Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
Which shows different approaches - my GP has been sending to texts/letters naming a specific 15 minute "slot" on a specific day for your jab. Proceeding down the list in order of age, I believe. Whole of January booked.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
I'm not sure the traditional midterm logic will entirely hold. Democrats are favoured in lower turnout elections now I think.
That depends entirely on the Biden Harris approval ratings in 2022, if they are low the GOP will almost certainly take back the House and maybe even the Senate too in the 2022 midterms.
Hyufd, don't the Republicans have a difficult slate in 2022 - more seats to defend than attack?
In the Senate maybe, not in the House though where every seat will be up in 2022 and the Democrats will be defending a majority of just 10 over the GOP
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
Delay the Olympics to October, Tokyo is still warm until the end of October. It would also give international fans a chance to attend because globally lots of people will have been vaccinated by then. We should be reaching the end of ours and be looking to studies for 13-17 year olds to be jabbed too.
Not an option, that's monsoon/typhoon weather that time of the year in Japan.
It caused havoc at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
That 2019 one was a monster, but the typhoons will get you in August as well. I'm pretty sure the average August is worse than the average October.
This sounds like bollocks. If true, this policy would render the company in question in breach of the Equality Act in the UK and of the EU Equal Treatment Framework Directive in the EU. Right to work is not the same as citizenship - it's as unlawful in the UK as in the EU to discriminate on the grounds of citizenship. Admittedly you can say must have right to work in a jurisdiction, but you shouldn't discriminate on the grounds of citizenship - for example my wife is an American citizen with ILR and has as much right to apply for work here as I do. Any job ad that said you have to be a citizen of a country is an actionable breach of the Equality Act and its EU equivalents.
Arch-Remainer as I am this post is either bollocks or it is breaking the law.
It did strike me that if the firm were in fact to exist and if it were to follow through reciprocally for vacancies in its UK arm, it would be the equivalent of putting up a "No Irish" sign on its notice board.
The irony is that the Irish now enjoy the best work and residency rights in Europe. If only my Irish ancestors had held onto their passports instead of assimilating so enthusiastically several generations back...
Loeffler on the radio there, imploring ‘all’ Americans to keep fighting for the American Dream. Hadn’t realised getting insider info during a pandemic and then buying up shares in a body bag firm was an aspect of the American Dream. Every day a school day,
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
Delay the Olympics to October, Tokyo is still warm until the end of October. It would also give international fans a chance to attend because globally lots of people will have been vaccinated by then. We should be reaching the end of ours and be looking to studies for 13-17 year olds to be jabbed too.
In terms of weather, October would actually be pretty much perfect in Japan. Whether there are logistical reasons not to do it, I don't know.
Yup, October is lovely, and July/August is horrible. IIUC the reason they insist on doing them in August is to do with other sporting events competing for TV viewers.
Also, a lot of other sports such as F1 have gone out of their way to avoid having a race that clashes with the Olympics.
Nothing from Raab so far on the Hong Kong arrests......
I sort of feel for him. Theres nothing anyone can do, China has won and the world isn't about to stop dealing with them, so his job will be to impotently protest. At best.
Loeffler on the radio there, imploring ‘all’ Americans to keep fighting for the American Dream. Hadn’t realised getting insider info during a pandemic and then buying up shares in a body bag firm was an aspect of the American Dream. Every day a school day,
Get rich or die trying. Or get rich off the back of others dying. That has pretty much been the American dream for centuries.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
and up to 80% of Repubs believe him!
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
Nobody denies Trump is a talented snake oil salesman. But to what effect? If he actually wants to preserve and extend his legacy, he's best ensuring Republicans control the Senate. Now they don't. He still has a load of people who will lick up anything he pukes out, but his political leverage is over people who aren't actually in power at the national level.
Oh, Trump can easily sway this result in Georgia to say that he was right and that the Republicans need to ignore the RINOs and listen to him. His arguments will be why the Republicans lost:
- McConnell opposed the $2K handout - he should have listened to me; - Kemp and the SoS has allowed the Democrats to steal the election by agreeing to Stacey Abrams' demands (more on that below); - The SoS released the tapes, allowing the media to run with the story about Trump pressuring Georgia; - Georgia has allowed voting fraud to run rampant; - If it wasn't for me campaigning, the margin of error would have been worse;
He will also use the results breakdown to push his arguments on fraud and that Republican legislatures should be doing more to limit mail-in ballots. NYT has the early vote essentially tied, the Republicans winning the election day ballots by 26/27% but the Democrats winning mail-in ballots by 34/35%..
Funnily enough, on this, he might get an ally in McConnell. If McConnell plans to stay around being leader and wants to win back the Senate in 2022, he might be more supportive to calls to limit mail-in ballots by state legislatures (which I'd expect to happen).
On the 14m target, personally I think it's unambitious. When you consider that AZ have declared doses of 19m for domestic use already produced and more on the way we should be thinking about how we can use all of that supply as quickly as possible, what are the pain points and how can we resolve them as quickly as possible. Production isn't a pain point, supply is, so what has broken down in between those two? Right now we know it's regulatory testing and approval of doses, the MHRA isn't set up to test and approve this many doses of two different types of vaccines. It needs to scale that process up so that it can test and approve many, many more batches of vaccine simultaneously. The Times say that this is already underway and they will be in a much better position by next week when we expect millions of doses per week to be reaching the end of the chain.
The next pain point is who does the jabs and when? There's a lot of talk about not doing Sundays, it seems like a completely mental idea not to run this 7 days a week, and hopefully that will get addressed, what we've also seen this morning is a government u-turn on not using pharmacies and pharmacists to dole it out.
A lot of this process is going to be learn by doing, setting a target of 14m is exactly what we need to do to ensure we address these pain points early on as the NHS is forced to scale up the process as quickly as possible. If we plod along at 1m per week and a 7m target it would mean we hit it easily but ultimately we never find out what needs fixing for when we need to double, and then double again the rate of vaccination.
We should have set a 20m ambition and 14m target. We have 19m doses produced of the AZ vaccine and around 1.5m per week from Pfizer of continuous supplely. If we don't use all of what is available, it would constitute a failure IMO.
Are we really 'not doing Sundays' ? I though it was established yesterday that was a myth.
As for the 19m doses, they aren't available until they're available to use.
As far as I can understand it, supply and not administration of the shots is the limiting factor.
Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
Which shows different approaches - my GP has been sending to texts/letters naming a specific 15 minute "slot" on a specific day for your jab. Proceeding down the list in order of age, I believe. Whole of January booked.
My Dad very efficiently got his 2nd jab this week. Exactly as planned. So there seems to be massive variation
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
I'm not sure the traditional midterm logic will entirely hold. Democrats are favoured in lower turnout elections now I think.
That depends entirely on the Biden Harris approval ratings in 2022, if they are low the GOP will almost certainly take back the House and maybe even the Senate too in the 2022 midterms.
Hyufd, don't the Republicans have a difficult slate in 2022 - more seats to defend than attack?
In the Senate maybe, not in the House though where every seat will be up in 2022 and the Democrats will be defending a majority of just 10 over the GOP
They'll be holding out for that 1990-style loosening and dumbing down of broadcasting regulation. Without Fox-style freedom, to genuinely propagandise, I don't think they'll be able to build a big enough audience for their ambitions and business model.
Very revealing of some people's attitude....a person of a certain skin colour must have a certain opinion on particular issues because of their skin colour, they either just can't say it, they are lying or worst they are an Uncle Tom.
It could well have you going back to read the statement he released after the police killing of George Floyd and how far out of the way it went to empathize with law enforcement who “train so diligently to understand how, when and where to use force.” Those words, typical Woods, seemed so cautious and even cowardly then – especially when compared to the more assertive tone struck by Michael Jordan, the greatest political fence sitter of all time until last summer. But after watching the doc you appreciate the statement for what it is – the words of a man who is just trying to survive another day in America. Sounds mighty black to me.
Maybe like Billy Vunipola he isn't exactly on board with all of the BLM movement demands and prefers to be diplomatic / doesn't believe some of the demonstrable false claims in terms of how likely an unarmed black man will get gunned down by the police.
On the 14m target, personally I think it's unambitious. When you consider that AZ have declared doses of 19m for domestic use already produced and more on the way we should be thinking about how we can use all of that supply as quickly as possible, what are the pain points and how can we resolve them as quickly as possible. Production isn't a pain point, supply is, so what has broken down in between those two? Right now we know it's regulatory testing and approval of doses, the MHRA isn't set up to test and approve this many doses of two different types of vaccines. It needs to scale that process up so that it can test and approve many, many more batches of vaccine simultaneously. The Times say that this is already underway and they will be in a much better position by next week when we expect millions of doses per week to be reaching the end of the chain.
The next pain point is who does the jabs and when? There's a lot of talk about not doing Sundays, it seems like a completely mental idea not to run this 7 days a week, and hopefully that will get addressed, what we've also seen this morning is a government u-turn on not using pharmacies and pharmacists to dole it out.
A lot of this process is going to be learn by doing, setting a target of 14m is exactly what we need to do to ensure we address these pain points early on as the NHS is forced to scale up the process as quickly as possible. If we plod along at 1m per week and a 7m target it would mean we hit it easily but ultimately we never find out what needs fixing for when we need to double, and then double again the rate of vaccination.
We should have set a 20m ambition and 14m target. We have 19m doses produced of the AZ vaccine and around 1.5m per week from Pfizer of continuous supplely. If we don't use all of what is available, it would constitute a failure IMO.
Are we really 'not doing Sundays' ? I though it was established yesterday that was a myth.
As for the 19m doses, they aren't available until they're available to use.
As far as I can understand it, supply and not administration of the shots is the limiting factor.
Damian Green was just on Sky saying they are vaccinating this weekend in Kent. I think it might be dependent on Trusts and regions.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
The GOP have got themselves into a dire position. Many of them know that the Trump core are batshit crazy / QAnon types but there are too many of them to ignore so they keep quiet because they are scared of them.
I don't see an easy path for any moderately sane Republican to win a GOP Primary. That's why we still have 10 GOP Senators about to humiliate themselves by still pretending Trump won the election.
IDK, parties nearly always pick a moderate against an incumbent, not least because if the governing side isn't contested then politics enthusiasts vote in the opposition race, especially where there are open primaries. It's not clear that Trump will be willing and able to run, and if he's not then it's not clear that anybody similar can pull off what he did.
In some cases you may be correct but I believe the GOP will be dancing to Trump's tune for the next 4 years.
Trump is a malign, vindictive and bullying individual who will take great pleasure in trying to destroy any Republican who has displeased him. The right really have taken the US into a very dark place and now the genii is out of the bottle it's not going to be easy to put it back.
