I have 3 kids - 11 (first year at secondary), 7 and 3. Home schooling earlier this year was challenging. This was despite my wife being a teacher not at her school and my working being done at home. It is hard to home school two whilst the third is clinging onto your legs. I really don't want to return to that again.
What I think could be a good compromise is for secondary to go to remote working. They are old enough and good enough with technology for it to work. The older ones can tend to stay at home alone if parents need to work. Primary go into school still. They are easier to bubble and they tend to have less social interactions. Finally keep pre-school settings open. Trying to work with toddlers around is almost impossible.
Just keeping secondary schools as remote work would.impact R significantly. Certainly anecdotally in recent weeks it has been far more secondary schools with cases rather than primary. I am in a T4 area.
I wouldn't be surprised if that is the outcome.
I would. It would mean the DfE admitting they had been lying, and they won’t be able to do that.
Blair making a good case for managing the vaccination faster, on R4 now. We do risk our achievement in getting them authorised negated by a lacklustre deployment.
Does he have data to support this novel protocol? Perhaps we could find 30,000 people and run a three-arm comparative study and then determine the answer?
Florey stuck penicillin into one sick policeman, Jenner inoculated one child. Don't be so precious.
The How to Vaccinate the World podcast dealt with this on its last episode. People are very reluctant to deviate from the trial design.
It is certainly a dilemma but the easiest way (for them) is to "follow the science". I can't see that changing.
Whether it should or not is I'm sure a fertile PB topic.
I was surprised by the immunologist on R4 this morning who claimed it was a no brainer as the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine single dose is 90%.
What he didn't note was that rate of effectiveness is only demonstrated for the period between the first and second dose. We have no data at all for any longer time period.
There's certainly a case to be made, but not dishonestly or stupidly.
You don't get time in a R4 Today slot to caveat absolutely everything. And what you don't note is that the rate of effectiveness of a second dose is only demonstrated for the period between whenever second doses have been given, and now. We have no data at all for any longer time period.
A lot longer than 21 days, though. He had plenty of time, particularly as he was on to make the case for the single dose.
And it's a basic point, not "caveating absolutely everything'.
It is inherently unlikely that the effect drops from 90% to zero on day 22. You set a very low bar for dishonest and stupid.
That's a straw man. He came on specifically to make the case for a single dose regime on the basis (repeatedly emphasised) that it is 90% effective. A scientist should know that simply isn't true.
As I said at the start of this discussion, there is a case to be made, but that is not the way to do it.
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
You do realise there are kids who desperately NEED school, not just for learning, but for socialising, maturing, interacting, growing up? Blithely closing down the schools, for months at a time, is mad. And doing it to save the old?
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
Again, the myth that children are being cruelly sacrificed to grant demented octogenarians an extra six months of life.
The issue isn't that we must save the elderly at any cost, it's that if the disease makes enough people sick at once then the healthcare system will implode, and take down anybody - young and old alike - who needs treatment for everything.
The Government has striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost. Almost. They're prepared to shut down the whole of hospitality, any retailers we can get by without, leisure facilities which benefit millions by providing health-improving exercise and force extended families to stay physically apart for months on end, as well as to ruin people's Christmas plans at the last minute - and yet, the Tier 4 advice still permits in-person tuition to continue. It will be practically the last thing to go. Nobody wants it to go. If it wasn't absolutely necessary then I wouldn't want it to go.
This all comes down to a calculation about how many people have to suffer and die in order that kids can keep going to school, which is the sort of trade off we make all the time in society. A certain number of people, including children of course, die on the roads every year because we don't reimpose the Red Flag Act. The social benefits of saving those lives would be outweighed by the damage caused to others, so we let them die. It's simply my contention that making children put up with remote learning for two, three, four months is less bad than the consequences of allowing schools to resume their function as coronavirus petri dishes, when the disease is running rampant in large swathes of the land and the new variant is liable to spread everywhere in the fullness of time. It's the least worst option.
I've argued a lot with you of late, but that's a really excellent post.
It’s weakness is that it conjures up remote learning as if it’s always some middle class kid sitting up in his or her bedroom learning via a new laptop.
The reality we are dealing with is that school is, for many kids, providing both essential childcare so that parents are able to get out and do their jobs, and providing a refuge from home environments that are simply unsuitable for remote learning, and often unpleasant in a whole variety of ways.
It is the emerging evidence of the consequences from the earlier lockdown when kids were forced to be at home that has informed the government making it the absolutely last thing they want to do again.
That's a fair point.
*BUT*
Here in Los Angeles, schools have been closed since March. They have successfully distributed laptops to all students. (We passed, because we have our own.)
Kids are doing OK. Not all, sure. And younger kids are finding it harder. But they're doing OK.
Before CV19, there were people - thousands in the UK alone - who were too remote from their local school. And you know, they turned out OK.
There's this bonkers fear that anything that deviates from just how things have been the last few years will cause some kind of massive harm. Humans are resilient. We do ok.
Social inequalities in schooling will only grow as a result.
Also, closed schools don't seem to have controlled the epidemic in LA, even without the presence of mutant Covid-19.
That's a different point.
Los Angeles - like many US cities - has a CV19 problem. People in low end jobs - in delivery, in retail, in kitchens, in factories - they have to go to work.
Nogotowork. Nogetpaid.
And this is an expensive place to live.
It's hard working these jobs safely. But there's no safety net. So you do it.
Wealthy, middle class, people: by and large they can work from home on their laptops.
But the question was about schools.
In many places - like Germany - kids don't go to school until they're 7. So, is losing one term, when you're a little kid, that serious? And older kids can remote learn.
I'm nit denying there are challenges. I'm merely asking you not to overstate them.
It is nothing for children , I took my daughter out of school and she spent 2 years living it up in California, improved her life skills, swimming ability and generally had a great couple of years. Came back and 2 years later got all her O Levels / highers and degree etc with little problem. Learnt far more than she ever would have in school.
Did you keep her isolated from all other children for those 2 years?
