying “temporary military bridge, cross at your own risk” isn’t allowed in 2020.
The modular BR90s aren't built to last. The longer spans are only designed to have 150 vehicles cross them before they are fucked. They have to be relatively light, and hence not durable, to be able to transported and placed quickly while being shot at by bad bastards.
Which is why it would only be a pedestrian bridge.
There are other systems available - and some have been left in place as temporary solutions for decades in other parts of the world.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
Given the ONS figures this is one of the only times that the term "decimated" is literally correct at the moment.
It won't be literally correct in six months time.
There ain't gonna be a V-shaped recovery in the UK. We are looking at L. A permanent reduction of GDP by 5-10%, possibly worse, depending on the virus and the vaccines.
I am wondering how the Tories have impressed so much as to add two points to their tally. Perhaps I haven't been paying attention enough.
There does not seem to be a reason but how on earth Starmer has not achieved a substantial crossover is a mystery
And who is Ed Davey
A very successful former energy an climate Change minister, probably with more intelligence than the Entire Tory front bench.
A very low bar indeed , and I suspect he only just scrapes over it, Lib Dumbs is a far better and more accurate description , they are not Liberal and are not democratic for sure.
Another inarticulate and childish post Malcolm. We can say that without doubt the LDs are rather more liberal than an average hate filled nationalist eh ? Love the way you call others half wits and morons when your own posts are so devoid of any intelligence, but moreover you blindly follow one of the most backward and philosophically bankrupt belief sets in the history of human kind. I await the inevitable torrent of poorly phrased childish abuse!
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Far better control and oversight of track and trace - the key to getting the pandemic under some kind of control.
Much closer coordination with local authorities on local lockdowns.
Financial support for businesses and employees affected by local lockdowns.
No end to the furlough and its extension to cover other areas where it has not been applied.
Labour will not support an opening up of the country as things stand. I think that is the right position to take.
It is just a matter of fact that Labour was well over 20 poionts behind when Starmer took over. It was close to 20 points behind before lockdown. But even if you want to go by the December result, there has been significant progress in the last six months. It's a long journey with much damage to undo. The strat has been a positive one.
How do you run an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with a hugely larger debt mountain to service? seriously, how do you do it? without collapse? to save all the 82 year olds out there?
You don't run it permanently in the way that it is being run now. No-one is advocating that. But an economy in which 50% of the population is too scared to leave the home is not one that is going to function in any meaningful way. A targeted approach to lockdowns, more financial support for those affected by them and a functioning track and trace system are the requirements for where we are now. The government is offering none of these things currently.
We are being told this is the new normal. We are being conditioned by some to accept things as they are. People who are unemployed are being told to retrain as windfarm engineers.
That's where we are. And that is where we are staying. Do you see a time when we are 'out' of this. Because I really can't.
Yes I do. There should be a vaccine, or better testing, or better treatments soon.
I don't see a return to normal without any of that. Even if the Government said "we give up, all restrictions are lifted, do what you want" the economic crisis would still be there.
I support people taking responsibility for their own actions but don't pretend it would be a return to normal. It won't. Normal isn't an option now.
Surely normal for you is just sitting behind a keyboard typing uninformed nonsense on PB 24/7? With a vaccine or without, very little will change for you. You are indeed blessed in your rather strange self imposed bubble! Or perhaps not!
You seem very, very obsessed with me for some bizarre reason.
And my number of posts which is little different to many other users and well below some others.
ONS estimating 17,200 cases per day in the week to 1 October. Test and Trace was finding roughly 3/4 of that, so should we estimate that we're finding the majority of cases with Testing?
Given asymptomatic spread it seems unlikely for us to be finding the majority of cases?
The test and trace numbers include cases at university, care homes and hospitals that aren't part of the target population for the ONS survey, so the proportion is not quite that high.
An effective test and trace system would find many asymptomatic cases by testing contacts of known cases and backwards tracing to find out where they caught it from, and who else caught it from the same source.
So our current system might not be as hopeless as made out, and provides a basis to be improved upon.