I totally share your opinion on the damage done but I do not think Trump & Clan will be the ongoing political force that many fear (or hope if they're on the dark side). Soon he will out of the White House. He'll be an impeached and disgraced one term ex-president with big legal and money troubles who managed the remarkable negative feat of failing to win a 2nd term after just 4 years of his party in power and while he's at it losing both houses of Congress to the hated other.
From 20 Jan his world will shrink beyond recognition. The difference between being the American president and not being the American president is almost as stark as that between being dead or alive. He'll lose all the trappings of that great office - the most important of which was to have his bullshit piped into people's heads 24/7. Supporters will drift away, not to be replaced by new ones. It will be one way traffic. Drip drip drip until what's left is something not to be taken seriously. He might even realize this himself before too long and concentrate just on cashflow and staying out of jail. Perhaps a deal? Not sure on that one. We'll see.
But Donald Trump the fearsome politician is over. No doubt there will be other grisly characters (the lizard Ted Cruz?) who will battle to own the MAGA space in the GOP, and one will prevail and be a live contender for the 24 nomination, but that person will not be called Trump and they won't be able to recreate what he did in 15/16 because that stunning achievement owed so much to his personal brand and persona. So they won't win the nomination. The Republican Party might look beyond the pale now but my money is on them detoxifying. Looking forward to the opening of the WH24 betting.
Nothing from Raab so far on the Hong Kong arrests......
I sort of feel for him. Theres nothing anyone can do, China has won and the world isn't about to stop dealing with them, so his job will be to impotently protest. At best.
In fairness we have done something - offering a path to citizenship for Hong Kong BNO passport holders:
They'll be holding out for that 1990-style loosening and dumbing down of broadcasting regulation. Without Fox-style freedom, to genuinely propagandise, I don't think they'll be able to build a big enough audience for the ambition and business model.
True. Even if they dont want to propagandize i dont see additional market for neutral news.
Another good, clear article - this time about the transmission of coronavirus. All that hand-washing and surfaces stuff is minor. You catch it by sitting indoors with other people, breathing. That’s it
Fits with the pattern of increased transmission as the summer slipped away and weather forced social life back indoors, around the world. Also an under-commented explanation for why Oz and NZ are looking so good right now. And for air travel - which is basically sitting indoors and breathing - having been key to the initial spread.
Also means that safety measures in pubs, theaters, taxis and so on are little more than safety theatre. They help a bit, but they do not make them safe.
(If you got to take a taxi, make it a black cab with its separate driver compartment. And maybe insist on a good airing before getting in.)
The suggestion is, if you can't open all the windows because you'd get cold sit at the opposite end of the taxi from the driver (as you'd expect) and open the window on the side away from you, and have them open the one on the side away from them, so there's diagonal airflow between you and the driver. This seems to work better than the obvious thing of opening the window next to each human.
Travelling in London you are almost certainly safer on the Tube or in a bus, right now. They are all 95% empty
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
Delay the Olympics to October, Tokyo is still warm until the end of October. It would also give international fans a chance to attend because globally lots of people will have been vaccinated by then. We should be reaching the end of ours and be looking to studies for 13-17 year olds to be jabbed too.
In terms of weather, October would actually be pretty much perfect in Japan. Whether there are logistical reasons not to do it, I don't know.
Yup, October is lovely, and July/August is horrible. IIUC the reason they insist on doing them in August is to do with other sporting events competing for TV viewers.
Also, a lot of other sports such as F1 have gone out of their way to avoid having a race that clashes with the Olympics.
They should roll them all in together, have a new kind of triathlon where you have to cycle down to Nagoya, drive 53 laps at Suzuka, then swim back. Possibly throw in a game of Rugby somewhere as well.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
I'm not sure the traditional midterm logic will entirely hold. Democrats are favoured in lower turnout elections now I think.
That depends entirely on the Biden Harris approval ratings in 2022, if they are low the GOP will almost certainly take back the House and maybe even the Senate too in the 2022 midterms.
Hyufd, don't the Republicans have a difficult slate in 2022 - more seats to defend than attack?
In the Senate maybe, not in the House though where every seat will be up in 2022 and the Democrats will be defending a majority of just 10 over the GOP
The Senate is much, much more important.
The President needs control of both the House and Senate to get his full legislative agenda through and the House controls the budget
Switch the Olympics to the autumn and hold Euro 2021 entirely in the UK, with only those vaccinated allowed to attend matches. You would still get full houses and it would be a great way to reward key workers (who will have been vaccinated).
They'll be holding out for that 1990-style loosening and dumbing down of broadcasting regulation. Without Fox-style freedom, to genuinely propagandise, I don't think they'll be able to build a big enough audience for their ambitions and business model.
My worry is somewhere out there is a British Trump just waiting for that to happen.
The same people who said it was impossible to do 100k tests per day ?
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
He's persistently misleading the country, normality by Christmas etc.
IIRC you were quite enraged by bad forecasts, particularly the Whitty/Vallance projections of 50,000 cases in October without further action.
Turns out they were right.
The 50k forecast was a ridiculous extrapolate to infinity and it was wrong.
And as you've not answered my question I'll ask it again:
What would you prefer - aim for 14m vaccinations and get 10m or aim for 7m and get 7m ?
The issue currently is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
And its more important that happens than politicians being able to say they reached their targets.
If it is really important to vaccinate as many people as possible why is the government not allowing pharmacists and former docs to join the vaccination rollout, and why are they taking breaks on Sunday?
This was asked on TalkRadio. I am none the wiser, but maybe I am being thick. Just bluster and waffle.
On the 14m target, personally I think it's unambitious. When you consider that AZ have declared doses of 19m for domestic use already produced and more on the way we should be thinking about how we can use all of that supply as quickly as possible, what are the pain points and how can we resolve them as quickly as possible. Production isn't a pain point, supply is, so what has broken down in between those two? Right now we know it's regulatory testing and approval of doses, the MHRA isn't set up to test and approve this many doses of two different types of vaccines. It needs to scale that process up so that it can test and approve many, many more batches of vaccine simultaneously. The Times say that this is already underway and they will be in a much better position by next week when we expect millions of doses per week to be reaching the end of the chain.
The next pain point is who does the jabs and when? There's a lot of talk about not doing Sundays, it seems like a completely mental idea not to run this 7 days a week, and hopefully that will get addressed, what we've also seen this morning is a government u-turn on not using pharmacies and pharmacists to dole it out.
A lot of this process is going to be learn by doing, setting a target of 14m is exactly what we need to do to ensure we address these pain points early on as the NHS is forced to scale up the process as quickly as possible. If we plod along at 1m per week and a 7m target it would mean we hit it easily but ultimately we never find out what needs fixing for when we need to double, and then double again the rate of vaccination.
We should have set a 20m ambition and 14m target. We have 19m doses produced of the AZ vaccine and around 1.5m per week from Pfizer of continuous supplely. If we don't use all of what is available, it would constitute a failure IMO.
Are we really 'not doing Sundays' ? I though it was established yesterday that was a myth.
As for the 19m doses, they aren't available until they're available to use.
As far as I can understand it, supply and not administration of the shots is the limiting factor.
We are doing Sundays, its nonsense that people are even discussing that we are not
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
and up to 80% of Repubs believe him!
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
Nobody denies Trump is a talented snake oil salesman. But to what effect? If he actually wants to preserve and extend his legacy, he's best ensuring Republicans control the Senate. Now they don't. He still has a load of people who will lick up anything he pukes out, but his political leverage is over people who aren't actually in power at the national level.
Oh, Trump can easily sway this result in Georgia to say that he was right and that the Republicans need to ignore the RINOs and listen to him. His arguments will be why the Republicans lost:
- McConnell opposed the $2K handout - he should have listened to me; - Kemp and the SoS has allowed the Democrats to steal the election by agreeing to Stacey Abrams' demands (more on that below); - The SoS released the tapes, allowing the media to run with the story about Trump pressuring Georgia; - Georgia has allowed voting fraud to run rampant; - If it wasn't for me campaigning, the margin of error would have been worse;
He will also use the results breakdown to push his arguments on fraud and that Republican legislatures should be doing more to limit mail-in ballots. NYT has the early vote essentially tied, the Republicans winning the election day ballots by 26/27% but the Democrats winning mail-in ballots by 34/35%..
Funnily enough, on this, he might get an ally in McConnell. If McConnell plans to stay around being leader and wants to win back the Senate in 2022, he might be more supportive to calls to limit mail-in ballots by state legislatures (which I'd expect to happen).
Sure, Trump can no doubt spin it - as I say, fantastic snake oil salesman. But the point is the MUCH better outcome for him would be for Republicans to retain control of the Senate.
Trump has great leverage within the GOP. But that's no good in terms of keeping the flame of Trumpism alive if they aren't in power anywhere. Losing the Senate means Republicans are purely reactive to someone else's agenda or two years at least. Perhaps that will change in 2022 - but not necessarily, and Trump is an old man who will be older still, he has a lot of legal issues, and the world does move on so he won't be quite as powerful as he is now.
He's maintained his leverage... but over what exactly?
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
The GOP have got themselves into a dire position. Many of them know that the Trump core are batshit crazy / QAnon types but there are too many of them to ignore so they keep quiet because they are scared of them.
I don't see an easy path for any moderately sane Republican to win a GOP Primary. That's why we still have 10 GOP Senators about to humiliate themselves by still pretending Trump won the election.
IDK, parties nearly always pick a moderate against an incumbent, not least because if the governing side isn't contested then politics enthusiasts vote in the opposition race, especially where there are open primaries. It's not clear that Trump will be willing and able to run, and if he's not then it's not clear that anybody similar can pull off what he did.
In some cases you may be correct but I believe the GOP will be dancing to Trump's tune for the next 4 years.
Trump is a malign, vindictive and bullying individual who will take great pleasure in trying to destroy any Republican who has displeased him. The right really have taken the US into a very dark place and now the genii is out of the bottle it's not going to be easy to put it back.
I totally share your opinion on the damage done but I do not think Trump & Clan will be the ongoing political force that many fear (or hope if they're on the dark side). Soon he will out of the White House. He'll be an impeached and disgraced one term ex-president with big legal and money troubles who managed the remarkable negative feat of failing to win a 2nd term after just 4 years of his party in power and while he's at it losing both houses of Congress to the hated other.
From 20 Jan his world will shrink beyond recognition. The difference between being the American president and not being the American president is almost as stark as that between being dead or alive. He'll lose all the trappings of that great office - the most important of which was to have his bullshit piped into people's heads 24/7. Supporters will drift away, not to be replaced by new ones. It will be one way traffic. Drip drip drip until what's left is something not to be taken seriously. He might even realize this himself before too long and concentrate just on cashflow and staying out of jail. Perhaps a deal? Not sure on that one. We'll see.