She never went to school but obviously met with lots of people including children her own age. We did lots of travelling and generally had a great life apart from having to go to work now and again.
There is no need to have anyone isolated just now. My grandsons still meet friends , not as ideal as normal life and not as regularly but they are not imprisoned in the house for months on end.
Sure, but if the point of closing schools is to stop children giving each other coronavirus, it does defeat the purpose if they are then meeting "lots of people" (especially with "lots of travelling"). At least in school it's a defined bubble, with distancing rules, staff getting tested every week and automatic contact tracing if there is a case - at least that what it is like in my son's school.
Staff are not being tested every week, nor are there distancing rules for children. Even if there were, this funny thing called the ‘start and end of the school day’ would make them unenforceable.
Our school does staggered dismissal of classes (i.e. in bubbles) from the playground (so outside)
Blair making a good case for managing the vaccination faster, on R4 now. We do risk our achievement in getting them authorised negated by a lacklustre deployment.
Does he have data to support this novel protocol? Perhaps we could find 30,000 people and run a three-arm comparative study and then determine the answer?
To be fair, and I'm still bitching about delays locally, there's the storage issue. Heavy duty fridges need to be supplied and tested.
I have heard a story through the grapevine (not from Leics) about a hospital that ruined a batch of vaccine through incorrect storage.
There was definitely a GP surgery that had a problem with its fridge.
That will happen, unfortunately. It's why AZ is a easier vaccine to work with.
That's cauliflower crust not as a topping isn't it?
For those with an allergy or on a special diet then cauliflower crust makes a surprisingly good pizza base.
Earlier in the year I tried a ketogenic diet for a few months which rules out traditional pizzas. I had a homemade cauliflower crust pizza and it worked nicely.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It's a PDF from the previous day. Each day includes some different statistics, as well as the daily tallies of cases, deaths (broken down regionally) hospital numbers, and R number.
What you can see is that some of the new Bundesländer, which got off relatively lightly in the Spring, are now the worst hit. Saxony (414) and Thuringia (320) have easily the highest 7-day incidence per 100,000 - all other states are between 96 and 207. Saxony already has easily the highest total death rate per capita.
Some people have drawn a correlation between areas with high AfD support and high numbers. I don't like this kind of thing - apart from the fact that Meckpomm still has the lowest numbers, you could have made a similar correlation in the Spring between areas of high AfD support and low coronavirus numbers. Of course, the AfD have been trying to make political capital out of being "anti-lockdown" so I can understand why people are making the connection.
On the other hand, it doesn't support the idea (proposed by some on here a while back) that high numbers of catholics meant high infection rates.
Blair making a good case for managing the vaccination faster, on R4 now. We do risk our achievement in getting them authorised negated by a lacklustre deployment.
Does he have data to support this novel protocol? Perhaps we could find 30,000 people and run a three-arm comparative study and then determine the answer?
Florey stuck penicillin into one sick policeman, Jenner inoculated one child. Don't be so precious.
The How to Vaccinate the World podcast dealt with this on its last episode. People are very reluctant to deviate from the trial design.
It is certainly a dilemma but the easiest way (for them) is to "follow the science". I can't see that changing.
Whether it should or not is I'm sure a fertile PB topic.
I was surprised by the immunologist on R4 this morning who claimed it was a no brainer as the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine single dose is 90%.
What he didn't note was that rate of effectiveness is only demonstrated for the period between the first and second dose. We have no data at all for any longer time period.
There's certainly a case to be made, but not dishonestly or stupidly.
You don't get time in a R4 Today slot to caveat absolutely everything. And what you don't note is that the rate of effectiveness of a second dose is only demonstrated for the period between whenever second doses have been given, and now. We have no data at all for any longer time period.
A lot longer than 21 days, though. He had plenty of time, particularly as he was on to make the case for the single dose.
And it's a basic point, not "caveating absolutely everything'.
It is inherently unlikely that the effect drops from 90% to zero on day 22. You set a very low bar for dishonest and stupid.
That's a straw man. He came on specifically to make the case for a single dose regime on the basis (repeatedly emphasised) that it is 90% effective. A scientist should know that simply isn't true.
As I said at the start of this discussion, there is a case to be made, but that is not the way to do it.
A scientist would be dealing in concepts like what the evidence suggests, not what is "simply true." You have fallen into the EBM trap of restrictively defining what evidence means and then complaining there isn't any. Florey staved off Albert Alexander's death for 48 hours, and took that single data point as evidence that penicillin was a life-saving intervention. Was he wrong, dishonest and/or stupid?
Then he should submit a series of papers to the MHRA, setting out the evidence for abandoning the previously agreed regime for administering each of the vaccines, so that it may be properly considered.
We currently do not have the infrastructure to move very fast to beat this epidemic. Testing takes months, manufacturing vaccines takes months, and vaccinating people will take months. Meanwhile, the virus is not only infecting and killing people, but also mutating and it could become able to defeat the vaccines by the time they are finally rolled out.
In 1348 we did not have the ability to create vaccines against the Black Death (the first vaccine from dead plague bacteria was created in 1890). In 2020 we have the technology to create vaccines against COVID-19, but it takes so long that there is still no end in sight.
Speed is of the essence in dealing with an epidemic. We need to explore every way of rolling the vaccines out faster, and Tony Blair's suggestion is well worth considering. The fact that to do this means following a slow and bureaucratic process involving large committees of experts illustrates that we are currently just not organised to develop vaccines quickly.
This could become critical if ever Disease X appears, possibly out of the African rain forests. This would spread like COVID and have a death rate like Ebola. We will really need vaccines available fast when/if this happens.
If that last scenario were ever to happen then everyone would be too scared to leave the house and civilizational collapse would occur.
It's also not plausible - that combination of rapid death and transmissibility is implausible. You'd need the ability for the virus to survive on fomites for an extended period.
