A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
Shorter terms means an earlier appointment with their voters?
A factor but more to do with partisanship within a district likely to be much stronger than within a state. Getting rid of primaries would improve things dramatically. Hopefully they don't ever take off here.
Merely having to persuade a tiny handful of usually elderly local party activists before you get handed a job foir life is hardly better, though. Indeed it is worse. The one time a primary system was used to select a candidate, it did at least deliver someone with some independence and thoughtfulness.
I thought so once. The lessons of the last few years have completely changed my mind, primaries in small constituencies combined with social media create a very high risk of extremism that outweighs any theoretical democratic advantage from them.
Staff at Fullwell Cross Medical Centre in North London are working 14-hour days three days a week giving Covid-19 vaccinations, according to GP Dr Anil Mehta.
They deliver about 975 vaccinations in that time until the batch is gone and they wait for the next week's delivery. "This is the biggest piece of work we've done in our medical lives," he tells the BBC.
We need to be getting this up to 7 days a week, more than 14hrs a day.
Yep. If there’s one box of vaccines per day, in every Parliamentary constituency, that’s 5m a week - everyone done twice by June. That should be the target, glad to see today’s briefing is including the military commander in charge of logistics.
Agree. Not a political point as quite frankly this isn't really at Boris's level, but noticed both last night and this morning a TV GP having a rant about not having a sniff of any vaccine in her part of the world and none of her patients having been vaccinated. This chimes with my experience. As reported here previously my Dad is 94 and not heard a thing and that appears to be the case with others in his area in this age group. I was reluctant to chase because you don't want to waste time, but was concerned. Nothing has been scheduled for anyone.
Hopefully the logistics will get sorted quickly, or is it a case of supply?
Trump takes his share of the blame, but Im afraid it takes two to tango. The Dems have been quite happy to up the heat when it suited, stand back when the mob was their mob and match Trump spin for spin.
Me: "Hampstead please."
Unusually Articulate Taxi Driver: "Sure, Guv. Hop in."
Brum brum. Brum brum.
UATD: "See that shit going down over in the States?"
Me: "Yeah. Unbelievable. Trump is a fucking menace."
UATD: "Not the point."
Me: "No?"
UATD: "No. The way I see it is that the Democrats in recent times have become infatuated with a radical woke agenda, critical race theory, white privilege, all the rest of it, which has made millions of essentially ordinary decent Americans feel like despised strangers in their own country."
Me: "Jeez. What a counterproductive approach by the Democrats."
UATD: "Yup. So now the payback. It was always coming. Rather than empathizing with issues important to these people this aggressive style of politics from the Left has radicalized them.
Me: "Ok but surely -"
UATD: "Shut up mate, let me finish. Radicalized them. Until now this. Banging on about Donald Trump misses the point. The point is, if you keep telling people they are racist lowlife scum the more spunky of them will at some point snap and kick back. Sadly."
Me: "I see. Thanks. Food for thought at the very least. Right, this is me!"
Well, at least we can be sure you're not SeanT. Otherwise UATD would stand for 'Unnamed Albanian Tax Driver.'
Sean T? Before my time but I've heard. As if!
No Albanians involved. Nothing so exotic. From what I could see from the back seat it was a stoutish chap in late middle age with a knowledgeable manner and a rosy hue. Possibly Irish? Not sure. I'm not good on accents.
Fake news sells because it is personalised and more exciting and interesting than real news. People can live years and decades in a fake news bubble and may actually be happier than those of whose who put up with the real thing as the world becomes more orderly and clearer to them. If only their enemies could be defeated we would be living in heaven - it is not that different to fundamentalist religions.
Just like extreme religions, it must be tackled, I don't have the answers but former insiders suggest taxing the data it relies on heavily is part of the solution.
Years of crying wolf don't help.
Crying wolf or telling the truth that there was indeed a winter emergency most years, albeit one that by its very nature was time-limited?
What is most frightening about this whole slide into proto-fascism is that the checks and balances of the US, and the commitment to democracy and the rule of law, which we all thought were amongst the strongest in the world, have proved to be barely adequate. If, ten years ago, someone had told me that these events were going to happen in 2020/2021, I would have thought they were bonkers. That the US has ended up with president who is a cross between an authoritarian dictator and a particularly badly-behaved toddler is just about understandable, in the sense that it is just one individual. What is completely unnerving is the way in which such a large number of elected congressmen and officials have joined in with the toddler to try to make him the dictator he'd clearly like to be. It is just gobsmacking, totally beyond the bounds of the comprehensible.
The entire concept of leasehold should be phased out. Introduce a right to buy for leaseholds, at a reasaonable low level.
The issue with that is any property not on the ground. If a freehold overhangs or underlies another freehold then there is no right, without an overarching title, to effect any repairs or guarantee support of the structure. If the structure collapses then the feeeholder literally owns a slice of air. At least with leasehold the landlord can be held responsible.