But Donald Trump the fearsome politician is over. No doubt there will be other grisly characters (the lizard Ted Cruz?) who will battle to own the MAGA space in the GOP, and one will prevail and be a live contender for the 24 nomination, but that person will not be called Trump and they won't be able to recreate what he did in 15/16 because that stunning achievement owed so much to his personal brand and persona. So they won't win the nomination. The Republican Party might look beyond the pale now but my money is on them detoxifying. Looking forward to the opening of the WH24 betting.
I think even if Trump and Trump Jnr do not run in 2024 one of Pence or Cruz will be the GOP nominee, the GOP base are not going to pick an establishment and moderate 'RINO' as their nominee anytime soon
More important than the target number is making sure you are measuring the right thing.
Without thinking it through in great detail - the number vaccinated looks like the right metric. I suppose if the govt messed up the prioritization in its haste to vaccinate everyone, then that might be an adverse consequence.
By contrast - the testing target of 100k/day was not the right metric. We prioritized doing lots of tests (or worse posting them to people!) vs. getting quick results, getting people to act on results, getting people to isolate etc.
They'll be holding out for that 1990-style loosening and dumbing down of broadcasting regulation. Without Fox-style freedom, to genuinely propagandise, I don't think they'll be able to build a big enough audience for their ambitions and business model.
My worry is somewhere out there is a British Trump just waiting for that to happen.
Also, a lot of other sports such as F1 have gone out of their way to avoid having a race that clashes with the Olympics.
The UCI have moved La Grande Boucle to late June/early July. The Olympics now only clashes with the Tour de Pologne which is a largely pointless crashfest for second stringers.
Mathieu van der Poel is a good bet for the road race gold, I reckon. It's his sort of course and he'll have a mega strong Dutch team working for him.
GB News are missing a trick if they don't also go the YouTube / internet streaming route.
As TalkRadio have found there are lots of views to be had there, in fact there are random "personalities" that cover current affairs that often get larger audience figures than the likes of Sky News. There are bugger all views in being Channel 4958 on Sky, unless you are a "speciality" channel for the mature audience, and even then hasn't all that stuff now gone to the internet?
It is unlawful to disciminate against people purely on the grounds of nationality. You are right that you can discriminate on the grounds of right to work (i.e. work permits) but you can't discriminate on the grounds of national origin if someone has a work permit - that would be indirect race discrimination. So if a Pakistani, British and Irish Citizen apply for a job in Ireland, each having a right to work there, but the first two are rejected on the grounds of citizenship then they both have a case under the Irish Equal Status Acts 2000-2018.
Article 13 of the Directive reads as follows -
(13) To this end, any direct or indirect discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin as regards the areas covered by this Directive should be prohibited throughout the Community. This prohibition of discrimination should also apply to nationals of third countries, but does not cover differences of treatment based on nationality and is without prejudice to provisions governing the entry and residence of third-country nationals and their access to employment and to occupation.
The sentence "based on nationality" is a bit of a red herring as if someone is lawfully able to work in a country then they are covered by the "third country" bit and it has been repeatedly proved impossible to discriminate on the grounds of nationality without discriminating indirectly on the grounds of ethnicity. For example "no Afghan citizens" is, objectively, based purely on nationality but is clearly indirectly discriminatory against people of Afghan ethnicity ("indirect discrimination shall be taken to occur where an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons of a racial or ethnic origin at a particular disadvantage compared with other persons, unless that provision, criterion or practice is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary"). In Bilka-Kaufhaus GmbH v Weber von Hartz, the European Court of Justice held that the measures taken by the employer: - Must correspond to a real need on the part of the employer. - Must be appropriate with a view to achieving the objectives pursued. - Must be necessary to that end.
So a blanket ban based on nationality, without reference to right to work, is unlawful indirect discrimination
Nothing from Raab so far on the Hong Kong arrests......
I sort of feel for him. Theres nothing anyone can do, China has won and the world isn't about to stop dealing with them, so his job will be to impotently protest. At best.
In fairness we have done something - offering a path to citizenship for Hong Kong BNO passport holders:
Yes it is. It feels like so little versus what is happening, but there really isn't much that can be done, especially when a great many places won't even want to the very little that can.
Switch the Olympics to the autumn and hold Euro 2021 entirely in the UK, with only those vaccinated allowed to attend matches. You would still get full houses and it would be a great way to reward key workers (who will have been vaccinated).
Very doable, just needs a bit of imagination.
There is absolutely no chance that UEFA will let us have the Euros to ourselves.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
I'm not sure the traditional midterm logic will entirely hold. Democrats are favoured in lower turnout elections now I think.
That depends entirely on the Biden Harris approval ratings in 2022, if they are low the GOP will almost certainly take back the House and maybe even the Senate too in the 2022 midterms.
Hyufd, don't the Republicans have a difficult slate in 2022 - more seats to defend than attack?
In the Senate maybe, not in the House though where every seat will be up in 2022 and the Democrats will be defending a majority of just 10 over the GOP
The Senate is much, much more important.
The President needs control of both the House and Senate to get his full legislative agenda through and the House controls the budget
No he doesn't. The house is much more used to facilitating cross partisan politics. Most Presidents end up working with an opposition controlled House without problems. The budget is always about horsetrading.
But the Senate uniquely can stallwall judicial appointments etc. It is far more critical.
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
It really depends on when they're asking for athletes to be vaccinated. If it's now then, you're right it wouldn't be very popular. If it's in May or June then no one's going to care because the programme will already be through all of the top 9 priority groups. Where it gets dicey is if the UK supplies the IOC for international use and for various dignitaries because their home countries haven't planned ahead properly. Though really we're talking about maybe 250000 doses and we can probably ask the US and Japan to chip in as well given their portfolios are as strong as ours.
I think plenty of athletes need vaccinating by February so they can form groups so they can do their training schedules to peak at the Olympics.
Vaccinating in May or June won't work, nor will sport bubbles as there's not enough facilities (or money) for them to form exclusive sporting bubbles.
Delay the Olympics to October, Tokyo is still warm until the end of October. It would also give international fans a chance to attend because globally lots of people will have been vaccinated by then. We should be reaching the end of ours and be looking to studies for 13-17 year olds to be jabbed too.
Not an option, that's monsoon/typhoon weather that time of the year in Japan.
It caused havoc at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
On the plus side, get the wind in the right direction and we might get the first 8 second 100m sprint
I have just heard from a friend of mine who is in his eighties and had the first jab before Xmas, that he has received a text reminder to go to the surgery tomorrow for his second jab, 21 days after his first.
A former Goldman Sachs banker will this week be installed by Boris Johnson as the next BBC chairman amid a deepening debate about the fate of the television licence fee and unprecedented competition from commercial rivals.
Sky News has learnt that the government is preparing to announce the appointment of Richard Sharp as Sir David Clementi's successor as soon as Thursday.
Mr Sharp, who during his long career at Goldman was once Rishi Sunak's boss, has spent much of the past year as an unpaid adviser to the chancellor on the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic...
Mr Sharp was an adviser to the PM during the latter's time as mayor of London, and has historically been a donor to the Conservative Party, although one ally of the new BBC chair said he had given just £2,500 to it in the last decade.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
and up to 80% of Repubs believe him!
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
Nobody denies Trump is a talented snake oil salesman. But to what effect? If he actually wants to preserve and extend his legacy, he's best ensuring Republicans control the Senate. Now they don't. He still has a load of people who will lick up anything he pukes out, but his political leverage is over people who aren't actually in power at the national level.
Oh, Trump can easily sway this result in Georgia to say that he was right and that the Republicans need to ignore the RINOs and listen to him. His arguments will be why the Republicans lost:
- McConnell opposed the $2K handout - he should have listened to me; - Kemp and the SoS has allowed the Democrats to steal the election by agreeing to Stacey Abrams' demands (more on that below); - The SoS released the tapes, allowing the media to run with the story about Trump pressuring Georgia; - Georgia has allowed voting fraud to run rampant; - If it wasn't for me campaigning, the margin of error would have been worse;
He will also use the results breakdown to push his arguments on fraud and that Republican legislatures should be doing more to limit mail-in ballots. NYT has the early vote essentially tied, the Republicans winning the election day ballots by 26/27% but the Democrats winning mail-in ballots by 34/35%..
Funnily enough, on this, he might get an ally in McConnell. If McConnell plans to stay around being leader and wants to win back the Senate in 2022, he might be more supportive to calls to limit mail-in ballots by state legislatures (which I'd expect to happen).
Sure, Trump can no doubt spin it - as I say, fantasticc snake oil salesman. But the point is the MUCH better outcome for him would be for Republicans to retain control of the Senare.
Trump has great leverage within the GOP. But that's no good in terms of keeping the flame of Trumpism alive if they aren't in power anywhere. Losing the Senate means Republicans are purely reactive to someone else's agenda or two years at least. Perhaps that will change in 2022 - but not necessarily, and Trump is an old man who will be older still, he has a lot of legal issues, and the world does move on so he won't be quite as powerful as he is now.
He's maintained his leverage... but over what exactly?
Well, it's easy to write off the Republicans after this result and say, at face value, the Democrats have the trifecta of the Presidency and Congress. But the Republicans still control the majority of state legislatures, which gives them the upper hand in redistricting in 2021, and the Democrats' grip on all three levers is weak - a limited majority in the House, a split Senate and a Presidency where there will be continued questioning on the vote.
As for Trump, while it will be spun as a blow for him, within Republican circles, it's more likely to be seen as fuelling calls for McConnell to quit. There are plenty of Senators like Hawley, Cruz and Cotton who are positioning themselves for 2024 (or 2028, if Trump goes for the nomination again and they decide to be his wing-man, given Pence is unlikely to get that role). It's an easy line to take that McConnell cocked up by not backing the £2K proposal and the three quarters of Republican voters who think the election was stolen not need much persuading in believing the narrative that he has been complicit in allowing the election to be stolen.
Loeffler on the radio there, imploring ‘all’ Americans to keep fighting for the American Dream. Hadn’t realised getting insider info during a pandemic and then buying up shares in a body bag firm was an aspect of the American Dream. Every day a school day,
Get rich or die trying. Or get rich off the back of others dying. That has pretty much been the American dream for centuries.
Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
Which shows different approaches - my GP has been sending to texts/letters naming a specific 15 minute "slot" on a specific day for your jab. Proceeding down the list in order of age, I believe. Whole of January booked.
My Dad very efficiently got his 2nd jab this week. Exactly as planned. So there seems to be massive variation
I have also heard that the response to various outfits (such as GPs) declining to participate in the Pfzier vaccine distribution (too demanding, too compiled), was to simply send the supplies (limited) elsewhere. On the basis of "If you can use use it, you can have it".
Apparently this was a bit of shock to some in the system.
Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
Which shows different approaches - my GP has been sending to texts/letters naming a specific 15 minute "slot" on a specific day for your jab. Proceeding down the list in order of age, I believe. Whole of January booked.