Cardiff based Peacocks stores are shutting. Potential loss of 24,000 jobs, nationally.
Paging Boris supporters, any retraining ideas?
That's the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, the EWM is parent of a lot of different brands.
A lot of shops on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh seem to be either them or virtually identikit tourist tat retail that all seem to stock the same stuff - are those them too?
Do you get out much?
Peacocks are a discount clothing retailer on every High Street. EWM stores have a presence across the UK too.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
Given the ONS figures this is one of the only times that the term "decimated" is literally correct at the moment.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
Given the ONS figures this is one of the only times that the term "decimated" is literally correct at the moment.
It won't be literally correct in six months time.
There ain't gonna be a V-shaped recovery in the UK. We are looking at L. A permanent reduction of GDP by 5-10%, possibly worse, depending on the virus and the vaccines.
We are 10% down while people are temporarily locked down (imposed or self-imposed).
Ferfuxsake, homeopaths, I knew the Great Barrington declaration was a load of bollocks.
A widely-circulated open letter calling on governments to pursue herd immunity is counting homeopaths, therapists and fake names among its "medical" signatories, leading to accusations that it falsely represents scientific support for the controversial position.
The Great Barrington Declaration, a letter organised by prominent advocates of herd immunity, claims to have been signed by more than 15,000 scientists and medical practitioners, as well as more than 150,000 members of the general public.
Yet Sky News found dozens of fake names on the list of medical signatories, which anyone can add to if they tick a box and enter a name. These included Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas, who listed himself as a "Dr of Hard Sums".
One medical professional on the list gives his name as Dr Harold Shipman, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom.
Other famous names included Dominic Cummings, who is described as "PhD Durham Univercity".
Sky News also found 18 self-declared homeopaths listed on the open letter as medical practitioners, despite the fact that homeopathy has no scientific underpinning or clinical evidence to support its use.
In addition, the letter has been signed by well over 100 therapists, including massage therapists, hypnotherapists, psychotherapists and one Mongolian Khöömii Singer who describes himself as a "therapeutic sound practitioner".
Public health experts accused the letter, which has been used as evidence for the idea of a rift in the scientific community, of misrepresenting the level of support for the controversial concept of herd immunity.
Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it reminded him of "the messaging used to undermine public health policies on harmful substances, such as tobacco".
They may yet endure a torrid second wave, having skilfully avoided the worst of the first
Germany still has had fewer cases overall than countries of comparable size like France, Italy, ourselves, Mexico and Iran and also significantly fewer deaths per head than the likes of Brazil, the USA , Canada and Spain
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
You think that we're going to be decimated, that is 1 in 10 lose their jobs? Such foolish optimism is worthy of the SNP itself.
Here I employ my LadyG rule of Reasonable Worst Case Scenario generally panning out. To me that says 10% unemployment is likely.
But yes, it could be worse, maybe much worse. We are in an unprecedented crisis, which will have all kinds of spiralling effects that are so complex as to be incalculable; nearly all of these consequences will be negative. What for instance, would be the impact of a major western country defaulting on its debts? It is not impossible.
Ferfuxsake, homeopaths, I knew the Great Barrington declaration was a load of bollocks.
A widely-circulated open letter calling on governments to pursue herd immunity is counting homeopaths, therapists and fake names among its "medical" signatories, leading to accusations that it falsely represents scientific support for the controversial position.
The Great Barrington Declaration, a letter organised by prominent advocates of herd immunity, claims to have been signed by more than 15,000 scientists and medical practitioners, as well as more than 150,000 members of the general public.
Yet Sky News found dozens of fake names on the list of medical signatories, which anyone can add to if they tick a box and enter a name. These included Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas, who listed himself as a "Dr of Hard Sums".
One medical professional on the list gives his name as Dr Harold Shipman, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom.
Other famous names included Dominic Cummings, who is described as "PhD Durham Univercity".
Sky News also found 18 self-declared homeopaths listed on the open letter as medical practitioners, despite the fact that homeopathy has no scientific underpinning or clinical evidence to support its use.