Staff at Fullwell Cross Medical Centre in North London are working 14-hour days three days a week giving Covid-19 vaccinations, according to GP Dr Anil Mehta.
They deliver about 975 vaccinations in that time until the batch is gone and they wait for the next week's delivery. "This is the biggest piece of work we've done in our medical lives," he tells the BBC.
We need to be getting this up to 7 days a week, more than 14hrs a day.
Yep. If there’s one box of vaccines per day, in every Parliamentary constituency, that’s 5m a week - everyone done twice by June. That should be the target, glad to see today’s briefing is including the military commander in charge of logistics.
Agree. Not a political point as quite frankly this isn't really at Boris's level, but noticed both last night and this morning a TV GP having a rant about not having a sniff of any vaccine in her part of the world and none of her patients having been vaccinated. This chimes with my experience. As reported here previously my Dad is 94 and not heard a thing and that appears to be the case with others in his area in this age group. I was reluctant to chase because you don't want to waste time, but was concerned. Nothing has been scheduled for anyone.
Hopefully the logistics will get sorted quickly, or is it a case of supply?
My mother, in a block of flats of the elderly, is in the same position.
I think its geography. Looking up the Kent distribution arrangements, they are managing it from locations in a limited number of towns - Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone are the nearest to her - and I reckon these are starting with their own more local patients first. Whether the intention is for these same centres to then call in people over a wider area, or whether additional more local centres will be set up (which will be much easier with the AZN) I don't know.
In fairness to Boris that sounds like a backhanded compliment by someone being diplomatic and not a bad one as well, after all he has actually called him mad.
Trump takes his share of the blame, but Im afraid it takes two to tango. The Dems have been quite happy to up the heat when it suited, stand back when the mob was their mob and match Trump spin for spin.
Me: "Hampstead please."
Unusually Articulate Taxi Driver: "Sure, Guv. Hop in."
Brum brum. Brum brum.
UATD: "See that shit going down over in the States?"
Me: "Yeah. Unbelievable. Trump is a fucking menace."
UATD: "Not the point."
Me: "No?"
UATD: "No. The way I see it is that the Democrats in recent times have become infatuated with a radical woke agenda, critical race theory, white privilege, all the rest of it, which has made millions of essentially ordinary decent Americans feel like despised strangers in their own country."
Me: "Jeez. What a counterproductive approach by the Democrats."
UATD: "Yup. So now the payback. It was always coming. Rather than empathizing with issues important to these people this aggressive style of politics from the Left has radicalized them.
Me: "Ok but surely -"
UATD: "Shut up mate, let me finish. Radicalized them. Until now this. Banging on about Donald Trump misses the point. The point is, if you keep telling people they are racist lowlife scum the more spunky of them will at some point snap and kick back. Sadly."
Me: "I see. Thanks. Food for thought at the very least. Right, this is me!"
He spoke good English for an Albanian.
Irish, I think. Decent enough bloke but on reflection I'm not 100% sold on the take.
The thinking behind my theory that the candidate with more personality has a big advantage that VI polls miss. Modern life is all about killer soundbites and image, and there are more people are fooled by them than bother to really think
America in 2016-2020: the Celebration of Ignorance. Sums up Trump and those who voted or him. Such a pity it was allowed to flourish by the Democrats and their Celebration of Nepotism.
I think this is an interesting argument by Sagan, but isn't really a description of what's going on.
Is the issue seriously that people were watching too much Beavis and Butthead in the 1990s? The programme was a parody, by the way, and Sagan is falling into the Bush Snr "Americans should be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons" error. An educated person patronisingly believing the plebs don't get the joke (or possibly not getting the joke themselves).
It also paints an extraordinarily distorted picture of the standard of political discourse and public understanding in the America of the past. A US where, for example, marshals had to escort little black girls to recently desegregated schools due to threat of physical violence against them. A US where Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined lives and careers, contributing to suicides of good people.
I think recent events aren't about changes that occurred that have made Americans dumber (or indeed Brits or anyone else). They simply underscore a more general truth that democracy is fragile and the veneer of civilisation is thinner than we like to believe.
Fake news sells because it is personalised and more exciting and interesting than real news. People can live years and decades in a fake news bubble and may actually be happier than those of whose who put up with the real thing as the world becomes more orderly and clearer to them. If only their enemies could be defeated we would be living in heaven - it is not that different to fundamentalist religions.
Just like extreme religions, it must be tackled, I don't have the answers but former insiders suggest taxing the data it relies on heavily is part of the solution.
Years of crying wolf don't help.
Crying wolf or telling the truth that there was indeed a winter emergency most years, albeit one that by its very nature was time-limited?