My Dad very efficiently got his 2nd jab this week. Exactly as planned. So there seems to be massive variation
My 88 and 87 in laws have their jab scheduled for tomorrow, time and place also notified by their GPs by letter, having heeded the advice not to contact anyone.
Very revealing of some people's attitude....a person of a certain skin colour must have a certain opinion on particular issues because of their skin colour, they either just can't say it, they are lying or worst they are an Uncle Tom.
It could well have you going back to read the statement he released after the police killing of George Floyd and how far out of the way it went to empathize with law enforcement who “train so diligently to understand how, when and where to use force.” Those words, typical Woods, seemed so cautious and even cowardly then – especially when compared to the more assertive tone struck by Michael Jordan, the greatest political fence sitter of all time until last summer. But after watching the doc you appreciate the statement for what it is – the words of a man who is just trying to survive another day in America. Sounds mighty black to me.
Maybe like Billy Vunipola he isn't exactly on board with all of the BLM movement demands and prefers to be diplomatic / doesn't believe some of the demonstrable false claims in terms of how likely an unarmed black man will get gunned down by the police.
When my (black) wife worked in Hollywood when the OJ trial was going on, she mentioned to her co-workers that she thought OJ was guilty. One of them said "I always knew X wasn't Black"
Loeffler on the radio there, imploring ‘all’ Americans to keep fighting for the American Dream. Hadn’t realised getting insider info during a pandemic and then buying up shares in a body bag firm was an aspect of the American Dream. Every day a school day,
Get rich or die trying. Or get rich off the back of others dying. That has pretty much been the American dream for centuries.
New Jack City was not intended to be a HowTo instructional film.... but....
It is unlawful to disciminate against people purely on the grounds of nationality. You are right that you can discriminate on the grounds of right to work (i.e. work permits) but you can't discriminate on the grounds of national origin if someone has a work permit - that would be indirect race discrimination. So if a Pakistani, British and Irish Citizen apply for a job in Ireland, each having a right to work there, but the first two are rejected on the grounds of citizenship then they both have a case under the Irish Equal Status Acts 2000-2018.
Article 13 of the Directive reads as follows -
(13) To this end, any direct or indirect discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin as regards the areas covered by this Directive should be prohibited throughout the Community. This prohibition of discrimination should also apply to nationals of third countries, but does not cover differences of treatment based on nationality and is without prejudice to provisions governing the entry and residence of third-country nationals and their access to employment and to occupation.
The sentence "based on nationality" is a bit of a red herring as if someone is lawfully able to work in a country then they are covered by the "third country" bit and it has been repeatedly proved impossible to discriminate on the grounds of nationality without discriminating indirectly on the grounds of ethnicity. For example "no Afghan citizens" is, objectively, based purely on nationality but is clearly indirectly discriminatory against people of Afghan ethnicity ("indirect discrimination shall be taken to occur where an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons of a racial or ethnic origin at a particular disadvantage compared with other persons, unless that provision, criterion or practice is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary"). In Bilka-Kaufhaus GmbH v Weber von Hartz, the European Court of Justice held that the measures taken by the employer: - Must correspond to a real need on the part of the employer. - Must be appropriate with a view to achieving the objectives pursued. - Must be necessary to that end.
So a blanket ban based on nationality, without reference to right to work, is unlawful indirect discrimination
I think you are over-analysing. The job vacancy notices which the original tweet referred to were probably modified from something like "EU, EEA or UK citizens, or other nationals with a right to work in the EU" to delete the UK reference. Given that tweets are very limited in length, it would hardly be unreasonable for the author to have skipped the last bit.
It also wouldn't be a misrepresentation. A UK citizen typically doesn't now have a pre-existing right to work in the EU. IANAE, but I very much doubt that there is an obligation on EU employers to accept applications from third-country nationals for whom they'd have to apply for a work permit, and clearly it's a hassle which they wouldn't want to bother with unless they had no choice.
I have just heard from a friend of mine who is in his eighties and had the first jab before Xmas, that he has received a text reminder to go to the surgery tomorrow for his second jab, 21 days after his first.
I've received about 3 messages from my surgery not to contact them but just to wait for it. Simple precaution or a lot of people phoning in I wonder?
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
The GOP have got themselves into a dire position. Many of them know that the Trump core are batshit crazy / QAnon types but there are too many of them to ignore so they keep quiet because they are scared of them.
I don't see an easy path for any moderately sane Republican to win a GOP Primary. That's why we still have 10 GOP Senators about to humiliate themselves by still pretending Trump won the election.
IDK, parties nearly always pick a moderate against an incumbent, not least because if the governing side isn't contested then politics enthusiasts vote in the opposition race, especially where there are open primaries. It's not clear that Trump will be willing and able to run, and if he's not then it's not clear that anybody similar can pull off what he did.
In some cases you may be correct but I believe the GOP will be dancing to Trump's tune for the next 4 years.
Trump is a malign, vindictive and bullying individual who will take great pleasure in trying to destroy any Republican who has displeased him. The right really have taken the US into a very dark place and now the genii is out of the bottle it's not going to be easy to put it back.
I totally share your opinion on the damage done but I do not think Trump & Clan will be the ongoing political force that many fear (or hope if they're on the dark side). Soon he will out of the White House. He'll be an impeached and disgraced one term ex-president with big legal and money troubles who managed the remarkable negative feat of failing to win a 2nd term after just 4 years of his party in power and while he's at it losing both houses of Congress to the hated other.
From 20 Jan his world will shrink beyond recognition. The difference between being the American president and not being the American president is almost as stark as that between being dead or alive. He'll lose all the trappings of that great office - the most important of which was to have his bullshit piped into people's heads 24/7. Supporters will drift away, not to be replaced by new ones. It will be one way traffic. Drip drip drip until what's left is something not to be taken seriously. He might even realize this himself before too long and concentrate just on cashflow and staying out of jail. Perhaps a deal? Not sure on that one. We'll see.
But Donald Trump the fearsome politician is over. No doubt there will be other grisly characters (the lizard Ted Cruz?) who will battle to own the MAGA space in the GOP, and one will prevail and be a live contender for the 24 nomination, but that person will not be called Trump and they won't be able to recreate what he did in 15/16 because that stunning achievement owed so much to his personal brand and persona. So they won't win the nomination. The Republican Party might look beyond the pale now but my money is on them detoxifying. Looking forward to the opening of the WH24 betting.
I think even if Trump and Trump Jnr do not run in 2024 one of Pence or Cruz will be the GOP nominee, the GOP base are not going to pick an establishment and moderate 'RINO' as their nominee anytime soon
Trump is a cult.* His support will wane now but it won't readily transfer anywhere and certainly not to traditional Republicans. The GoP has a massive problem, very much of its own creation. It will do well to avoid a long period in the wilderness.
GB News are missing a trick if they don't also go the YouTube / internet streaming route.
As TalkRadio have found there are lots of views to be had there, in fact there are random "personalities" that cover current affairs that often get larger audience figures than the likes of Sky News. There are bugger all views in being Channel 4958 on Sky, unless you are a "speciality" channel for the mature audience, and even then hasn't all that stuff now gone to the internet?
I find YouTube quite often promotes professionally produced videos by people you’ve never heard of on various alt-right topics.
A former Goldman Sachs banker will this week be installed by Boris Johnson as the next BBC chairman amid a deepening debate about the fate of the television licence fee and unprecedented competition from commercial rivals.
Sky News has learnt that the government is preparing to announce the appointment of Richard Sharp as Sir David Clementi's successor as soon as Thursday.
Mr Sharp, who during his long career at Goldman was once Rishi Sunak's boss, has spent much of the past year as an unpaid adviser to the chancellor on the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic...
Mr Sharp was an adviser to the PM during the latter's time as mayor of London, and has historically been a donor to the Conservative Party, although one ally of the new BBC chair said he had given just £2,500 to it in the last decade.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
I'm not sure the traditional midterm logic will entirely hold. Democrats are favoured in lower turnout elections now I think.
That depends entirely on the Biden Harris approval ratings in 2022, if they are low the GOP will almost certainly take back the House and maybe even the Senate too in the 2022 midterms.
Hyufd, don't the Republicans have a difficult slate in 2022 - more seats to defend than attack?
In the Senate maybe, not in the House though where every seat will be up in 2022 and the Democrats will be defending a majority of just 10 over the GOP
The Senate is much, much more important.
The President needs control of both the House and Senate to get his full legislative agenda through and the House controls the budget
No he doesn't. The house is much more used to facilitating cross partisan politics. Most Presidents end up working with an opposition controlled House without problems. The budget is always about horsetrading.
But the Senate uniquely can stallwall judicial appointments etc. It is far more critical.
There would have been no Obamacare for example if the GOP had held the House from 2009 to 2011
More important than the target number is making sure you are measuring the right thing.
Without thinking it through in great detail - the number vaccinated looks like the right metric. I suppose if the govt messed up the prioritization in its haste to vaccinate everyone, then that might be an adverse consequence.
By contrast - the testing target of 100k/day was not the right metric. We prioritized doing lots of tests (or worse posting them to people!) vs. getting quick results, getting people to act on results, getting people to isolate etc.
Number actually immunised would be better. Number vaccinated pushes towards the single dose regime no matter what its effectiveness turns out to be, and towards using the more easily administered vaccine even when the more effective one is available.
Trouble is, that's not an easily obtainable number, and of course targets do need to be measurable.
You're complaining about the loss of Francovich damages now? Hopefully this means we are getting near the bottom of the pile. Other than Factortame did the UK government ever pay such damages in the 30 years since the CJEU invented that principle?
GB News are missing a trick if they don't also go the YouTube / internet streaming route.
As TalkRadio have found there are lots of views to be had there, in fact there are random "personalities" that cover current affairs that often get larger audience figures than the likes of Sky News. There are bugger all views in being Channel 4958 on Sky, unless you are a "speciality" channel for the mature audience, and even then hasn't all that stuff now gone to the internet?
I find YouTube quite often promotes professionally produced videos by people you’ve never heard of on various alt-right topics.
You should watch some more left wing people then....I do and I get recommended both. It is true though that YouTube algorithm is particular poor for if you watch one video by somebody, you don't like or subscribe etc, it still thinks well you must be really into this type of content, and gives you some more of the same for a bit.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
The GOP have got themselves into a dire position. Many of them know that the Trump core are batshit crazy / QAnon types but there are too many of them to ignore so they keep quiet because they are scared of them.
I don't see an easy path for any moderately sane Republican to win a GOP Primary. That's why we still have 10 GOP Senators about to humiliate themselves by still pretending Trump won the election.
IDK, parties nearly always pick a moderate against an incumbent, not least because if the governing side isn't contested then politics enthusiasts vote in the opposition race, especially where there are open primaries. It's not clear that Trump will be willing and able to run, and if he's not then it's not clear that anybody similar can pull off what he did.
In some cases you may be correct but I believe the GOP will be dancing to Trump's tune for the next 4 years.