(Don't worry about Ebola. Look at Marburg's Disease if you want to scare yourself. Mutate it to include respiratory transmission - there is an argument that some people make that this was actually the Black Death vs. Yersinia pestis transmitted bubonic plague. Read the following if you don't want to sleep tonight:
I thought MERS had a death rate well into the 20-30% range. Would a transmissible MERS-CoV definitely mean changes to make it less deadly?
Of course, humanity having had COVID first now, probably much shortens vaccine time to market even compared to this year's pace.
It's not necessarily changes in the vaccine per se.
Simply if it kills people quicker then it has less time to spread before the host ceases to be functional.
Worst case would be say:
(a) 10 day asymptomatic period (b) during which it is transmissible via respiratory delivery (i.e. coughing) (c) sudden onset of symptoms at that point (d) rapid (say 4-5 day) progression with a 80-90% mortality rate (e) extended survival of the virus on fomites.
I think you could see 40-50% of a population wiped
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Blair making a good case for managing the vaccination faster, on R4 now. We do risk our achievement in getting them authorised negated by a lacklustre deployment.
Does he have data to support this novel protocol? Perhaps we could find 30,000 people and run a three-arm comparative study and then determine the answer?
To be fair, and I'm still bitching about delays locally, there's the storage issue. Heavy duty fridges need to be supplied and tested.
I have heard a story through the grapevine (not from Leics) about a hospital that ruined a batch of vaccine through incorrect storage.
There was definitely a GP surgery that had a problem with its fridge.
That will happen, unfortunately. It's why AZ is a easier vaccine to work with.
I'd be somewhat surprised if all, even many, GP surgeries had fridges that could cope with -80degC. And had much spare capacity.
As Mr C says, that's a reason for the AZ vaccine being preferred, although personally I would like to see the issue about dosage being definitely sorted.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Blair making a good case for managing the vaccination faster, on R4 now. We do risk our achievement in getting them authorised negated by a lacklustre deployment.
Does he have data to support this novel protocol? Perhaps we could find 30,000 people and run a three-arm comparative study and then determine the answer?
Florey stuck penicillin into one sick policeman, Jenner inoculated one child. Don't be so precious.
The How to Vaccinate the World podcast dealt with this on its last episode. People are very reluctant to deviate from the trial design.
It is certainly a dilemma but the easiest way (for them) is to "follow the science". I can't see that changing.
Whether it should or not is I'm sure a fertile PB topic.
I was surprised by the immunologist on R4 this morning who claimed it was a no brainer as the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine single dose is 90%.
What he didn't note was that rate of effectiveness is only demonstrated for the period between the first and second dose. We have no data at all for any longer time period.
There's certainly a case to be made, but not dishonestly or stupidly.
You don't get time in a R4 Today slot to caveat absolutely everything. And what you don't note is that the rate of effectiveness of a second dose is only demonstrated for the period between whenever second doses have been given, and now. We have no data at all for any longer time period.
A lot longer than 21 days, though. He had plenty of time, particularly as he was on to make the case for the single dose.
And it's a basic point, not "caveating absolutely everything'.
It is inherently unlikely that the effect drops from 90% to zero on day 22. You set a very low bar for dishonest and stupid.
That's a straw man. He came on specifically to make the case for a single dose regime on the basis (repeatedly emphasised) that it is 90% effective. A scientist should know that simply isn't true.
As I said at the start of this discussion, there is a case to be made, but that is not the way to do it.
A scientist would be dealing in concepts like what the evidence suggests, not what is "simply true." You have fallen into the EBM trap of restrictively defining what evidence means and then complaining there isn't any. Florey staved off Albert Alexander's death for 48 hours, and took that single data point as evidence that penicillin was a life-saving intervention. Was he wrong, dishonest and/or stupid?
A major difference between your examples and a vaccine is that -- for a vaccination program to be successful -- it needs widespread public confidence & acceptance.
A bungled vaccination program that causes loss of public confidence because of misplaced claims would be disastrous.
Hence, public trust in what scientists say about the vaccine is very important, and so scientists should be very careful on TV/R4.
One of my chums is having the shittest Christmas. His wife and kids are stuck in Mexico, his sister is down with Covid and had to call an ambulance yesterday (but wasn't admitted - she wasn't yet quite bad enough to get a bed). He's prone to self-harming. And his Christmas dinner is going to be a pizza.
Although it will be a pigs-in-blankets pizza, so he has something to look forward to...
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
What's interesting is that you have characters like Trump and Johnson who half the people see as pants-on-fire liars (which the evidence also supports), and yet half the people (or at least a lot) see them as "telling like it is" and more honest than the average politician, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So you only have to fake in a way that fools 40% of people, and shamelessly lying all the time seems to be quite effective for this limited goal.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
You can fool some of the people..........
And it would appear that Johnson can, ATM, fool enough of the people. However there will come a day.......
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Its not as if they loved him before the last election. And then he got an 80-seat majority.
That's cauliflower crust not as a topping isn't it?
For those with an allergy or on a special diet then cauliflower crust makes a surprisingly good pizza base.
Earlier in the year I tried a ketogenic diet for a few months which rules out traditional pizzas. I had a homemade cauliflower crust pizza and it worked nicely.
Do @TOPPING get his name from one of @TSE's pizzas?
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
What's interesting is that you have characters like Trump and Johnson who half the people see as pants-on-fire liars (which the evidence also supports), and yet half the people (or at least a lot) see them as "telling like it is" and more honest than the average politician, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So you only have to fake in a way that fools 40% of people, and shamelessly lying all the time seems to be quite effective for this limited goal.
I think Trump and Johnson are quite different here even though superficially similar.
With Trump, I think I know his real opinions better than I know Biden's or Clinton's despite him out-lying them by hundreds to one.
With Johnson, I have no idea his real opinion on much despite his lying.
I can see an argument that Trump tells it like it is, I can't see it for Johnson.