Yeah could be a bit of both really, but when its the same story, we are at breaking point, every year its harder to make the case that this time it's really serious
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
Yes. It would be ridiculous for ministers to censor themselves from expressing legitimate political opinions on the off chance that a single unconnected nutter might commit a crime. Contrast the co-ordinated national campaign run by Trump and his allies that incited an armed insurrection by thousands of his political followers against the national Congress to halt the installation of his elected opponent.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
There's a difference between criticism and incitement to violence, yes.
Telling lies about what lawyers do is just as much fake news as claiming you've won an election you've lost. The security services did not warn Patel to stop saying what she was saying because they were bothered about a bit of criticism.
Just to play devil's advocate, our population is much older today than in the past - much more low hanging fruit for something like COVID to take.
The real issue is health care capacity. That's the big problem. If the vaccines do enough to stop it being a problem then that will be that. COVID will just be another cause of death.
Betfair has now declared winners in Georgia and no overall majority in the Senate. Not paid up yet though. EDIT: Just paid me my winnings on no overall majority.
Making money off Betfair would be a lot easier if we knew when they would settle. I posted the free money Senate bets a couple of hours back on the last thread but then hesitated while working out what might stop Betfair settling, since they could already by that time have closed the markets.
Rose for London Mayor is still trading between 9 and 10. The only way a lay doesnt win is if it is delayed beyond 2021 when it will be void.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
There's a difference between criticism and incitement to violence, yes.
Your desire Philip Thompson to desperately differentiate hard right politicians in the UK from those in the US is irrational and either fundamentally stupid or disingenuous. Priti Patel uses the same techniques as Trump, but has watered them down a little to suit British hard right taste. Your pretence to dislike Trump certainly doesn't fool me, and I doubt it fools anyone else on here who have read the right wing divisive drivel that you support and write. You are the most Trumpian poster on this site by some margin.
There is something exciting about watching a bubble bursting. That half the US couldn't see the insanity the rest of the world has been seeing for at least four years until yesterday is quite biblical.
I'm still hopeful that that the 50% who can't see the insanity that's engulfed this country over the last four years will face a similar lightening bolt.
The thinking behind my theory that the candidate with more personality has a big advantage that VI polls miss. Modern life is all about killer soundbites and image, and there are more people are fooled by them than bother to really think
America in 2016-2020: the Celebration of Ignorance. Sums up Trump and those who voted or him. Such a pity it was allowed to flourish by the Democrats and their Celebration of Nepotism.
Nepotism? She was a former Secretary of State and Senator.
There's many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton but to say she got the nomination down to nepotism is a bizarre reading of the facts, even more so when you consider she won the popular vote.
Heck you can say she was eminently more qualified to be POTUS than the GOP's last bit of nepotism, back in 2000 when they picked the son of a former President.
52 arrests from yesterday. Probably the most shockingly inept policing effort I have ever seen in a developed democracy.
This is how the law falls into contempt and people have actual evidence that they are above it.
An optimistic might point out that anyone charged is a very like recipient of a pardon. Better to gather evidence for perhaps 2 weeks or so, then charge them?
Another reason to use the 25th would be to end further pardons. Trump could spend a fortnight pardoning anyone who has ever voted Republican of anything....
Hopefully the FBI will be smart enough not to charge any of the Capitol protestors until after the 20th, otherwise Trump will pardon them.
I think this is an interesting argument by Sagan, but isn't really a description of what's going on.
Is the issue seriously that people were watching too much Beavis and Butthead in the 1990s? The programme was a parody, by the way, and Sagan is falling into the Bush Snr "Americans should be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons" error. An educated person patronisingly believing the plebs don't get the joke (or possibly not getting the joke themselves).
It also paints an extraordinarily distorted picture of the standard of political discourse and public understanding in the America of the past. A US where, for example, marshals had to escort little black girls to recently desegregated schools due to threat of physical violence against them. A US where Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined lives and careers, contributing to suicides of good people.
I think recent events aren't about changes that occurred that have made Americans dumber (or indeed Brits or anyone else). They simply underscore a more general truth that democracy is fragile and the veneer of civilisation is thinner than we like to believe.
People think of Norman Rockwell only as a painter of the anodyne. The cuddly myth of America etc.
Staff at Fullwell Cross Medical Centre in North London are working 14-hour days three days a week giving Covid-19 vaccinations, according to GP Dr Anil Mehta.
They deliver about 975 vaccinations in that time until the batch is gone and they wait for the next week's delivery. "This is the biggest piece of work we've done in our medical lives," he tells the BBC.
We need to be getting this up to 7 days a week, more than 14hrs a day.
Yep. If there’s one box of vaccines per day, in every Parliamentary constituency, that’s 5m a week - everyone done twice by June. That should be the target, glad to see today’s briefing is including the military commander in charge of logistics.
Agree. Not a political point as quite frankly this isn't really at Boris's level, but noticed both last night and this morning a TV GP having a rant about not having a sniff of any vaccine in her part of the world and none of her patients having been vaccinated. This chimes with my experience. As reported here previously my Dad is 94 and not heard a thing and that appears to be the case with others in his area in this age group. I was reluctant to chase because you don't want to waste time, but was concerned. Nothing has been scheduled for anyone.