Trump is a malign, vindictive and bullying individual who will take great pleasure in trying to destroy any Republican who has displeased him. The right really have taken the US into a very dark place and now the genii is out of the bottle it's not going to be easy to put it back.
I totally share your opinion on the damage done but I do not think Trump & Clan will be the ongoing political force that many fear (or hope if they're on the dark side). Soon he will out of the White House. He'll be an impeached and disgraced one term ex-president with big legal and money troubles who managed the remarkable negative feat of failing to win a 2nd term after just 4 years of his party in power and while he's at it losing both houses of Congress to the hated other.
From 20 Jan his world will shrink beyond recognition. The difference between being the American president and not being the American president is almost as stark as that between being dead or alive. He'll lose all the trappings of that great office - the most important of which was to have his bullshit piped into people's heads 24/7. Supporters will drift away, not to be replaced by new ones. It will be one way traffic. Drip drip drip until what's left is something not to be taken seriously. He might even realize this himself before too long and concentrate just on cashflow and staying out of jail. Perhaps a deal? Not sure on that one. We'll see.
But Donald Trump the fearsome politician is over. No doubt there will be other grisly characters (the lizard Ted Cruz?) who will battle to own the MAGA space in the GOP, and one will prevail and be a live contender for the 24 nomination, but that person will not be called Trump and they won't be able to recreate what he did in 15/16 because that stunning achievement owed so much to his personal brand and persona. So they won't win the nomination. The Republican Party might look beyond the pale now but my money is on them detoxifying. Looking forward to the opening of the WH24 betting.
I think even if Trump and Trump Jnr do not run in 2024 one of Pence or Cruz will be the GOP nominee, the GOP base are not going to pick an establishment and moderate 'RINO' as their nominee anytime soon
Trump is a cult.* His support will wane now but it won't readily transfer anywhere and certainly not to traditional Republicans. The GoP has a massive problem, very much of its own creation. It will do well to avoid a long period in the wilderness.
* For the avoidance of doubt this is not a typo.
It should be noted that the last time a party lost the White House after only 1 term, when Carter lost in 1980, it took the Democrats 12 years until Bill Clinton in 1992 before they won the White House again.
Which is not encouraging for the GOP, at least at the Presidential level
Needless to say we don't see eye-to-eye on Europe. I suspect that would have let him down, as it did for Ken Clarke.
Yep I agree with this. I think he was utterly wrong on Europe and I think that would have killed any chance he had of being PM even had he kept his seat. But he has been right on many other things not least his calls for us to welcome Hong Kong residents we abandoned after the handover in 1999. This is a great wrong I hope we are now righting.
Agreed. What was different about him is that he had little time for the pomposity of Heseltine and Heath either, and was clearly patriotic - believing Britain's interests could best be asserted via the EU.
I didn't agree with him on that, but I respect anyone (of whatever view) who has moral and political courage.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
and up to 80% of Repubs believe him!
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
Nobody denies Trump is a talented snake oil salesman. But to what effect? If he actually wants to preserve and extend his legacy, he's best ensuring Republicans control the Senate. Now they don't. He still has a load of people who will lick up anything he pukes out, but his political leverage is over people who aren't actually in power at the national level.
Oh, Trump can easily sway this result in Georgia to say that he was right and that the Republicans need to ignore the RINOs and listen to him. His arguments will be why the Republicans lost:
- McConnell opposed the $2K handout - he should have listened to me; - Kemp and the SoS has allowed the Democrats to steal the election by agreeing to Stacey Abrams' demands (more on that below); - The SoS released the tapes, allowing the media to run with the story about Trump pressuring Georgia; - Georgia has allowed voting fraud to run rampant; - If it wasn't for me campaigning, the margin of error would have been worse;
He will also use the results breakdown to push his arguments on fraud and that Republican legislatures should be doing more to limit mail-in ballots. NYT has the early vote essentially tied, the Republicans winning the election day ballots by 26/27% but the Democrats winning mail-in ballots by 34/35%..
Funnily enough, on this, he might get an ally in McConnell. If McConnell plans to stay around being leader and wants to win back the Senate in 2022, he might be more supportive to calls to limit mail-in ballots by state legislatures (which I'd expect to happen).
Sure, Trump can no doubt spin it - as I say, fantasticc snake oil salesman. But the point is the MUCH better outcome for him would be for Republicans to retain control of the Senare.
Trump has great leverage within the GOP. But that's no good in terms of keeping the flame of Trumpism alive if they aren't in power anywhere. Losing the Senate means Republicans are purely reactive to someone else's agenda or two years at least. Perhaps that will change in 2022 - but not necessarily, and Trump is an old man who will be older still, he has a lot of legal issues, and the world does move on so he won't be quite as powerful as he is now.
He's maintained his leverage... but over what exactly?
Well, it's easy to write off the Republicans after this result and say, at face value, the Democrats have the trifecta of the Presidency and Congress. But the Republicans still control the majority of state legislatures, which gives them the upper hand in redistricting in 2021, and the Democrats' grip on all three levers is weak - a limited majority in the House, a split Senate and a Presidency where there will be continued questioning on the vote.
As for Trump, while it will be spun as a blow for him, within Republican circles, it's more likely to be seen as fuelling calls for McConnell to quit. There are plenty of Senators like Hawley, Cruz and Cotton who are positioning themselves for 2024 (or 2028, if Trump goes for the nomination again and they decide to be his wing-man, given Pence is unlikely to get that role). It's an easy line to take that McConnell cocked up by not backing the £2K proposal and the three quarters of Republican voters who think the election was stolen not need much persuading in believing the narrative that he has been complicit in allowing the election to be stolen.
I have just heard from a friend of mine who is in his eighties and had the first jab before Xmas, that he has received a text reminder to go to the surgery tomorrow for his second jab, 21 days after his first.
I've received about 3 messages from my surgery not to contact them but just to wait for it. Simple precaution or a lot of people phoning in I wonder?
My surgery has the same message. Don't phone us. We'll contact you. So I didn't phone them until I got a text message 8 days ago saying phone us. I did and got an appointment for my first jab the next day (7 days ago) and an appointment for my second jab on 20th Jan.
A former Goldman Sachs banker will this week be installed by Boris Johnson as the next BBC chairman amid a deepening debate about the fate of the television licence fee and unprecedented competition from commercial rivals.
Sky News has learnt that the government is preparing to announce the appointment of Richard Sharp as Sir David Clementi's successor as soon as Thursday.
Mr Sharp, who during his long career at Goldman was once Rishi Sunak's boss, has spent much of the past year as an unpaid adviser to the chancellor on the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic...
Mr Sharp was an adviser to the PM during the latter's time as mayor of London, and has historically been a donor to the Conservative Party, although one ally of the new BBC chair said he had given just £2,500 to it in the last decade.
They'll be holding out for that 1990-style loosening and dumbing down of broadcasting regulation. Without Fox-style freedom, to genuinely propagandise, I don't think they'll be able to build a big enough audience for their ambitions and business model.
My worry is somewhere out there is a British Trump just waiting for that to happen.
You don't need to worry, unless Britain becomes a Republic.
Nothing from Raab so far on the Hong Kong arrests......
I sort of feel for him. Theres nothing anyone can do, China has won and the world isn't about to stop dealing with them, so his job will be to impotently protest. At best.
We could decide to reduce the amount we deal with them. A China Repression Tariff Escalator. A general tariff of x% on Chinese goods, increase it by x% a year while they violate standards on the rule of law and human rights.
It would give time for people to find alternatives as the tariffs ramped up over the years.
There seems to be some confusion this morning if the elections are going ahead or not in May.
Surely worth delaying them to July. No need to have a mass superspreading event just as we're tipping the balance in our favour. Two more months means 20m more people jabbed and 14m more people immunised.
Just make them all-postal.
Counting will have to take a bit longer, but we delayed a whole heap of elections from last spring. There's no need to delay again.
Would 100% postal voting favour anybody in particular in Scotland?
Can't see this being too popular but we should do it so we can go further up the medal table.
Olympics official says prioritise athletes for coronavirus jab so Tokyo Games can go ahead
Sky News understands conversations underway between government and British Olympic Association about securing athletes a Covid-19 vaccination; IOC member Dick Pound is confident the Olympics can still go ahead as long as athletes can be vaccinated beforehand
I have just heard from a friend of mine who is in his eighties and had the first jab before Xmas, that he has received a text reminder to go to the surgery tomorrow for his second jab, 21 days after his first.
I've received about 3 messages from my surgery not to contact them but just to wait for it. Simple precaution or a lot of people phoning in I wonder?
According to my GP (well, the nurse there, while sort out to do some other stuff at the same time as the jab, for an elderly relative), the phones have been ringing non-stop. Generally ineligible people seeking to get the jab early.
It is unlawful to disciminate against people purely on the grounds of nationality. You are right that you can discriminate on the grounds of right to work (i.e. work permits) but you can't discriminate on the grounds of national origin if someone has a work permit - that would be indirect race discrimination. So if a Pakistani, British and Irish Citizen apply for a job in Ireland, each having a right to work there, but the first two are rejected on the grounds of citizenship then they both have a case under the Irish Equal Status Acts 2000-2018.
Article 13 of the Directive reads as follows -
(13) To this end, any direct or indirect discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin as regards the areas covered by this Directive should be prohibited throughout the Community. This prohibition of discrimination should also apply to nationals of third countries, but does not cover differences of treatment based on nationality and is without prejudice to provisions governing the entry and residence of third-country nationals and their access to employment and to occupation.
The sentence "based on nationality" is a bit of a red herring as if someone is lawfully able to work in a country then they are covered by the "third country" bit and it has been repeatedly proved impossible to discriminate on the grounds of nationality without discriminating indirectly on the grounds of ethnicity. For example "no Afghan citizens" is, objectively, based purely on nationality but is clearly indirectly discriminatory against people of Afghan ethnicity ("indirect discrimination shall be taken to occur where an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons of a racial or ethnic origin at a particular disadvantage compared with other persons, unless that provision, criterion or practice is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary"). In Bilka-Kaufhaus GmbH v Weber von Hartz, the European Court of Justice held that the measures taken by the employer: - Must correspond to a real need on the part of the employer. - Must be appropriate with a view to achieving the objectives pursued. - Must be necessary to that end.
So a blanket ban based on nationality, without reference to right to work, is unlawful indirect discrimination
I think you are over-analysing. The job vacancy notices which the original tweet referred to were probably modified from something like "EU, EEA or UK citizens, or other nationals with a right to work in the EU" to delete the UK reference. Given that tweets are very limited in length, it would hardly be unreasonable for the author to have skipped the last bit.
It also wouldn't be a misrepresentation. A UK citizen typically doesn't now have a pre-existing right to work in the EU. IANAE, but I very much doubt that there is an obligation on EU employers to accept applications from third-country nationals for whom they'd have to apply for a work permit, and clearly it's a hassle which they wouldn't want to bother with unless they had no choice.