The newly discovered variant was only detected in Britain because scientists there are doing the most sequencing in the world, by far. Since Dec. 1, Britain has sequenced more than 3,700 coronavirus cases, compared with fewer than 40 cases in the United States, according to Trevor Bedford, who leads a viral sequencing effort at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Its not as if they loved him before the last election. And then he got an 80-seat majority.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
Well they failed dismally with Johnson giving him a magnificent 80 seat majority.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
What's interesting is that you have characters like Trump and Johnson who half the people see as pants-on-fire liars (which the evidence also supports), and yet half the people (or at least a lot) see them as "telling like it is" and more honest than the average politician, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So you only have to fake in a way that fools 40% of people, and shamelessly lying all the time seems to be quite effective for this limited goal.
I think Trump and Johnson are quite different here even though superficially similar.
With Trump, I think I know his real opinions better than I know Biden's or Clinton's despite him out-lying them by hundreds to one.
With Johnson, I have no idea his real opinion on much despite his lying.
I can see an argument that Trump tells it like it is, I can't see it for Johnson.
That's an intersting take. I think Trump does stay "true to character" in a way that some politicians don't. Even if the character he stays true to is "lying sociopathic racist sexist fraudster".
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
You can fool some of the people all of the time. And those are the ones you want to concentrate on.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Its not as if they loved him before the last election. And then he got an 80-seat majority.
The likes of Johnson love elections because they can run around doing stunts and avoiding difficult (or even moderately hard) questions, which making amusing remarks about sycophantic ones. And when much of the press is going to ask the sycophantic ones, he's got it made.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
What's interesting is that you have characters like Trump and Johnson who half the people see as pants-on-fire liars (which the evidence also supports), and yet half the people (or at least a lot) see them as "telling like it is" and more honest than the average politician, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So you only have to fake in a way that fools 40% of people, and shamelessly lying all the time seems to be quite effective for this limited goal.
I think Trump and Johnson are quite different here even though superficially similar.
With Trump, I think I know his real opinions better than I know Biden's or Clinton's despite him out-lying them by hundreds to one.
With Johnson, I have no idea his real opinion on much despite his lying.
I can see an argument that Trump tells it like it is, I can't see it for Johnson.
I agree. I think Trump genuinely wants America to be Great Again, and I don't think Johnson gives a toss about whether the UK is Great or not.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Its not as if they loved him before the last election. And then he got an 80-seat majority.
Yes but but they hated Corbyn more
A judgement which could have been arrived at in four nano-seconds by an apolitical fruit fly. Yet Labour didn't have even that level of nous...
One of my chums is having the shittest Christmas. His wife and kids are stuck in Mexico, his sister is down with Covid and had to call an ambulance yesterday (but wasn't admitted - she wasn't yet quite bad enough to get a bed). He's prone to self-harming. And his Christmas dinner is going to be a pizza.
Although it will be a pigs-in-blankets pizza, so he has something to look forward to...
That’s really crap. Let’s all make a point of calling up anyone we know in a shitty situation, or old friends we’ve not spoken to in a while, to wish them a Merry Christmas and ask if there’s anything we can do to help them out.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
What's interesting is that you have characters like Trump and Johnson who half the people see as pants-on-fire liars (which the evidence also supports), and yet half the people (or at least a lot) see them as "telling like it is" and more honest than the average politician, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So you only have to fake in a way that fools 40% of people, and shamelessly lying all the time seems to be quite effective for this limited goal.
I think Trump and Johnson are quite different here even though superficially similar.
With Trump, I think I know his real opinions better than I know Biden's or Clinton's despite him out-lying them by hundreds to one.
With Johnson, I have no idea his real opinion on much despite his lying.
I can see an argument that Trump tells it like it is, I can't see it for Johnson.
I agree. I think Trump genuinely wants America to be Great Again, and I don't think Johnson gives a toss about whether the UK is Great or not.
If anything, I think the reverse is slightly more likely. As a thought experiment: I think Trump hopes that Biden's presidency is a disaster, whereas when Johnson goes he will be at worst neutral about how well the UK does under his successor.
Both care far more about themselves than about their countries.
Margin of error stuff. Noise. In reality, the parties are level-pegging.
I see no sign of a breakout by Labour, despite unending incompetence from the Tories that would have sunk any government historically.
Why would you expect anything more dramatic than we have already seen?One year out from the GE and Johnson retains a great deal of the benefit of doubt. The Government has been hosing money around to put of the inevitable economic disaster.
However it is not good news, Johnson retains a decent approval rating at just shy of 40%. You can read it on here, according to Philip Thompson (and others) Johnson is in the top three of greatest post war Prime Ministers.
Incompetence is the new normal, and we are loving it.
It is the emerging evidence of the consequences from the earlier lockdown when kids were forced to be at home that has informed the government making it the absolutely last thing they want to do again.
That’s an unusually naive post, Ian. Do you honestly think the government cares about evidence? Or indeed, about children?
The reason they have kept schools open is they promised with their shiny new policies that they would be safe, and screamed and shouted and stamped their feet and made actual physical threats when told that they were wrong.
But now the unions have been proven right on every single point, the government cannot afford to be seen to be beaten by them, as they know it will play badly. Plus, being naturally dishonest and stupid, lying and bullying comes naturally to them. That is why we had probably illegal threats made to schools by Nick Gibb, a man whose failure in everything he has tried is total and therefore has a pathological need to be seen to be in control, to stay open even though the government has now had to lock down and suspend reopening.
These people are utter scum. They need to be put on trial and jailed.
Having a bad day? Or (virtual) drinking with Malc?
I’m stating facts. That’s irrelevant to the time of day.
I am quite deeply frustrated at the ignorance and naivety displayed on this thread proposing simplistic solutions to complex problems, but the fact that the DfE as an organisation is dangerous, corrupt from top to bottom and doesn’t contain a single person of ability in it is separate and a real ongoing issue in this country.
Hacker had the right idea. Abolish it. It couldn’t make matters worse and might make them better.
I think it is pretty obvious thinking that children especially of primary age should stay in school.
I credit the government with understanding this.
Unions, Nick Gibb, DfE, etc all details.