Hopefully the logistics will get sorted quickly, or is it a case of supply?
I think the issue is supply rather than logistics at the moment, especially with the Pfizer vaccine there’s a lot of places simply unable to deal with the refrigeration requirements. There’s also been some confusion about number of vaccines produced, bottled, approved for release and delivered, the process is more complex than most journalists initially understood it to be. We should hear a lot more at tonight’s press conference.
Even on the out of date numbers from last week, some 8% of all vaccines given worldwide have been in the UK- only USA, China and Israel are ahead in raw numbers. Hopefully those numbers should be updated today, and show over 2m vaccines given.
I think this is an interesting argument by Sagan, but isn't really a description of what's going on.
Is the issue seriously that people were watching too much Beavis and Butthead in the 1990s? The programme was a parody, by the way, and Sagan is falling into the Bush Snr "Americans should be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons" error. An educated person patronisingly believing the plebs don't get the joke (or possibly not getting the joke themselves).
It also paints an extraordinarily distorted picture of the standard of political discourse and public understanding in the America of the past. A US where, for example, marshals had to escort little black girls to recently desegregated schools due to threat of physical violence against them. A US where Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined lives and careers, contributing to suicides of good people.
I think recent events aren't about changes that occurred that have made Americans dumber (or indeed Brits or anyone else). They simply underscore a more general truth that democracy is fragile and the veneer of civilisation is thinner than we like to believe.
There were Republican fans on here posting how good it was that education levels in the US were declining as it means more votes for Republicans. The glee in deliberately spreading covid at Republican events is another stark example.
Declining educational levels are definitely part of their problem, and one of the reasons this chaos is a fair bit less likely to happen here (not saying it won't, we should not be complacent, but we are better positioned).
I guess they're weighing up the pros and cons. Two weeks is at once both not very long and also a very long time. Is it worth just letting his time run out?
What can he do as an Executive Order? Would disobeying a direct order from the President (Bomb Iran?) be treason. Who else can he pardon? Who else can he sack?
What is most frightening about this whole slide into proto-fascism is that the checks and balances of the US, and the commitment to democracy and the rule of law, which we all thought were amongst the strongest in the world, have proved to be barely adequate. If, ten years ago, someone had told me that these events were going to happen in 2020/2021, I would have thought they were bonkers. That the US has ended up with president who is a cross between an authoritarian dictator and a particularly badly-behaved toddler is just about understandable, in the sense that it is just one individual. What is completely unnerving is the way in which such a large number of elected congressmen and officials have joined in with the toddler to try to make him the dictator he'd clearly like to be. It is just gobsmacking, totally beyond the bounds of the comprehensible.
Thank you.
Might I modestly remind you of these 2 articles from last March which describe the complacency which can allow the gobsmacking to occur -
The thinking behind my theory that the candidate with more personality has a big advantage that VI polls miss. Modern life is all about killer soundbites and image, and there are more people are fooled by them than bother to really think
America in 2016-2020: the Celebration of Ignorance. Sums up Trump and those who voted or him. Such a pity it was allowed to flourish by the Democrats and their Celebration of Nepotism.
Nepotism? She was a former Secretary of State and Senator.
There's many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton but to say she got the nomination down to nepotism is a bizarre reading of the facts, even more so when you consider she won the popular vote.
Heck you can say she was eminently more qualified to be POTUS than the GOP's last bit of nepotism, back in 2000 when they picked the son of a former President.
She was a shockingly bad candidate. She lost to Donald Trump. I rest my case.
The Democrats seem in thrall to family dynasties. Kennedy's, Clintons.... Not that the Republican are much better. The 2016 member of the Bush dynasty was also a shockingly bad candidate. He lost to Donald Trump.
It now looks like Pence could even be the main moderate candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination primaries, assuming Trump or Trump Jnr and Cruz are his main rivals, quite the turn of events
Pence ain’t moderate.
He is by the standards of most of the current Republican Party.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
It now looks like Pence could even be the main moderate candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination primaries, assuming Trump or Trump Jnr and Cruz are his main rivals, quite the turn of events
Pence ain’t moderate.
He is by the standards of most of the current GOP.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
Is he in charge for the next two weeks, is an interesting question.
The Democrats didn't win the a Presidential election for nearly a quarter of a century after the start of the Civil War, perhaps the GOP will be out of the White House for even longer after Trump goes.
Staff at Fullwell Cross Medical Centre in North London are working 14-hour days three days a week giving Covid-19 vaccinations, according to GP Dr Anil Mehta.
They deliver about 975 vaccinations in that time until the batch is gone and they wait for the next week's delivery. "This is the biggest piece of work we've done in our medical lives," he tells the BBC.