In addition, the letter has been signed by well over 100 therapists, including massage therapists, hypnotherapists, psychotherapists and one Mongolian Khöömii Singer who describes himself as a "therapeutic sound practitioner".
Public health experts accused the letter, which has been used as evidence for the idea of a rift in the scientific community, of misrepresenting the level of support for the controversial concept of herd immunity.
Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it reminded him of "the messaging used to undermine public health policies on harmful substances, such as tobacco".
I've tried my best to make the word dominatrixes more well known, I even used it in a PB thread header once.
It seems every day new record breaking polls come out implying that the Tories are going win a stonking landslide on June the 8th, whilst Jeremy Corbyn and Labour would suffer less punishment if they booked 400 dominatrices concurrently that night and chose ‘mower’ as their safe word.
I am wondering how the Tories have impressed so much as to add two points to their tally. Perhaps I haven't been paying attention enough.
There does not seem to be a reason but how on earth Starmer has not achieved a substantial crossover is a mystery
And who is Ed Davey
A very successful former energy an climate Change minister, probably with more intelligence than the Entire Tory front bench.
A very low bar indeed , and I suspect he only just scrapes over it, Lib Dumbs is a far better and more accurate description , they are not Liberal and are not democratic for sure.
Another inarticulate and childish post Malcolm. We can say that without doubt the LDs are rather more liberal than an average hate filled nationalist eh ? Love the way you call others half wits and morons when your own posts are so devoid of any intelligence, but moreover you blindly follow one of the most backward and philosophically bankrupt belief sets in the history of human kind. I await the inevitable torrent of poorly phrased childish abuse!
It is true that the LDs at the 2019 GE had the highest average incomes and most graduates as a percentage of their vote of any of the main parties, so the LDs can say they attract the most successful voters now however that also proves you need to attract far more than just voters doing well to win
I have a lot of sympathy with those who point out that the economic cost of trying (unsuccessfully at that) to stop this virus is worse than the cure; that our young will have serious damage to their economic prospects; to their education and will be paying higher taxes throughout their lives to repay the debt taken on to protect our elderly.
My reservation is essentially Long Covid. A statistically significant number of younger people are suffering long term consequences from this virus including damaged lungs, organ failures and general exhaustion. I fear that the sequelae of this virus are going to be significant ongoing health costs. What I have not seen is an indication of how common this is but death is not the only consequence.
Im sure its a thing, but do not underestimate the psychological factors here. If relentless propaganda tells a person a disease is serious, they are surely much more likely to see it as such.
What do you think we should be doing?
All our resources should surely be devoted at those with serious symptoms or who are genuinely vulnerable.
We could have almost built a moat around every person 75 or over and still spent a couple of 100 billion less, and had an economy that shrank less.
Why are we spending billions trying to track down people who have no symptoms giving COVID to other people who aren't in any danger either?
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Thats the lack of foreign tourists. Its not just sun-starved Brits deprived of their ability to go to Magaluf thats the problem, its absurdly expensive jumper-starved fat Americans
I am amazed they have 24K workers, I thought all the mills were closed and they cannot have that many shops. Where do they all work.
I wonder whether Boris openly standing up to the Let It Rip faction of his own party - by no means the path of least resistance - might not be winning him a few points with a safety-conscious public.
They may yet endure a torrid second wave, having skilfully avoided the worst of the first
Germany still has had fewer cases overall than countries of comparable size like France, Italy, ourselves, Mexico and Iran and also significantly fewer deaths per head than the likes of Brazil, the USA , Canada and Spain
Indeed. In western Europe, Germany and Sweden have done the best (in very different ways). That may change in the 2nd wave, is my point.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
The economy is going to be smaller either way. There is a major health crisis and people are not going out whether there is a formal lockdown or not.
People talk about shielding the vulnerable but having hospitality get back to normal but not only do the vulnerable rely upon the healthy . . . but hospitality relies upon the vulnerable. A great many pounds spent in pubs, restaurants etc normally are spent by people who now need to shield and will shield regardless of what the government says because they are afraid and don't want to die.