Then you do not understand this government. How often do I have to explain, they do not care about children. They’ve demonstrated that amply over many years, on governance, on exams, on Covid itself. They care about being in charge and being seen to ‘win.’
Meanwhile, the children suffer and the staff and their families are put in genuine danger as a result of their actions - e.g. deciding staff do not need to isolate when there is a Covid case in the classroom, even if that child was just one metre away. Or do you not care about that?
Nobody *wants* to close schools, although too many people think it funny to make that claim because they are basically nasty. But at the moment, nobody has come up with a way to open them safely
The unions got this. They said what was proposed was unworkable and unsafe, They’ve been proved right. The government have lied, bullied, harassed, used legal threats and generally behaved like criminal lunatics to cover up their failure. They deserve no credit. None. Only jail terms.
Edit - the only way to open schools safely right now would be ‘Nightingale’ schools, with much smaller classes, staffed by newly retired or supply teachers. Not an ideal scenario, but it would have done the trick for twelve months. The government refused to consider that because they didn’t want to pay for it. It’s fine to throw money at serial failures like Harding, but not to pay to keep staff and children safe.
n=1
But my daughter's schooling and social development really suffered during the period when the schools were closed. She has thrived since the return.
I know you are at the pointy end of the situation, but you absolutely have an agenda.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
What's interesting is that you have characters like Trump and Johnson who half the people see as pants-on-fire liars (which the evidence also supports), and yet half the people (or at least a lot) see them as "telling like it is" and more honest than the average politician, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So you only have to fake in a way that fools 40% of people, and shamelessly lying all the time seems to be quite effective for this limited goal.
I think Trump and Johnson are quite different here even though superficially similar.
With Trump, I think I know his real opinions better than I know Biden's or Clinton's despite him out-lying them by hundreds to one.
With Johnson, I have no idea his real opinion on much despite his lying.
I can see an argument that Trump tells it like it is, I can't see it for Johnson.
I agree. I think Trump genuinely wants America to be Great Again, and I don't think Johnson gives a toss about whether the UK is Great or not.
If anything, I think the reverse is slightly more likely. As a thought experiment: I think Trump hopes that Biden's presidency is a disaster, whereas when Johnson goes he will be at worst neutral about how well the UK does under his successor.
Both care far more about themselves than about their countries.
Trump is a scorched earth narcissist.
Boris is at worst just an opportunist.
If Boris had lost the election last December he would have buggered off the next day. He wouldn't be trying to pull society down with him to cling on.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Its not as if they loved him before the last election. And then he got an 80-seat majority.
Yes but but they hated Corbyn more
I meet former " Labour 'til I die" voters in Port Talbot. They hate the English, they hate English toffs, but Johnson is seen as neither.
Then he should submit a series of papers to the MHRA, setting out the evidence for abandoning the previously agreed regime for administering each of the vaccines, so that it may be properly considered.
We currently do not have the infrastructure to move very fast to beat this epidemic. Testing takes months, manufacturing vaccines takes months, and vaccinating people will take months. Meanwhile, the virus is not only infecting and killing people, but also mutating and it could become able to defeat the vaccines by the time they are finally rolled out.
In 1348 we did not have the ability to create vaccines against the Black Death (the first vaccine from dead plague bacteria was created in 1890). In 2020 we have the technology to create vaccines against COVID-19, but it takes so long that there is still no end in sight.
Speed is of the essence in dealing with an epidemic. We need to explore every way of rolling the vaccines out faster, and Tony Blair's suggestion is well worth considering. The fact that to do this means following a slow and bureaucratic process involving large committees of experts illustrates that we are currently just not organised to develop vaccines quickly.
This could become critical if ever Disease X appears, possibly out of the African rain forests. This would spread like COVID and have a death rate like Ebola. We will really need vaccines available fast when/if this happens.
If that last scenario were ever to happen then everyone would be too scared to leave the house and civilizational collapse would occur.
It's also not plausible - that combination of rapid death and transmissibility is implausible. You'd need the ability for the virus to survive on fomites for an extended period.
(Don't worry about Ebola. Look at Marburg's Disease if you want to scare yourself. Mutate it to include respiratory transmission - there is an argument that some people make that this was actually the Black Death vs. Yersinia pestis transmitted bubonic plague. Read the following if you don't want to sleep tonight:
I thought MERS had a death rate well into the 20-30% range. Would a transmissible MERS-CoV definitely mean changes to make it less deadly?
Of course, humanity having had COVID first now, probably much shortens vaccine time to market even compared to this year's pace.
It's not necessarily changes in the vaccine per se.
Simply if it kills people quicker then it has less time to spread before the host ceases to be functional.
Worst case would be say:
(a) 10 day asymptomatic period (b) during which it is transmissible via respiratory delivery (i.e. coughing) (c) sudden onset of symptoms at that point (d) rapid (say 4-5 day) progression with a 80-90% mortality rate (e) extended survival of the virus on fomites.
I think you could see 40-50% of a population wiped
Yes, that would be the ultimate for wipeout. The only effective response to that would be NOBODY leaves home for a month apart from a cadre of highly remunerated crack deliveroos.
This virus is not that but its virulence & velocity mix puts it right in the sweet spot for maximum disruption over a long period. It's here to torment and have fun not to kill. It kills just enough to fulfill its goals.
On the list of appointments to the Lords, can we get at the evaluations done by the Appointments' Commission via FOI?
I'd like to know why they went against Peter Cruddas - what is unacceptable (don't know his detail well), and I'd also like to know how Vernon Coaker got through - a player in the Parliamentary Expenses Fiddling scandal, and Nick's Predecessor at Gedling I think.
The Chief Exec of the Board of Deputies on Mr Starmer's list (how does one title a knight by their surname?) is interesting - will she sit on a part ticket? As is the Archbishop; I hope he will continue to be fiery.