We need to be getting this up to 7 days a week, more than 14hrs a day.
Yep. If there’s one box of vaccines per day, in every Parliamentary constituency, that’s 5m a week - everyone done twice by June. That should be the target, glad to see today’s briefing is including the military commander in charge of logistics.
Agree. Not a political point as quite frankly this isn't really at Boris's level, but noticed both last night and this morning a TV GP having a rant about not having a sniff of any vaccine in her part of the world and none of her patients having been vaccinated. This chimes with my experience. As reported here previously my Dad is 94 and not heard a thing and that appears to be the case with others in his area in this age group. I was reluctant to chase because you don't want to waste time, but was concerned. Nothing has been scheduled for anyone.
Hopefully the logistics will get sorted quickly, or is it a case of supply?
My mother, in a block of flats of the elderly, is in the same position.
I think its geography. Looking up the Kent distribution arrangements, they are managing it from locations in a limited number of towns - Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone are the nearest to her - and I reckon these are starting with their own more local patients first. Whether the intention is for these same centres to then call in people over a wider area, or whether additional more local centres will be set up (which will be much easier with the AZN) I don't know.
My understanding (gained by informally talking to GP nurses etc) is that given the limited amount of the Pfizer vaccine available, the government took the approach of giving supplies of it to the areas where the various organisations (such as GPs) could (and would) use it. On a first come, first served basis.
What some people in the system expected was that the distribution would be carefully levelled, rather than a drive to get the vaccine out there.
Betfair has now declared winners in Georgia and no overall majority in the Senate. Not paid up yet though. EDIT: Just paid me my winnings on no overall majority.
Making money off Betfair would be a lot easier if we knew when they would settle. I posted the free money Senate bets a couple of hours back on the last thread but then hesitated while working out what might stop Betfair settling, since they could already by that time have closed the markets.
Rose for London Mayor is still trading between 9 and 10. The only way a lay doesnt win is if it is delayed beyond 2021 when it will be void.
Trump takes his share of the blame, but Im afraid it takes two to tango. The Dems have been quite happy to up the heat when it suited, stand back when the mob was their mob and match Trump spin for spin.
Me: "Hampstead please."
Unusually Articulate Taxi Driver: "Sure, Guv. Hop in."
Brum brum. Brum brum.
UATD: "See that shit going down over in the States?"
Me: "Yeah. Unbelievable. Trump is a fucking menace."
UATD: "Not the point."
Me: "No?"
UATD: "No. The way I see it is that the Democrats in recent times have become infatuated with a radical woke agenda, critical race theory, white privilege, all the rest of it, which has made millions of essentially ordinary decent Americans feel like despised strangers in their own country."
Me: "Jeez. What a counterproductive approach by the Democrats."
UATD: "Yup. So now the payback. It was always coming. Rather than empathizing with issues important to these people this aggressive style of politics from the Left has radicalized them.
Me: "Ok but surely -"
UATD: "Shut up mate, let me finish. Radicalized them. Until now this. Banging on about Donald Trump misses the point. The point is, if you keep telling people they are racist lowlife scum the more spunky of them will at some point snap and kick back. Sadly."
Me: "I see. Thanks. Food for thought at the very least. Right, this is me!"
Your learned Albanian taxi driver wouldn't be 100% wrong. There was an orgy of violent, lawless, politically-motivated destruction by the Left in the US over the summer, and it didn't take much imagination to see what a terrible precedent that set. Some of us said so at the time; others applauded the destructive mobs for their righteousness.
I think we can settle on a principled position: use violence to achieve your political goals, and you get your head cracked by the authorities and a long spell in prison, whether you're on the Right or the Left. Nice and simple.
Or alternatively you overthrow the state by force and impose your own government.
I guess they're weighing up the pros and cons. Two weeks is at once both not very long and also a very long time. Is it worth just letting his time run out?
What can he do as an Executive Order? Would disobeying a direct order from the President (Bomb Iran?) be treason. Who else can he pardon? Who else can he sack?
Didn’t Nixon get through a handful of attorneys general in as many days, as they either resigned or were fired for refusing to call off the investigation against him?
Betfair has now declared winners in Georgia and no overall majority in the Senate. Not paid up yet though. EDIT: Just paid me my winnings on no overall majority.
Making money off Betfair would be a lot easier if we knew when they would settle. I posted the free money Senate bets a couple of hours back on the last thread but then hesitated while working out what might stop Betfair settling, since they could already by that time have closed the markets.
Rose for London Mayor is still trading between 9 and 10. The only way a lay doesnt win is if it is delayed beyond 2021 when it will be void.
Yes but 1.1 for a (lay) bet that will not be settled for months is not tempting; on the eve of the election, things would look different, of course.
It now looks like Pence could even be the main moderate candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination primaries, assuming Trump or Trump Jnr and Cruz are his main rivals, quite the turn of events
Pence ain’t moderate.