The only way to get the economy back to normal is to put the health crisis behind us. That means either a vaccine, herd immunity (which would be hundreds of thousands more deaths) or suppressing the virus.
The average age of covid deaths is 82. The media are having a giant canary over Trump recovering because it blasts a gargantuan hole in their and your narrative of collapse.
Which is what we are going to get.
But OK. People will see that poverty, unemployment and destitution kill. Kill far worse that corona.
"[Research] shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5."
Sun
So it is virtually indistinguishable from any other disease as far as median age at death is concerned. So your point is what?
Seriously you can't see the point? really? we are destroying countless young lives for this for decades, young people between the ages of 16 and 35 face the worst outlook since our boys went over the top at the Somme. and you can't see the point?
We expect these people to have a rotten terrible youth and still pay for our retirements? what are they, children or bloody slaves?
Cuckoo
That the best you got? from the lunatic asylum that is the Scottish government?
Streets ahead of their counterparts in other UK regions, especially Westminster.
Cardiff based Peacocks stores are shutting. Potential loss of 24,000 jobs, nationally.
Paging Boris supporters, any retraining ideas?
That's the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, the EWM is parent of a lot of different brands.
A lot of shops on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh seem to be either them or virtually identikit tourist tat retail that all seem to stock the same stuff - are those them too?
Do you get out much?
Peacocks are a discount clothing retailer on every High Street. EWM stores have a presence across the UK too.
No need to be rude, I was just asking a question asking if those were them "too" (ie in addiotion to Peacocks).
Though for what its worth there is no Peacocks in my High Street. I would have to drive to another town or city to find a Peacocks and have never shopped there personally, in part because they simply don't exist where I live. If I do drive away from where I live it is to the Trafford Centre and to the best of my recollection I don't recall seeing them there either.
Ferfuxsake, homeopaths, I knew the Great Barrington declaration was a load of bollocks.
A widely-circulated open letter calling on governments to pursue herd immunity is counting homeopaths, therapists and fake names among its "medical" signatories, leading to accusations that it falsely represents scientific support for the controversial position.
The Great Barrington Declaration, a letter organised by prominent advocates of herd immunity, claims to have been signed by more than 15,000 scientists and medical practitioners, as well as more than 150,000 members of the general public.
Yet Sky News found dozens of fake names on the list of medical signatories, which anyone can add to if they tick a box and enter a name. These included Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas, who listed himself as a "Dr of Hard Sums".
One medical professional on the list gives his name as Dr Harold Shipman, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom.
Other famous names included Dominic Cummings, who is described as "PhD Durham Univercity".
Sky News also found 18 self-declared homeopaths listed on the open letter as medical practitioners, despite the fact that homeopathy has no scientific underpinning or clinical evidence to support its use.
In addition, the letter has been signed by well over 100 therapists, including massage therapists, hypnotherapists, psychotherapists and one Mongolian Khöömii Singer who describes himself as a "therapeutic sound practitioner".
Public health experts accused the letter, which has been used as evidence for the idea of a rift in the scientific community, of misrepresenting the level of support for the controversial concept of herd immunity.
Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it reminded him of "the messaging used to undermine public health policies on harmful substances, such as tobacco".
I wonder whether Boris openly standing up to the Let It Rip faction of his own party - by no means the path of least resistance - might not be winning him a few points with a safety-conscious public.
Does that mean when he inevitably U turns his value goes down again?
Cardiff based Peacocks stores are shutting. Potential loss of 24,000 jobs, nationally.
Paging Boris supporters, any retraining ideas?
That's the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, the EWM is parent of a lot of different brands.
A lot of shops on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh seem to be either them or virtually identikit tourist tat retail that all seem to stock the same stuff - are those them too?
Do you get out much?
Peacocks are a discount clothing retailer on every High Street. EWM stores have a presence across the UK too.
No need to be rude, I was just asking a question asking if those were them "too" (ie in addiotion to Peacocks).
Though for what its worth there is no Peacocks in my High Street. I would have to drive to another town or city to find a Peacocks and have never shopped there personally, in part because they simply don't exist where I live. If I do drive away from where I live it is to the Trafford Centre and to the best of my recollection I don't recall seeing them there either.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
Brexit was not sold on economics.