The growing problem for the Conservatives now is that, while a no deal is likely to cause a pretty sharp economic contraction, even a "deal" cannot now avoid most of the same problems. The core of the cabinet has no business experience and their critical failure to understand that UK PLC needs time to plan and respond in order to avoid disruption is now leading the country to a major crisis. The infrastructure of customs and immigration simply does not exist and the utter incompetence of the Home Office starts with the useless and unpleasant Ms. Patel herself. I could go down the cabinet, but everyone, even Tory loyalists know: Johnson is NBG and most of the cabinet are worse.
"Even the best of political leaders would struggle in the current crisis" is the get out clause the Tories are giving themselves, but in the country at large public opinion seems increasingly to believe that the Tories have caused the Brexit part of the crisis themselves and their handling of the Covid part of the crisis is a shambles. Then there is the growing whiff of corruption.
There are now two more crises barreling down the track: the economic fall-out, which will see a major cull of small and medium sized businesses and a major pick up in unemployment. Sunak´s policies are a not especially good band-aid on the severing of a major artery. The emerging battle for the Tory leadership will ensure at least a six month delay before the Treasury can focus, and it is already too late now. The Scottish Parliament elections in May might also add to the growing sense of Britterdämmerung, although just possibly these may be delayed to October for Covid reasons. By that time the SNP civil war may finally impact their support, but unless such a delay occurs the Brexit, Covid and economic crisis will be joined by an existential threat to the UK itself.
No one could say that this was a good record. Although slower, this government is already in its 1992 Black Wednesday meltdown and the 1997 style defeat seems a growing prospect, or quite possibly a major realignment on the scale of 1922.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
Yes, but even if he were wearing a pith helmet and stabbing a pathan to death with the Union Flag while singing God save the Queen, you would doubt his commitment. You just find any excuse to caricature him as a "Woke Cultural Marxist".
I am no Starmer fan, but he is clearly a patriotic Briton, though obviously not the Faragite type.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Its not as if they loved him before the last election. And then he got an 80-seat majority.
Yes but but they hated Corbyn more
I meet former " Labour 'til I die" voters in Port Talbot. They hate the English, they hate English toffs, but Johnson is seen as neither.
The anti establishment candidate direct from the establishment, ‘he makes us laugh’ nobody really knows what he stands for which is quite clever until you realize he doesn’t either. The fact that he appears to be related to Worzel Gummage and apparently can’t afford a haircut or a suit also helps. He’s fooled people into thinking he’s clever but he’s just another Oxford grad with a useless degree, in any other times, no brexit no covid he probably would have been a great success and done wonders for UK PLC but he’s the wrong man in the wrong job at the moment.
I'm starting to get a bit Christmassy at last - tree going up in the window today. Cards sent, a few in person visits due for conversations over the garden gate, and business bits and pieces.
Incidentally, Aldi seem to be open until 11pm if anyone needs shopping in isolation; did a huge shop last night at 10pm+, nearly alone. Being home alone, I did not buy the whole goose they were offering.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Its not as if they loved him before the last election. And then he got an 80-seat majority.
Yes but but they hated Corbyn more
I meet former " Labour 'til I die" voters in Port Talbot. They hate the English, they hate English toffs, but Johnson is seen as neither.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
It doesn't matter, because Values.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
Its not as if they loved him before the last election. And then he got an 80-seat majority.
Yes but but they hated Corbyn more
I meet former " Labour 'til I die" voters in Port Talbot. They hate the English, they hate English toffs, but Johnson is seen as neither.
I can imagine them not seeing him as an English toff as they might see Rees Mogg or even 'English' in the smug englishman sense. I think he's worse than both of those. I see him more like Trump. Entitled and malevolent.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
If sincerity is on the ballot this will be grim news indeed for Boris Johnson.
Sincerity is important in politics.
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
What's interesting is that you have characters like Trump and Johnson who half the people see as pants-on-fire liars (which the evidence also supports), and yet half the people (or at least a lot) see them as "telling like it is" and more honest than the average politician, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So you only have to fake in a way that fools 40% of people, and shamelessly lying all the time seems to be quite effective for this limited goal.
I think Trump and Johnson are quite different here even though superficially similar.
With Trump, I think I know his real opinions better than I know Biden's or Clinton's despite him out-lying them by hundreds to one.
With Johnson, I have no idea his real opinion on much despite his lying.
I can see an argument that Trump tells it like it is, I can't see it for Johnson.
I agree. I think Trump genuinely wants America to be Great Again, and I don't think Johnson gives a toss about whether the UK is Great or not.
Although his definition of a "great" America is simply one where HE is the president.
It is the emerging evidence of the consequences from the earlier lockdown when kids were forced to be at home that has informed the government making it the absolutely last thing they want to do again.
That’s an unusually naive post, Ian. Do you honestly think the government cares about evidence? Or indeed, about children?
The reason they have kept schools open is they promised with their shiny new policies that they would be safe, and screamed and shouted and stamped their feet and made actual physical threats when told that they were wrong.
But now the unions have been proven right on every single point, the government cannot afford to be seen to be beaten by them, as they know it will play badly. Plus, being naturally dishonest and stupid, lying and bullying comes naturally to them. That is why we had probably illegal threats made to schools by Nick Gibb, a man whose failure in everything he has tried is total and therefore has a pathological need to be seen to be in control, to stay open even though the government has now had to lock down and suspend reopening.
These people are utter scum. They need to be put on trial and jailed.
Having a bad day? Or (virtual) drinking with Malc?
I’m stating facts. That’s irrelevant to the time of day.
I am quite deeply frustrated at the ignorance and naivety displayed on this thread proposing simplistic solutions to complex problems, but the fact that the DfE as an organisation is dangerous, corrupt from top to bottom and doesn’t contain a single person of ability in it is separate and a real ongoing issue in this country.
Hacker had the right idea. Abolish it. It couldn’t make matters worse and might make them better.
I think it is pretty obvious thinking that children especially of primary age should stay in school.
I credit the government with understanding this.
Unions, Nick Gibb, DfE, etc all details.
Then you do not understand this government. How often do I have to explain, they do not care about children. They’ve demonstrated that amply over many years, on governance, on exams, on Covid itself. They care about being in charge and being seen to ‘win.’