He is by the standards of most of the current GOP.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
As you've been wrong on virtually everything regarding American politics, I shall give your US tips a wide berth. Here's a reminder of one of your recent gems:
The latest polling suggests the GOP will hold the Georgia Senate seats in the run off and I agree.
Biden was not elected on the back of a Democratic landslide to sweep the US to the left, he was elected purely to beat Trump and Georgia swing voters having voted Biden to beat the incumbent President will now vote GOP to ensure the woke, far left does not get too much power and the Senate stays GOP.
Hence Biden will be the first incoming President not to take office with his party in control of both chambers of Congress since Bush Snr in 1989. That would be about right, US voters want him to compromise with the GOP and to reduce the polarisation
What is most frightening about this whole slide into proto-fascism is that the checks and balances of the US, and the commitment to democracy and the rule of law, which we all thought were amongst the strongest in the world, have proved to be barely adequate. If, ten years ago, someone had told me that these events were going to happen in 2020/2021, I would have thought they were bonkers. That the US has ended up with president who is a cross between an authoritarian dictator and a particularly badly-behaved toddler is just about understandable, in the sense that it is just one individual. What is completely unnerving is the way in which such a large number of elected congressmen and officials have joined in with the toddler to try to make him the dictator he'd clearly like to be. It is just gobsmacking, totally beyond the bounds of the comprehensible.
Thank you.
Might I modestly remind you of these 2 articles from last March which describe the complacency which can allow the gobsmacking to occur -
Complacency is Trump's lifeblood, because he's a very dangerous sort of performance artist. If you continually oscillate between deniable theatre and real chaos, you move the boundaries and disorient, bit by bit and one step at a time.
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s?
Slowing down of the aging population. By then, the big wins from things like de-industrialisation are in the numbers so excess deaths suddenly increase as you begin to reach an equilibrium.
Betfair has now declared winners in Georgia and no overall majority in the Senate. Not paid up yet though. EDIT: Just paid me my winnings on no overall majority.
Making money off Betfair would be a lot easier if we knew when they would settle. I posted the free money Senate bets a couple of hours back on the last thread but then hesitated while working out what might stop Betfair settling, since they could already by that time have closed the markets.
Rose for London Mayor is still trading between 9 and 10. The only way a lay doesnt win is if it is delayed beyond 2021 when it will be void.
Yes but 1.1 for a (lay) bet that will not be settled for months is not tempting; on the eve of the election, things would look different, of course.
In a sub 1% savings interest rate environment it looks good to me!
The thinking behind my theory that the candidate with more personality has a big advantage that VI polls miss. Modern life is all about killer soundbites and image, and there are more people are fooled by them than bother to really think
America in 2016-2020: the Celebration of Ignorance. Sums up Trump and those who voted or him. Such a pity it was allowed to flourish by the Democrats and their Celebration of Nepotism.
Nepotism? She was a former Secretary of State and Senator.
There's many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton but to say she got the nomination down to nepotism is a bizarre reading of the facts, even more so when you consider she won the popular vote.
Heck you can say she was eminently more qualified to be POTUS than the GOP's last bit of nepotism, back in 2000 when they picked the son of a former President.
She was a shockingly bad candidate. She lost to Donald Trump. I rest my case.
The Democrats seem in thrall to family dynasties. Kennedy's, Clintons.... Not that the Republican are much better. The 2016 member of the Bush dynasty was also a shockingly bad candidate. He lost to Donald Trump.
His half Hispanic son though may be the next elected GOP President at this rate, probably not for at least a decade.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
Yes. It would be ridiculous for ministers to censor themselves from expressing legitimate political opinions on the off chance that a single unconnected nutter might commit a crime. Contrast the co-ordinated national campaign run by Trump and his allies that incited an armed insurrection by thousands of his political followers against the national Congress to halt the installation of his elected opponent.
Minor vs. major.
It is not ridiculous to expect Ministers to tell the truth about what lawyers do.
It is not ridiculous to expect Ministers to stop telling lies especially when specifically warned by the secret services about the risks of doing so.
It is not ridiculous to expect the Minister who is specifically entrusted with the maintenance of law and order in this country not to create a climate which leads others to try and kill those scapegoated by said Minister.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
I’m a solicitor who received some pretty alarming online abuse as a result of Patel’s “lefty lawyers” jibe (I have to commend Damian Green for responding to me personally within 5 minutes of my emailing him about it agreeing to raise it with the Home Office) because my Twitter bio mentioned the business immigration side of my practice. Despite all that it would be churlish of me not to commend Patel for saying this and hope that her future comments are less inflammatory.
I'm not surprised because this seems to be their modus operandi. Ladbrokes in my experience are much quicker and I expect others too.
You may say, well it's only a matter of hours and it's only the networks etc. but we all know now that Jon Ossoff has won by a significantly indisputable margin.