No, it was sold on emotions and feelings at a time of relative global stability, when some people were feeling disgruntled at missing out on perceived national success.
This pandemic will impact everyone, mostly in extremely negative ways, and the universal perception will be: oh God help make it stop. A very different ambience.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
You half witted nutter, given England will be in the toilet why does it make a blind bit of difference. Instead of being robbed of our last shilling we will be able to spend it where we want. Will be a landslide next year.
They may yet endure a torrid second wave, having skilfully avoided the worst of the first
Germany still has had fewer cases overall than countries of comparable size like France, Italy, ourselves, Mexico and Iran and also significantly fewer deaths per head than the likes of Brazil, the USA , Canada and Spain
Indeed. In western Europe, Germany and Sweden have done the best (in very different ways). That may change in the 2nd wave, is my point.
Germany may see more cases again but I expect their excellent track and trace system will still leave them near the top of the Western league table (and they still have had fewer deaths per head than Sweden as well while doing slightly better in terms of lost economic growth than the OECD average too)
Comments
It is every political party's aim to achieve things. The LDs achieved things but of course had to compromise.
But equally, it doesn't show the contrary either.
Belt up and learn some logic.
I don't see a return to normal without any of that. Even if the Government said "we give up, all restrictions are lifted, do what you want" the economic crisis would still be there.
I support people taking responsibility for their own actions but don't pretend it would be a return to normal. It won't. Normal isn't an option now.
I paid the 3k fees (I think I was the last year), and I would have been much better off paying the 9k fees.
If you do think Trump might squeak a win, those look like exceptional value.
Of course you're not covered for the tie, which falls in the 240-269 band, but you could always look at the option of Biden 240-269.
Be aware that both markets go in play on election day, and appear to be contingent on the respective candidate contesting the election, otherwise they will be voided.
https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1314459119533735936?s=20
especially when its to prolong your life beyond an age incredibly few people in history ever go to.
Now we are.
Given asymptomatic spread it seems unlikely for us to be finding the majority of cases?
Cardiff based Peacocks stores are shutting. Potential loss of 24,000 jobs, nationally.
Paging Boris supporters, any retraining ideas?
But they chose the wrong thing on which to compromise - and it entirely compromised their credibility for a large number of their supporters.
Under plan 1 I was paying off around £80 a month of my "student loan".
Under plan 2 I would have been paying off around £25 a month. Thus I'd have an extra £55 disposal income per month. That's a night out!
My reservation is essentially Long Covid. A statistically significant number of younger people are suffering long term consequences from this virus including damaged lungs, organ failures and general exhaustion. I fear that the sequelae of this virus are going to be significant ongoing health costs. What I have not seen is an indication of how common this is but death is not the only consequence.
In an interview on RAC-1, Campins asked all people over 60 years of age or with underlying pathologies to get vaccinated against the flu since "infection by both viruses can represent a higher excess mortality, especially in people over 70 ".
Exchange back of Trump EC 270 to 329
Sell of SPIN Biden win with Handicap -110
Exchange back of Reps to hold Florida.
Running my Biden EC supremacy.
So far the Tories despite the past year are still over 40%.
If the Tories collapse then Starmer is basically stood on the sidelines saying I'm here if you need me.
If by this time next year the health crisis is behind us, Brexit negotiations are behind us and the economy is growing then what will Starmer have?
Super spreader in Chief going to expose a load more people this weekend.
Here's some https://www.newsweek.com/more-americans-want-kamala-harris-president-mike-pence-ahead-vp-debate-poll-1537260?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1602115144
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
The mistake, as you and others have said, was immediately deciding that tuition fees, the single issue on which they’d based the majority of their campaign, was not as important as electoral reform. That they made the decision on fees before the AV referendum, turned the latter into a referendum on Nick Clegg and his about-turn on fees.
Then, in 2015, they tried to distance themselves from all their good achievements during the previous five years in government.