Meanwhile, the children suffer and the staff and their families are put in genuine danger as a result of their actions - e.g. deciding staff do not need to isolate when there is a Covid case in the classroom, even if that child was just one metre away. Or do you not care about that?
Nobody *wants* to close schools, although too many people think it funny to make that claim because they are basically nasty. But at the moment, nobody has come up with a way to open them safely
The unions got this. They said what was proposed was unworkable and unsafe, They’ve been proved right. The government have lied, bullied, harassed, used legal threats and generally behaved like criminal lunatics to cover up their failure. They deserve no credit. None. Only jail terms.
Edit - the only way to open schools safely right now would be ‘Nightingale’ schools, with much smaller classes, staffed by newly retired or supply teachers. Not an ideal scenario, but it would have done the trick for twelve months. The government refused to consider that because they didn’t want to pay for it. It’s fine to throw money at serial failures like Harding, but not to pay to keep staff and children safe.
n=1
But my daughter's schooling and social development really suffered during the period when the schools were closed. She has thrived since the return.
I know you are at the pointy end of the situation, but you absolutely have an agenda.
I’ve spent the last five months working incredibly hard so children like your daughter can go to school.
I’ve worked under regulations designed by people who would make the characters from Hot Fuzz look like models of probity and ability.
I’ve put myself at risk, every day, to keep schools open, even though it’s been a fiasco and the safety rules have been shelved for political reasons.
And what thanks do I get? None. I get threats and abuse.
Yes I have an agenda. I’m pointing out the government are dishonest, corrupt, incompetent, and dangerous, and their policies have failed.
That is because those are true.
If you don’t like that, tell your friends to change their approach, or better still, fuck off to cleaning the sewers where they belong.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
Yes, but even if he were wearing a pith helmet and stabbing a pathan to death with the Union Flag while singing God save the Queen, you would doubt his commitment. You just find any excuse to caricature him as a "Woke Cultural Marxist".
I am no Starmer fan, but he is clearly a patriotic Briton, though obviously not the Faragite type.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
Yes, but even if he were wearing a pith helmet and stabbing a pathan to death with the Union Flag while singing God save the Queen, you would doubt his commitment. You just find any excuse to caricature him as a "Woke Cultural Marxist".
I am no Starmer fan, but he is clearly a patriotic Briton, though obviously not the Faragite type.
Nah, bollocks. This is just you dismissing the point. And entirely typical of you.
Still, suits me. It's not me who'll be upset by permanent Tory rule.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
Yes, but even if he were wearing a pith helmet and stabbing a pathan to death with the Union Flag while singing God save the Queen, you would doubt his commitment. You just find any excuse to caricature him as a "Woke Cultural Marxist".
I am no Starmer fan, but he is clearly a patriotic Briton, though obviously not the Faragite type.
I sincerely hope Starmer is biding his time. But it doesn’t look like it.
Depressing.
Starmer has a real problem with presentation. I reckon he’s clever at politics and policy, and is a strategic thinker. He’s put Labour in a much better place, already, when it comes to the culture wars, devolution, patriotism, Brexit, and so on. And he’s kept mostly everyone on board.
Trouble is he has good words to say, but he can’t say them. Jesus effing Christ he’s boring. He’s like a talking coffin lid on TV. You could give him the best joke in the world and he would deliver it like a boiler repairman describing your minor boiler problems.
And the more people see this, the less interested they are. They’d rather watch Boris being an idiot with amusingly mad hair. In an age of limited attention spans and 3 second opinion-formations, based on tweets and YouTube, this really matters. I don’t see how it is solvable. This is what Starmer is.
I think he has another problem too - sincerity.
He knows he has to say all the right words about patriotism and nationhood, but I don't think he really believes them. In all other respects he's a North London left-liberal and we all know what they're like.
For all his faults, I think Tony Blair was a patriot (although a trendy, cool Britannia, hip-type) and Gordon Brown is certainly a proud Briton.
Far too many of the Labour frontbench just seem to dislike their own country, and England in particular, and want it superseded, totally remade, or dissolved supernationally.
Soft-Tories and Red-Wallers are very attuned to sniffing out and detecting this.
Yes, but even if he were wearing a pith helmet and stabbing a pathan to death with the Union Flag while singing God save the Queen, you would doubt his commitment. You just find any excuse to caricature him as a "Woke Cultural Marxist".
I am no Starmer fan, but he is clearly a patriotic Briton, though obviously not the Faragite type.
Nah, bollocks. This is just you dismissing the point. And entirely typical of you.
Still, suits me. It's not me who'll be upset by permanent Tory rule.
I remember those dark days of post 1987 and post 1992 General Elections when Telegraph leader writers were musing as to whom the Conservative Prime Minister might be for the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Elections...and then came Black Wednesday.
Comments
Wasn't their faultt.
He came on specifically to make the case for a single dose regime on the basis (repeatedly emphasised) that it is 90% effective.
A scientist should know that simply isn't true.
As I said at the start of this discussion, there is a case to be made, but that is not the way to do it.
That will happen, unfortunately. It's why AZ is a easier vaccine to work with.
For those with an allergy or on a special diet then cauliflower crust makes a surprisingly good pizza base.
Earlier in the year I tried a ketogenic diet for a few months which rules out traditional pizzas. I had a homemade cauliflower crust pizza and it worked nicely.
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1341661342483230722
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Gesamt.html
It's a PDF from the previous day. Each day includes some different statistics, as well as the daily tallies of cases, deaths (broken down regionally) hospital numbers, and R number.
So now there is Tuesday's report:
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Dez_2020/2020-12-22-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
Tuesdays have breakdowns by age, sex, some occupations, and country of infection, and symptoms.