I guess they're weighing up the pros and cons. Two weeks is at once both not very long and also a very long time. Is it worth just letting his time run out?
What can he do as an Executive Order? Would disobeying a direct order from the President (Bomb Iran?) be treason. Who else can he pardon? Who else can he sack?
Didn’t Nixon get through a handful of attorneys general in as many days, as they either resigned or were fired for refusing to call off the investigation against him?
The Saturday night massacre, Nixon lost an Attorney General and a Solicitor General in an evening.
But he had four AGs in the space of two years towards the end.
It now looks like Pence could even be the main moderate candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination primaries, assuming Trump or Trump Jnr and Cruz are his main rivals, quite the turn of events
Pence ain’t moderate.
He is by the standards of most of the current GOP.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
As you've been wrong on virtually everything regarding American politics, I shall give your US tips a wide berth. Here's a reminder of one of your recent gems:
The latest polling suggests the GOP will hold the Georgia Senate seats in the run off and I agree.
Biden was not elected on the back of a Democratic landslide to sweep the US to the left, he was elected purely to beat Trump and Georgia swing voters having voted Biden to beat the incumbent President will now vote GOP to ensure the woke, far left does not get too much power and the Senate stays GOP.
Hence Biden will be the first incoming President not to take office with his party in control of both chambers of Congress since Bush Snr in 1989. That would be about right, US voters want him to compromise with the GOP and to reduce the polarisation
I said either Biden or Trump would narrowly win, in the end it was Biden narrowly but with Trump still winning Ohio and Florida, certainly not the Biden landslide some on here were forecasting.
As for Georgia that was also very close, Ossoff got 50.4% and Perdue 49.6%
It very much can. A week to ten days ago, the proportion of Daily Mail comments that the coronavirus was a plot against civil liberties, and hospitals were empty, was around the 50% mark.
You read the daily mail comments, you must really like punishing yourself.
Below the line comments everywhere should be avoided. Except here of course. I used to really w joy the novelty of commenting on Slate in the late 90s/early 00s. I briefly attempted joining the political “blogosphere” which was, predictably, a disaster. Most online discourse went to shit when FB was rolled out.
The Mail comments were far more useful in working out the referendum result, and the why and how of Brexit than almost anything else.
Only if you wanted a deluded and extreme parody of it. Explains a lot about your thinking if you think Daily Mail comments are mainstream.
Based on your stated beliefs I would have thought you would have been an avid Daily Mail reader. Perhaps it is not right wing enough for you? The Express perhaps more to your taste?
You have made it abundantly clear you don't know, understand or care what my stated beliefs are - and instead are nothing more than a pathetic vapid troll.
Pathetic? So says the person who spends all his waking hours on a political betting blog talking trite shit about things he clearly has no experience of and is unlikely to get because he spends so much time on here. I have just called you out for what you are; a purveyor of divisive crap based on either pure blind prejudice or too much reading of the Daily Express. Your stated beliefs unknown? You have stated your rather confused and downright uninformed views on so many occasions that even though I am not on here often I am aware we all have to be subjected to them.
The thinking behind my theory that the candidate with more personality has a big advantage that VI polls miss. Modern life is all about killer soundbites and image, and there are more people are fooled by them than bother to really think
America in 2016-2020: the Celebration of Ignorance. Sums up Trump and those who voted or him. Such a pity it was allowed to flourish by the Democrats and their Celebration of Nepotism.
Nepotism? She was a former Secretary of State and Senator.
There's many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton but to say she got the nomination down to nepotism is a bizarre reading of the facts, even more so when you consider she won the popular vote.
Heck you can say she was eminently more qualified to be POTUS than the GOP's last bit of nepotism, back in 2000 when they picked the son of a former President.
She was a shockingly bad candidate. She lost to Donald Trump. I rest my case.
.
Yep. She was appalling.
I have Democrat friends who preferred Donald Trump to win in 2016 than self-entitled haughty Hillary. They cite many examples but the one which really gets up their noses is that she refused to campaign in many down and out areas. Those weren't apparently her sort of people.
Everything that was so godawful about that 2010's Metropolitan Elitism. The kind which also led to Brexit.
The thinking behind my theory that the candidate with more personality has a big advantage that VI polls miss. Modern life is all about killer soundbites and image, and there are more people are fooled by them than bother to really think
America in 2016-2020: the Celebration of Ignorance. Sums up Trump and those who voted or him. Such a pity it was allowed to flourish by the Democrats and their Celebration of Nepotism.
Nepotism? She was a former Secretary of State and Senator.
There's many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton but to say she got the nomination down to nepotism is a bizarre reading of the facts, even more so when you consider she won the popular vote.
Heck you can say she was eminently more qualified to be POTUS than the GOP's last bit of nepotism, back in 2000 when they picked the son of a former President.
She was a shockingly bad candidate. She lost to Donald Trump. I rest my case.