AEP in Telegraph.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
Other than that they are now basically the fiscally conservative, socially liberal party which is no surprise as all but 2 of the top 20 LD target seats are now Tory seats and all but 4 are in London and the South and mainly voted Remain
https://twitter.com/wi_john/status/1314442061412732928
It won't be literally correct in six months time.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/08/germany-sees-worrying-jump-coronavirus-cases-amid-warnings-uncontrollable/
They may yet endure a torrid second wave, having skilfully avoided the worst of the first
That cannot be right can it ???
And my number of posts which is little different to many other users and well below some others.
An effective test and trace system would find many asymptomatic cases by testing contacts of known cases and backwards tracing to find out where they caught it from, and who else caught it from the same source.
So our current system might not be as hopeless as made out, and provides a basis to be improved upon.
Peacocks are a discount clothing retailer on every High Street. EWM stores have a presence across the UK too.
(the day is not completely wasted after all)
It won't be permanently 10% down.
A W-shaped recession looks more likely to me.
A widely-circulated open letter calling on governments to pursue herd immunity is counting homeopaths, therapists and fake names among its "medical" signatories, leading to accusations that it falsely represents scientific support for the controversial position.
The Great Barrington Declaration, a letter organised by prominent advocates of herd immunity, claims to have been signed by more than 15,000 scientists and medical practitioners, as well as more than 150,000 members of the general public.
Yet Sky News found dozens of fake names on the list of medical signatories, which anyone can add to if they tick a box and enter a name. These included Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas, who listed himself as a "Dr of Hard Sums".
One medical professional on the list gives his name as Dr Harold Shipman, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom.
Other famous names included Dominic Cummings, who is described as "PhD Durham Univercity".
Sky News also found 18 self-declared homeopaths listed on the open letter as medical practitioners, despite the fact that homeopathy has no scientific underpinning or clinical evidence to support its use.
In addition, the letter has been signed by well over 100 therapists, including massage therapists, hypnotherapists, psychotherapists and one Mongolian Khöömii Singer who describes himself as a "therapeutic sound practitioner".
Public health experts accused the letter, which has been used as evidence for the idea of a rift in the scientific community, of misrepresenting the level of support for the controversial concept of herd immunity.
Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it reminded him of "the messaging used to undermine public health policies on harmful substances, such as tobacco".
https://news.sky.com/story/coronvairus-dr-johnny-bananas-and-dr-person-fakename-among-medical-signatories-on-herd-immunity-open-letter-12099947
But yes, it could be worse, maybe much worse. We are in an unprecedented crisis, which will have all kinds of spiralling effects that are so complex as to be incalculable; nearly all of these consequences will be negative. What for instance, would be the impact of a major western country defaulting on its debts? It is not impossible.
It seems every day new record breaking polls come out implying that the Tories are going win a stonking landslide on June the 8th, whilst Jeremy Corbyn and Labour would suffer less punishment if they booked 400 dominatrices concurrently that night and chose ‘mower’ as their safe word.
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2017/04/23/why-a-1997-style-landslide-or-even-a-1983-style-landslide-might-not-happen-but-maybe-a-2005-style-majority-of-66-will/
Perhaps this PB notion that the pandemic chaos is a result of Starmer's failure to write a response plan is gaining traction nationally.
We could have almost built a moat around every person 75 or over and still spent a couple of 100 billion less, and had an economy that shrank less.
Why are we spending billions trying to track down people who have no symptoms giving COVID to other people who aren't in any danger either?
I wonder whether Boris openly standing up to the Let It Rip faction of his own party - by no means the path of least resistance - might not be winning him a few points with a safety-conscious public.
Where are the hospitalisations?
Though for what its worth there is no Peacocks in my High Street. I would have to drive to another town or city to find a Peacocks and have never shopped there personally, in part because they simply don't exist where I live. If I do drive away from where I live it is to the Trafford Centre and to the best of my recollection I don't recall seeing them there either.
https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1272625988514562052
This pandemic will impact everyone, mostly in extremely negative ways, and the universal perception will be: oh God help make it stop. A very different ambience.