Wednesdays have info on testing - numbers, capacity, positivity rate (for previous week)
Thursdays have info on numbers for other respiratory diseases, and emergency department usage - they have quite an interesting graph which shows eg last week that emergency department usage was 30% BELOW the average for 2019
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Dez_2020/2020-12-17-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile (page 10)
You can find previous daily reports where it says "Archiv"
For the latest numbers (for yesterday) see here;
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Fallzahlen.html
What you can see is that some of the new Bundesländer, which got off relatively lightly in the Spring, are now the worst hit. Saxony (414) and Thuringia (320) have easily the highest 7-day incidence per 100,000 - all other states are between 96 and 207. Saxony already has easily the highest total death rate per capita.
Some people have drawn a correlation between areas with high AfD support and high numbers. I don't like this kind of thing - apart from the fact that Meckpomm still has the lowest numbers, you could have made a similar correlation in the Spring between areas of high AfD support and low coronavirus numbers. Of course, the AfD have been trying to make political capital out of being "anti-lockdown" so I can understand why people are making the connection.
On the other hand, it doesn't support the idea (proposed by some on here a while back) that high numbers of catholics meant high infection rates.
Simply if it kills people quicker then it has less time to spread before the host ceases to be functional.
Worst case would be say:
(a) 10 day asymptomatic period
(b) during which it is transmissible via respiratory delivery (i.e. coughing)
(c) sudden onset of symptoms at that point
(d) rapid (say 4-5 day) progression with a 80-90% mortality rate
(e) extended survival of the virus on fomites.
I think you could see 40-50% of a population wiped
Once you can fake that, you have it made.
And had much spare capacity.
As Mr C says, that's a reason for the AZ vaccine being preferred, although personally I would like to see the issue about dosage being definitely sorted.
Labour need to understand this. Just mocking Boris because they hate him won't win them an election.
A bungled vaccination program that causes loss of public confidence because of misplaced claims would be disastrous.
Hence, public trust in what scientists say about the vaccine is very important, and so scientists should be very careful on TV/R4.
Although it will be a pigs-in-blankets pizza, so he has something to look forward to...
So you only have to fake in a way that fools 40% of people, and shamelessly lying all the time seems to be quite effective for this limited goal.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1341584756245458944
And it would appear that Johnson can, ATM, fool enough of the people. However there will come a day.......
With Trump, I think I know his real opinions better than I know Biden's or Clinton's despite him out-lying them by hundreds to one.
With Johnson, I have no idea his real opinion on much despite his lying.
I can see an argument that Trump tells it like it is, I can't see it for Johnson.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/opinion/coronavirus-uk-strain.html
Ninety two times more - like Germany and better than Italy (140x)
In reality, the parties are level-pegging.
I see no sign of a breakout by Labour, despite unending incompetence from the Tories that would have sunk any government historically.
George W. Bush
And when much of the press is going to ask the sycophantic ones, he's got it made.
Both care far more about themselves than about their countries.
However it is not good news, Johnson retains a decent approval rating at just shy of 40%. You can read it on here, according to Philip Thompson (and others) Johnson is in the top three of greatest post war Prime Ministers.
Incompetence is the new normal, and we are loving it.
But my daughter's schooling and social development really suffered during the period when the schools were closed. She has thrived since the return.
I know you are at the pointy end of the situation, but you absolutely have an agenda.
Boris is at worst just an opportunist.
If Boris had lost the election last December he would have buggered off the next day. He wouldn't be trying to pull society down with him to cling on.
This virus is not that but its virulence & velocity mix puts it right in the sweet spot for maximum disruption over a long period. It's here to torment and have fun not to kill. It kills just enough to fulfill its goals.
I'd like to know why they went against Peter Cruddas - what is unacceptable (don't know his detail well), and I'd also like to know how Vernon Coaker got through - a player in the Parliamentary Expenses Fiddling scandal, and Nick's Predecessor at Gedling I think.
The Chief Exec of the Board of Deputies on Mr Starmer's list (how does one title a knight by their surname?) is interesting - will she sit on a part ticket? As is the Archbishop; I hope he will continue to be fiery.
"Even the best of political leaders would struggle in the current crisis" is the get out clause the Tories are giving themselves, but in the country at large public opinion seems increasingly to believe that the Tories have caused the Brexit part of the crisis themselves and their handling of the Covid part of the crisis is a shambles. Then there is the growing whiff of corruption.
There are now two more crises barreling down the track: the economic fall-out, which will see a major cull of small and medium sized businesses and a major pick up in unemployment. Sunak´s policies are a not especially good band-aid on the severing of a major artery. The emerging battle for the Tory leadership will ensure at least a six month delay before the Treasury can focus, and it is already too late now. The Scottish Parliament elections in May might also add to the growing sense of Britterdämmerung, although just possibly these may be delayed to October for Covid reasons. By that time the SNP civil war may finally impact their support, but unless such a delay occurs the Brexit, Covid and economic crisis will be joined by an existential threat to the UK itself.
No one could say that this was a good record. Although slower, this government is already in its 1992 Black Wednesday meltdown and the 1997 style defeat seems a growing prospect, or quite possibly a major realignment on the scale of 1922.
I am no Starmer fan, but he is clearly a patriotic Briton, though obviously not the Faragite type.
Tories 25 short of a majority.
Morning all and Happy Christmas.
I'm starting to get a bit Christmassy at last - tree going up in the window today. Cards sent, a few in person visits due for conversations over the garden gate, and business bits and pieces.
Incidentally, Aldi seem to be open until 11pm if anyone needs shopping in isolation; did a huge shop last night at 10pm+, nearly alone. Being home alone, I did not buy the whole goose they were offering.
I’ve worked under regulations designed by people who would make the characters from Hot Fuzz look like models of probity and ability.
I’ve put myself at risk, every day, to keep schools open, even though it’s been a fiasco and the safety rules have been shelved for political reasons.
And what thanks do I get? None. I get threats and abuse.
Yes I have an agenda. I’m pointing out the government are dishonest, corrupt, incompetent, and dangerous, and their policies have failed.
That is because those are true.
If you don’t like that, tell your friends to change their approach, or better still, fuck off to cleaning the sewers where they belong.
Still, suits me. It's not me who'll be upset by permanent Tory rule.