I mean, the whole purpose of Brexit, and the most material consequence of it, is to strip the automatic right to work and residency for UK citizens in the EU and vice versa. For any Brexiteer to raise objections to this happening would be pretty odd.
Yes, after all the sound and fury, we've done about as well most large, diverse, western European countries. France, Italy and the United States have done about as well, Belgium and Spain a bit worse, Germany and Canada rather better.
Incidentally, whoever wrote the article, which includes the statement that the Dutch are noted as a world leader in complex projects clearly hasn't studied the North/South line in the Amsterdam Metro, which is a parody of a badly-managed project.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
I'm not sure the traditional midterm logic will entirely hold. Democrats are favoured in lower turnout elections now I think.
That depends entirely on the Biden Harris approval ratings in 2022, if they are low the GOP will almost certainly take back the House and maybe even the Senate too in the 2022 midterms.
Hyufd, don't the Republicans have a difficult slate in 2022 - more seats to defend than attack?
In the Senate maybe, not in the House though where every seat will be up in 2022 and the Democrats will be defending a majority of just 10 over the GOP
The Senate is much, much more important.
The President needs control of both the House and Senate to get his full legislative agenda through and the House controls the budget
No he doesn't. The house is much more used to facilitating cross partisan politics. Most Presidents end up working with an opposition controlled House without problems. The budget is always about horsetrading.
But the Senate uniquely can stallwall judicial appointments etc. It is far more critical.
There would have been no Obamacare for example if the GOP had held the House from 2009 to 2011
That was a dramatic partisan reform not a budget. President's can still get their agenda and a budget through via horsetrading which is what Biden is good at, even if there's no dramatic partisan reforms.
The Democrats have two years potentially to get partisan stuff done, so long as it can get past Manchin so nothing AOC related. A new Voting Rights Act should be top of the agenda along with Statehood.
Nothing from Raab so far on the Hong Kong arrests......
I sort of feel for him. Theres nothing anyone can do, China has won and the world isn't about to stop dealing with them, so his job will be to impotently protest. At best.
We could decide to reduce the amount we deal with them. A China Repression Tariff Escalator. A general tariff of x% on Chinese goods, increase it by x% a year while they violate standards on the rule of law and human rights.
It would give time for people to find alternatives as the tariffs ramped up over the years.
Apparently, according to an HK friend, the next expected move from the Chinese government will be to make dual nationality illegal. Except for the rich and powerful, of course.
A former Goldman Sachs banker will this week be installed by Boris Johnson as the next BBC chairman amid a deepening debate about the fate of the television licence fee and unprecedented competition from commercial rivals.
Sky News has learnt that the government is preparing to announce the appointment of Richard Sharp as Sir David Clementi's successor as soon as Thursday.
Mr Sharp, who during his long career at Goldman was once Rishi Sunak's boss, has spent much of the past year as an unpaid adviser to the chancellor on the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic...
Mr Sharp was an adviser to the PM during the latter's time as mayor of London, and has historically been a donor to the Conservative Party, although one ally of the new BBC chair said he had given just £2,500 to it in the last decade.
The Guardian are going to have fits....and again it looks like jobs for your mates.
There's an incredibly casual, almost careless - in fact, almost proud - quality to the govrnment's cronyism. And again, it does have to be said that the current western government that most reminds of, is Trump's ; in a politer and subtler English version.
It is unlawful to disciminate against people purely on the grounds of nationality. You are right that you can discriminate on the grounds of right to work (i.e. work permits) but you can't discriminate on the grounds of national origin if someone has a work permit - that would be indirect race discrimination. So if a Pakistani, British and Irish Citizen apply for a job in Ireland, each having a right to work there, but the first two are rejected on the grounds of citizenship then they both have a case under the Irish Equal Status Acts 2000-2018.
Article 13 of the Directive reads as follows -
(13) To this end, any direct or indirect discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin as regards the areas covered by this Directive should be prohibited throughout the Community. This prohibition of discrimination should also apply to nationals of third countries, but does not cover differences of treatment based on nationality and is without prejudice to provisions governing the entry and residence of third-country nationals and their access to employment and to occupation.
The sentence "based on nationality" is a bit of a red herring as if someone is lawfully able to work in a country then they are covered by the "third country" bit and it has been repeatedly proved impossible to discriminate on the grounds of nationality without discriminating indirectly on the grounds of ethnicity. For example "no Afghan citizens" is, objectively, based purely on nationality but is clearly indirectly discriminatory against people of Afghan ethnicity ("indirect discrimination shall be taken to occur where an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons of a racial or ethnic origin at a particular disadvantage compared with other persons, unless that provision, criterion or practice is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary"). In Bilka-Kaufhaus GmbH v Weber von Hartz, the European Court of Justice held that the measures taken by the employer: - Must correspond to a real need on the part of the employer. - Must be appropriate with a view to achieving the objectives pursued. - Must be necessary to that end.
So a blanket ban based on nationality, without reference to right to work, is unlawful indirect discrimination
Yes yes I do understand employment law. The key phrase is "each having a right to work there". UK citizens no longer have an automatic right to work in EU countries. Someone applying for a logistics job in the UK from Germany would not be allowed in on our new points system. It cannot be illegal discrimination to refuse that person a job they cannot legally do. I have had to ask non-UK candidates that they have the right to work in the UK before Brexit - if they didn't then that would have been that.
Very revealing of some people's attitude....a person of a certain skin colour must have a certain opinion on particular issues because of their skin colour, they either just can't say it, they are lying or worst they are an Uncle Tom.
It could well have you going back to read the statement he released after the police killing of George Floyd and how far out of the way it went to empathize with law enforcement who “train so diligently to understand how, when and where to use force.” Those words, typical Woods, seemed so cautious and even cowardly then – especially when compared to the more assertive tone struck by Michael Jordan, the greatest political fence sitter of all time until last summer. But after watching the doc you appreciate the statement for what it is – the words of a man who is just trying to survive another day in America. Sounds mighty black to me.
Maybe like Billy Vunipola he isn't exactly on board with all of the BLM movement demands and prefers to be diplomatic / doesn't believe some of the demonstrable false claims in terms of how likely an unarmed black man will get gunned down by the police.
When my (black) wife worked in Hollywood when the OJ trial was going on, she mentioned to her co-workers that she thought OJ was guilty. One of them said "I always knew X wasn't Black"
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
and up to 80% of Repubs believe him!
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
Nobody denies Trump is a talented snake oil salesman. But to what effect? If he actually wants to preserve and extend his legacy, he's best ensuring Republicans control the Senate. Now they don't. He still has a load of people who will lick up anything he pukes out, but his political leverage is over people who aren't actually in power at the national level.
Oh, Trump can easily sway this result in Georgia to say that he was right and that the Republicans need to ignore the RINOs and listen to him. His arguments will be why the Republicans lost:
- McConnell opposed the $2K handout - he should have listened to me; - Kemp and the SoS has allowed the Democrats to steal the election by agreeing to Stacey Abrams' demands (more on that below); - The SoS released the tapes, allowing the media to run with the story about Trump pressuring Georgia; - Georgia has allowed voting fraud to run rampant; - If it wasn't for me campaigning, the margin of error would have been worse;
He will also use the results breakdown to push his arguments on fraud and that Republican legislatures should be doing more to limit mail-in ballots. NYT has the early vote essentially tied, the Republicans winning the election day ballots by 26/27% but the Democrats winning mail-in ballots by 34/35%..
Funnily enough, on this, he might get an ally in McConnell. If McConnell plans to stay around being leader and wants to win back the Senate in 2022, he might be more supportive to calls to limit mail-in ballots by state legislatures (which I'd expect to happen).
Sure, Trump can no doubt spin it - as I say, fantasticc snake oil salesman. But the point is the MUCH better outcome for him would be for Republicans to retain control of the Senare.
Trump has great leverage within the GOP. But that's no good in terms of keeping the flame of Trumpism alive if they aren't in power anywhere. Losing the Senate means Republicans are purely reactive to someone else's agenda or two years at least. Perhaps that will change in 2022 - but not necessarily, and Trump is an old man who will be older still, he has a lot of legal issues, and the world does move on so he won't be quite as powerful as he is now.
He's maintained his leverage... but over what exactly?
Well, it's easy to write off the Republicans after this result and say, at face value, the Democrats have the trifecta of the Presidency and Congress. But the Republicans still control the majority of state legislatures, which gives them the upper hand in redistricting in 2021, and the Democrats' grip on all three levers is weak - a limited majority in the House, a split Senate and a Presidency where there will be continued questioning on the vote.
As for Trump, while it will be spun as a blow for him, within Republican circles, it's more likely to be seen as fuelling calls for McConnell to quit. There are plenty of Senators like Hawley, Cruz and Cotton who are positioning themselves for 2024 (or 2028, if Trump goes for the nomination again and they decide to be his wing-man, given Pence is unlikely to get that role). It's an easy line to take that McConnell cocked up by not backing the £2K proposal and the three quarters of Republican voters who think the election was stolen not need much persuading in believing the narrative that he has been complicit in allowing the election to be stolen.
Needless to say we don't see eye-to-eye on Europe. I suspect that would have let him down, as it did for Ken Clarke.
Yep I agree with this. I think he was utterly wrong on Europe and I think that would have killed any chance he had of being PM even had he kept his seat. But he has been right on many other things not least his calls for us to welcome Hong Kong residents we abandoned after the handover in 1999. This is a great wrong I hope we are now righting.
Agreed. What was different about him is that he had little time for the pomposity of Heseltine and Heath either, and was clearly patriotic - believing Britain's interests could best be asserted via the EU.
I didn't agree with him on that, but I respect anyone (of whatever view) who has moral and political courage.
He had it. In spades.
And quite a good sense of humour. His time at the BBC wasn't great, though.
Gifted. But did seem to look down on those who did not appreciate those gifts as much as he did.
The inability to even start vaccinating until next week is absolutely unforgivable.
I think the issue in the countries that are in this position, is that they saw the vaccination as just another vaccination, at the fundamental organisational level. Normal process, important, but no rush.
The inability to even start vaccinating until next week is absolutely unforgivable.
Some of the quotes from Dutch politicians are identical to those from French pols. And quite mind-boggling
‘It doesn’t matter if you start vaccinating earlier on some symbolic date’
‘Vaccinating everyone is a marathon, not a sprint’
No mate, it is a sprint. It is now, literally, a race against the virus. Injection v infection.
It's as if there were three fully-laden jumbo jets hitting the deck every single day and government ministers were saying "Maybe we ought to look into this. Are you busy next week?"
Couple of questions about the vaccination. Will those vaccinated have some sort of certificate to say that the =vaccination has taken place? I can't imagine rocking up to a, for example, Thai airport and them happily accepting my word that I've been 'done'. and Has the Govt. done another U turn. It was reported the morning that pharmacies wouldn't be involved, but I'm sure I've seen somewhere, from later today, that they will?
The inability to even start vaccinating until next week is absolutely unforgivable.
I predict that the more Brexity end of the market is going to continue obsessing about what’s going on in the EU for a very, very long time.
Well, for the last four and a half years, we've had folks ramming down our throats just how wonderful the EU is - and how we are seven shades of shite in comparison. Excuse us if on the first major test of that assumption, some of us have a head-at-an-angle "Really?"....
A former Goldman Sachs banker will this week be installed by Boris Johnson as the next BBC chairman amid a deepening debate about the fate of the television licence fee and unprecedented competition from commercial rivals.
Sky News has learnt that the government is preparing to announce the appointment of Richard Sharp as Sir David Clementi's successor as soon as Thursday.
Mr Sharp, who during his long career at Goldman was once Rishi Sunak's boss, has spent much of the past year as an unpaid adviser to the chancellor on the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic...
Mr Sharp was an adviser to the PM during the latter's time as mayor of London, and has historically been a donor to the Conservative Party, although one ally of the new BBC chair said he had given just £2,500 to it in the last decade.
The Guardian are going to have fits....and again it looks like jobs for your mates.
There's an incredibly casual, almost careless - in fact, almost proud - quality to the govrnment's cronyism. And again, it does have to be said that the current western government that most reminds of, is Trump's ; in a politer and subtler English version.
They've given up on the subtlety now. It's blatant cronyism. They may as well tear up the Nolan Principles for Public Life and put them in the bin.
A Georgia exit poll by CNN showed that 3 in 4 GOP voters believe the presidential was rigged against Trump. And that's a poll, presumably, of voters who showed up for the run-offs. The percentage among those repubs who didn't is probably higher.
Given the vote suppressing implications of that attitude, a civil war in the party, and add in up to 20 million brand new citizens and the chances of the repubs winning anything in, ever, that's in any way meaningful are remote. In 2022 or 3022.
One of the amusing things is how the media are now latching on to so called moderate slightly pink dem senators, presumably not to frighten the investment horses...??
Senator no-mark, of no-marksburg, now a crucial power broker, blah blah blah. Thompson et al and the other Boris rampers on here swallowing it whole of course.
Who single-handedly created that 'vote-suppressing attitude' amongst Republicans, and thus deliberately threw away Republican control of the Senate just to spite McConnell for not helping him steal the Presidency?
Was it Trump? Yep, it was Trump all right.
and up to 80% of Repubs believe him!
What a genius! Has anybody been able to sway republican hearts and minds like this in the past!
Nobody denies Trump is a talented snake oil salesman. But to what effect? If he actually wants to preserve and extend his legacy, he's best ensuring Republicans control the Senate. Now they don't. He still has a load of people who will lick up anything he pukes out, but his political leverage is over people who aren't actually in power at the national level.
Oh, Trump can easily sway this result in Georgia to say that he was right and that the Republicans need to ignore the RINOs and listen to him. His arguments will be why the Republicans lost:
- McConnell opposed the $2K handout - he should have listened to me; - Kemp and the SoS has allowed the Democrats to steal the election by agreeing to Stacey Abrams' demands (more on that below); - The SoS released the tapes, allowing the media to run with the story about Trump pressuring Georgia; - Georgia has allowed voting fraud to run rampant; - If it wasn't for me campaigning, the margin of error would have been worse;
He will also use the results breakdown to push his arguments on fraud and that Republican legislatures should be doing more to limit mail-in ballots. NYT has the early vote essentially tied, the Republicans winning the election day ballots by 26/27% but the Democrats winning mail-in ballots by 34/35%..
Funnily enough, on this, he might get an ally in McConnell. If McConnell plans to stay around being leader and wants to win back the Senate in 2022, he might be more supportive to calls to limit mail-in ballots by state legislatures (which I'd expect to happen).
Sure, Trump can no doubt spin it - as I say, fantasticc snake oil salesman. But the point is the MUCH better outcome for him would be for Republicans to retain control of the Senare.
Trump has great leverage within the GOP. But that's no good in terms of keeping the flame of Trumpism alive if they aren't in power anywhere. Losing the Senate means Republicans are purely reactive to someone else's agenda or two years at least. Perhaps that will change in 2022 - but not necessarily, and Trump is an old man who will be older still, he has a lot of legal issues, and the world does move on so he won't be quite as powerful as he is now.
He's maintained his leverage... but over what exactly?
Well, it's easy to write off the Republicans after this result and say, at face value, the Democrats have the trifecta of the Presidency and Congress. But the Republicans still control the majority of state legislatures, which gives them the upper hand in redistricting in 2021, and the Democrats' grip on all three levers is weak - a limited majority in the House, a split Senate and a Presidency where there will be continued questioning on the vote.
As for Trump, while it will be spun as a blow for him, within Republican circles, it's more likely to be seen as fuelling calls for McConnell to quit. There are plenty of Senators like Hawley, Cruz and Cotton who are positioning themselves for 2024 (or 2028, if Trump goes for the nomination again and they decide to be his wing-man, given Pence is unlikely to get that role). It's an easy line to take that McConnell cocked up by not backing the £2K proposal and the three quarters of Republican voters who think the election was stolen not need much persuading in believing the narrative that he has been complicit in allowing the election to be stolen.
Does anyone actually want McConnell's job though?
Group leader is a poisoned chalice if you've Presidential ambitions. It's powerful, but it's all about deal-making and disappointing people - you have to be flexible and thick skinned. If an ideologue fancies it, then bloody good luck to them brow-beating Collins, Murkowski, Romney etc. Biden has a lot to offer to a GOP Senator who wants infrastructure work in their state, or their name on legislation - what has the Senate Minority Leader got?
So again, what is the plan for Trump? Install a loyalist as Group leader to be ritually humiliated by swing Republicans? What's the point?
Even many Trump loyalist Republicans have to be thinking now "what if he dies? What if his legal problems worsen?" Spin only gets Trump so far with this - if he's serious on maintaining influence, he needs to think about what he's influencing and to what end.
So does the GOP fall into civil war or does it reorganise and retake the House in 2022 ?
The GOP have got themselves into a dire position. Many of them know that the Trump core are batshit crazy / QAnon types but there are too many of them to ignore so they keep quiet because they are scared of them.
I don't see an easy path for any moderately sane Republican to win a GOP Primary. That's why we still have 10 GOP Senators about to humiliate themselves by still pretending Trump won the election.
IDK, parties nearly always pick a moderate against an incumbent, not least because if the governing side isn't contested then politics enthusiasts vote in the opposition race, especially where there are open primaries. It's not clear that Trump will be willing and able to run, and if he's not then it's not clear that anybody similar can pull off what he did.
In some cases you may be correct but I believe the GOP will be dancing to Trump's tune for the next 4 years.
Trump is a malign, vindictive and bullying individual who will take great pleasure in trying to destroy any Republican who has displeased him. The right really have taken the US into a very dark place and now the genii is out of the bottle it's not going to be easy to put it back.
I totally share your opinion on the damage done but I do not think Trump & Clan will be the ongoing political force that many fear (or hope if they're on the dark side). Soon he will out of the White House. He'll be an impeached and disgraced one term ex-president with big legal and money troubles who managed the remarkable negative feat of failing to win a 2nd term after just 4 years of his party in power and while he's at it losing both houses of Congress to the hated other.
From 20 Jan his world will shrink beyond recognition. The difference between being the American president and not being the American president is almost as stark as that between being dead or alive. He'll lose all the trappings of that great office - the most important of which was to have his bullshit piped into people's heads 24/7. Supporters will drift away, not to be replaced by new ones. It will be one way traffic. Drip drip drip until what's left is something not to be taken seriously. He might even realize this himself before too long and concentrate just on cashflow and staying out of jail. Perhaps a deal? Not sure on that one. We'll see.
But Donald Trump the fearsome politician is over. No doubt there will be other grisly characters (the lizard Ted Cruz?) who will battle to own the MAGA space in the GOP, and one will prevail and be a live contender for the 24 nomination, but that person will not be called Trump and they won't be able to recreate what he did in 15/16 because that stunning achievement owed so much to his personal brand and persona. So they won't win the nomination. The Republican Party might look beyond the pale now but my money is on them detoxifying. Looking forward to the opening of the WH24 betting.
I think even if Trump and Trump Jnr do not run in 2024 one of Pence or Cruz will be the GOP nominee, the GOP base are not going to pick an establishment and moderate 'RINO' as their nominee anytime soon
Trump is a cult.* His support will wane now but it won't readily transfer anywhere and certainly not to traditional Republicans. The GoP has a massive problem, very much of its own creation. It will do well to avoid a long period in the wilderness.
* For the avoidance of doubt this is not a typo.
It should be noted that the last time a party lost the White House after only 1 term, when Carter lost in 1980, it took the Democrats 12 years until Bill Clinton in 1992 before they won the White House again.
Which is not encouraging for the GOP, at least at the Presidential level
Slightly different scenario - Reagan had a solid election win, Carter's term in office wasn't great and the Democrats generally were still hamstrung somewhat by the legacy of the late 60s / early 70s where they were seen as very left-wing.
In some ways, the Republicans have things to be positive about. The Hispanic vote (which is the fastest growing demographic) has shown signs of a big shift, and to a lesser degree young Black males. College graduates are set to flatline and the crisis will probably exacerbate that, so that should help. And the Democrats have big splits which, in some ways, this result may deepen - JB can no longer hide behind the excuse he doesn't control the Senate.
A former Goldman Sachs banker will this week be installed by Boris Johnson as the next BBC chairman amid a deepening debate about the fate of the television licence fee and unprecedented competition from commercial rivals.
Sky News has learnt that the government is preparing to announce the appointment of Richard Sharp as Sir David Clementi's successor as soon as Thursday.
Mr Sharp, who during his long career at Goldman was once Rishi Sunak's boss, has spent much of the past year as an unpaid adviser to the chancellor on the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic...
Mr Sharp was an adviser to the PM during the latter's time as mayor of London, and has historically been a donor to the Conservative Party, although one ally of the new BBC chair said he had given just £2,500 to it in the last decade.
The Guardian are going to have fits....and again it looks like jobs for your mates.
There's an incredibly casual, almost careless - in fact, almost proud - quality to the govrnment's cronyism. And again, it does have to be said that the current western government that most reminds of, is Trump's ; in a politer and subtler English version.
They've given up on the subtlety now. It's blatant cronyism. They may as well tear up the Nolan Principles for Public Life and put them in the bin.
Just an anecdote about the vaccine roll out. My Grandmother was told before Christmas that she was eligible for the vaccine and should phone her local hospital to arrange an appointment. Despite phoning multiple times a day she has never been able to get through on the phone. All she gets is a recorded message saying that phone lines are busy.
I wouldn't want to extrapolate anything from this but I suspect that there will be a lot of bottlenecks in the roll out that has nothing to do with the amount of vaccine doses in existence. In my Gran's case it seems to be the administrative capacity of the local hospital. It seems counterproductive to me that everyone in her area of Cambridgeshire has to go through one obviously overstretched hospital to arrange an appointment for the vaccine.
Which shows different approaches - my GP has been sending to texts/letters naming a specific 15 minute "slot" on a specific day for your jab. Proceeding down the list in order of age, I believe. Whole of January booked.
My Dad very efficiently got his 2nd jab this week. Exactly as planned. So there seems to be massive variation
Very, very patchy round here. One or two people I know have had appointments at a hospital 30 miles away and one at one 10 miles away. Anything reasonably local ..... at least two weeks.
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jan/06/two-more-manchester-city-players-and-one-staff-member-positive-for-covid
The EPL must be reaching herd immunity by now....
- McConnell opposed the $2K handout - he should have listened to me;
- Kemp and the SoS has allowed the Democrats to steal the election by agreeing to Stacey Abrams' demands (more on that below);
- The SoS released the tapes, allowing the media to run with the story about Trump pressuring Georgia;
- Georgia has allowed voting fraud to run rampant;
- If it wasn't for me campaigning, the margin of error would have been worse;
He will also use the results breakdown to push his arguments on fraud and that Republican legislatures should be doing more to limit mail-in ballots. NYT has the early vote essentially tied, the Republicans winning the election day ballots by 26/27% but the Democrats winning mail-in ballots by 34/35%..
Funnily enough, on this, he might get an ally in McConnell. If McConnell plans to stay around being leader and wants to win back the Senate in 2022, he might be more supportive to calls to limit mail-in ballots by state legislatures (which I'd expect to happen).
I though it was established yesterday that was a myth.
As for the 19m doses, they aren't available until they're available to use.
As far as I can understand it, supply and not administration of the shots is the limiting factor.
It could well have you going back to read the statement he released after the police killing of George Floyd and how far out of the way it went to empathize with law enforcement who “train so diligently to understand how, when and where to use force.” Those words, typical Woods, seemed so cautious and even cowardly then – especially when compared to the more assertive tone struck by Michael Jordan, the greatest political fence sitter of all time until last summer. But after watching the doc you appreciate the statement for what it is – the words of a man who is just trying to survive another day in America. Sounds mighty black to me.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jan/06/tiger-woods-hbo-documentary-golf
Maybe like Billy Vunipola he isn't exactly on board with all of the BLM movement demands and prefers to be diplomatic / doesn't believe some of the demonstrable false claims in terms of how likely an unarmed black man will get gunned down by the police.
From 20 Jan his world will shrink beyond recognition. The difference between being the American president and not being the American president is almost as stark as that between being dead or alive. He'll lose all the trappings of that great office - the most important of which was to have his bullshit piped into people's heads 24/7. Supporters will drift away, not to be replaced by new ones. It will be one way traffic. Drip drip drip until what's left is something not to be taken seriously. He might even realize this himself before too long and concentrate just on cashflow and staying out of jail. Perhaps a deal? Not sure on that one. We'll see.
But Donald Trump the fearsome politician is over. No doubt there will be other grisly characters (the lizard Ted Cruz?) who will battle to own the MAGA space in the GOP, and one will prevail and be a live contender for the 24 nomination, but that person will not be called Trump and they won't be able to recreate what he did in 15/16 because that stunning achievement owed so much to his personal brand and persona. So they won't win the nomination. The Republican Party might look beyond the pale now but my money is on them detoxifying. Looking forward to the opening of the WH24 betting.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-04/u-k-grants-hongkongers-five-passports-a-minute-as-exodus-looms
The absolutely right decision.
The recent attempts by some to absolve it of any blame were reaching a whole new level in sycophancy.
Very doable, just needs a bit of imagination.
Trump has great leverage within the GOP. But that's no good in terms of keeping the flame of Trumpism alive if they aren't in power anywhere. Losing the Senate means Republicans are purely reactive to someone else's agenda or two years at least. Perhaps that will change in 2022 - but not necessarily, and Trump is an old man who will be older still, he has a lot of legal issues, and the world does move on so he won't be quite as powerful as he is now.
He's maintained his leverage... but over what exactly?
Don't have any of those.
Without thinking it through in great detail - the number vaccinated looks like the right metric. I suppose if the govt messed up the prioritization in its haste to vaccinate everyone, then that might be an adverse consequence.
By contrast - the testing target of 100k/day was not the right metric. We prioritized doing lots of tests (or worse posting them to people!) vs. getting quick results, getting people to act on results, getting people to isolate etc.
Mathieu van der Poel is a good bet for the road race gold, I reckon. It's his sort of course and he'll have a mega strong Dutch team working for him.
As TalkRadio have found there are lots of views to be had there, in fact there are random "personalities" that cover current affairs that often get larger audience figures than the likes of Sky News. There are bugger all views in being Channel 4958 on Sky, unless you are a "speciality" channel for the mature audience, and even then hasn't all that stuff now gone to the internet?
It is unlawful to disciminate against people purely on the grounds of nationality. You are right that you can discriminate on the grounds of right to work (i.e. work permits) but you can't discriminate on the grounds of national origin if someone has a work permit - that would be indirect race discrimination. So if a Pakistani, British and Irish Citizen apply for a job in Ireland, each having a right to work there, but the first two are rejected on the grounds of citizenship then they both have a case under the Irish Equal Status Acts 2000-2018.
Article 13 of the Directive reads as follows -
(13) To this end, any direct or indirect discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin as regards the areas covered by this Directive should be prohibited throughout the Community. This prohibition of discrimination should also apply to nationals of third countries, but does not cover differences of treatment based on nationality and is without prejudice to provisions governing the entry and residence of third-country nationals and their access to employment and to occupation.
The sentence "based on nationality" is a bit of a red herring as if someone is lawfully able to work in a country then they are covered by the "third country" bit and it has been repeatedly proved impossible to discriminate on the grounds of nationality without discriminating indirectly on the grounds of ethnicity. For example "no Afghan citizens" is, objectively, based purely on nationality but is clearly indirectly discriminatory against people of Afghan ethnicity ("indirect discrimination shall be taken to occur where an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons of a racial or ethnic origin at a particular disadvantage compared with other persons, unless that provision, criterion or practice is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary"). In Bilka-Kaufhaus GmbH v Weber von Hartz, the European Court of Justice held that the measures taken by the employer:
- Must correspond to a real need on the part of the employer.
- Must be appropriate with a view to achieving the objectives pursued.
- Must be necessary to that end.
So a blanket ban based on nationality, without reference to right to work, is unlawful indirect discrimination
But the Senate uniquely can stallwall judicial appointments etc. It is far more critical.
Sky News has learnt that the government is preparing to announce the appointment of Richard Sharp as Sir David Clementi's successor as soon as Thursday.
Mr Sharp, who during his long career at Goldman was once Rishi Sunak's boss, has spent much of the past year as an unpaid adviser to the chancellor on the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic...
Mr Sharp was an adviser to the PM during the latter's time as mayor of London, and has historically been a donor to the Conservative Party, although one ally of the new BBC chair said he had given just £2,500 to it in the last decade.
https://news.sky.com/story/ministers-to-unveil-former-goldman-banker-sharp-as-new-bbc-chair-12180454
The Guardian are going to have fits....and again it looks like jobs for your mates.
As for Trump, while it will be spun as a blow for him, within Republican circles, it's more likely to be seen as fuelling calls for McConnell to quit. There are plenty of Senators like Hawley, Cruz and Cotton who are positioning themselves for 2024 (or 2028, if Trump goes for the nomination again and they decide to be his wing-man, given Pence is unlikely to get that role). It's an easy line to take that McConnell cocked up by not backing the £2K proposal and the three quarters of Republican voters who think the election was stolen not need much persuading in believing the narrative that he has been complicit in allowing the election to be stolen.
Apparently this was a bit of shock to some in the system.
{Sackler family has entered the chat}
It also wouldn't be a misrepresentation. A UK citizen typically doesn't now have a pre-existing right to work in the EU. IANAE, but I very much doubt that there is an obligation on EU employers to accept applications from third-country nationals for whom they'd have to apply for a work permit, and clearly it's a hassle which they wouldn't want to bother with unless they had no choice.
* For the avoidance of doubt this is not a typo.
Trouble is, that's not an easily obtainable number, and of course targets do need to be measurable.
Which is not encouraging for the GOP, at least at the Presidential level
https://twitter.com/duncanrobinson/status/1346767012924678144?s=21
https://twitter.com/acatherwoodnews/status/1337668744634650624?s=21
It would give time for people to find alternatives as the tariffs ramped up over the years.
‘It doesn’t matter if you start vaccinating earlier on some symbolic date’
‘Vaccinating everyone is a marathon, not a sprint’
No mate, it is a sprint. It is now, literally, a race against the virus. Injection v infection.
Incidentally, whoever wrote the article, which includes the statement that the Dutch are noted as a world leader in complex projects clearly hasn't studied the North/South line in the Amsterdam Metro, which is a parody of a badly-managed project.
The Democrats have two years potentially to get partisan stuff done, so long as it can get past Manchin so nothing AOC related. A new Voting Rights Act should be top of the agenda along with Statehood.
Will those vaccinated have some sort of certificate to say that the =vaccination has taken place? I can't imagine rocking up to a, for example, Thai airport and them happily accepting my word that I've been 'done'.
and
Has the Govt. done another U turn. It was reported the morning that pharmacies wouldn't be involved, but I'm sure I've seen somewhere, from later today, that they will?
He will not be happy with the Donald, I wouldn't imagine.
Group leader is a poisoned chalice if you've Presidential ambitions. It's powerful, but it's all about deal-making and disappointing people - you have to be flexible and thick skinned. If an ideologue fancies it, then bloody good luck to them brow-beating Collins, Murkowski, Romney etc. Biden has a lot to offer to a GOP Senator who wants infrastructure work in their state, or their name on legislation - what has the Senate Minority Leader got?
So again, what is the plan for Trump? Install a loyalist as Group leader to be ritually humiliated by swing Republicans? What's the point?
Even many Trump loyalist Republicans have to be thinking now "what if he dies? What if his legal problems worsen?" Spin only gets Trump so far with this - if he's serious on maintaining influence, he needs to think about what he's influencing and to what end.
In some ways, the Republicans have things to be positive about. The Hispanic vote (which is the fastest growing demographic) has shown signs of a big shift, and to a lesser degree young Black males. College graduates are set to flatline and the crisis will probably exacerbate that, so that should help. And the Democrats have big splits which, in some ways, this result may deepen - JB can no longer hide behind the excuse he doesn't control the Senate.