The Democrats seem in thrall to family dynasties. Kennedy's, Clintons.... Not that the Republican are much better. The 2016 member of the Bush dynasty was also a shockingly bad candidate. He lost to Donald Trump.
But your original allegation was of nepotism, which is demonstrable bollocks, if nepotism was rampant as you allege she would have won the nomination in 2008.
Betfair has now declared winners in Georgia and no overall majority in the Senate. Not paid up yet though. EDIT: Just paid me my winnings on no overall majority.
Making money off Betfair would be a lot easier if we knew when they would settle. I posted the free money Senate bets a couple of hours back on the last thread but then hesitated while working out what might stop Betfair settling, since they could already by that time have closed the markets.
Rose for London Mayor is still trading between 9 and 10. The only way a lay doesnt win is if it is delayed beyond 2021 when it will be void.
Yes but 1.1 for a (lay) bet that will not be settled for months is not tempting; on the eve of the election, things would look different, of course.
In a sub 1% savings interest rate environment it looks good to me!
Free money but in a sub-1% environment might include laying Trump's exit date being 2025 at 150 out to 200. All the 1.01 for 2021 went ages ago.
It now looks like Pence could even be the main moderate candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination primaries, assuming Trump or Trump Jnr and Cruz are his main rivals, quite the turn of events
Pence ain’t moderate.
He is by the standards of most of the current Republican Party.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
I think it unlikely. His natural base now considers him a Judas
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s? From 2010 to about 2017 is a similar line to this year
It's excess deaths compared to the 5-yr average.
So if you have a run of good years you then create a lower baseline against which to judge future years.
You could argue that we had some better years due to New Labour's spending on the NHS, and then austerity after the Financial Crash led to a deterioration.
The Democrats didn't win the a Presidential election for nearly a quarter of a century after the start of the Civil War, perhaps the GOP will be out of the White House for even longer after Trump goes.
The Democrats did control the Senate though from 1879-1881 and the House of Representatives from 1875-1881 and 1883-1889.
Andrew Johnson was also technically a Democratic President from 1865 to 1869 even though he was originally elected with Lincoln on a National Union ticket
Betfair has now declared winners in Georgia and no overall majority in the Senate. Not paid up yet though. EDIT: Just paid me my winnings on no overall majority.
Making money off Betfair would be a lot easier if we knew when they would settle. I posted the free money Senate bets a couple of hours back on the last thread but then hesitated while working out what might stop Betfair settling, since they could already by that time have closed the markets.
Rose for London Mayor is still trading between 9 and 10. The only way a lay doesnt win is if it is delayed beyond 2021 when it will be void.
One of the best bets out there.
To those who ask why politicians fall down social media rabbit holes, Rose raised almost £1m last year, sure he will raise more this year.
To those who ask why he is so short on betfair? The most likely explanation, imo at least, is he is re-investing some of that £1m to generate publicity for 2021 fundraising by being the second favourite in the biggest UK election of 2021.
The well of columnists who wrote "Trump won't be as bad as you think/the hysterical doom mongering of the left" columns 4 years ago who are now writing "Who could have seen this coming/the signs were always there" columns today will draw deep.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
I’m a solicitor who received some pretty alarming online abuse as a result of Patel’s “lefty lawyers” jibe (I have to commend Damian Green for responding to me personally within 5 minutes of my emailing him about it agreeing to raise it with the Home Office) because my Twitter bio mentioned the business immigration side of my practice. Despite all that it would be churlish of me not to commend Patel for saying this and hope that her future comments are less inflammatory.
Certainly. She is an interesting politician because she can sometimes say interesting and unexpected things. Whether it is because she believes them or is simply cunning enough to sidestep obvious traps I don't know. But there is still a lack of self-awareness. Always easier to see the beam rather than the mote, I guess.
It now looks like Pence could even be the main moderate candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination primaries, assuming Trump or Trump Jnr and Cruz are his main rivals, quite the turn of events
Pence ain’t moderate.
He is by the standards of most of the current Republican Party.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
I think it unlikely. His natural base now considers him a Judas
Yes but many Corbynites still think Starmer is a Judas too
It now looks like Pence could even be the main moderate candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination primaries, assuming Trump or Trump Jnr and Cruz are his main rivals, quite the turn of events
Pence ain’t moderate.
He is by the standards of most of the current Republican Party.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
I think it unlikely. His natural base now considers him a Judas
Pence's base is the Evangelical Christian right, not the Trumpskyites.
The thinking behind my theory that the candidate with more personality has a big advantage that VI polls miss. Modern life is all about killer soundbites and image, and there are more people are fooled by them than bother to really think
America in 2016-2020: the Celebration of Ignorance. Sums up Trump and those who voted or him. Such a pity it was allowed to flourish by the Democrats and their Celebration of Nepotism.
Nepotism? She was a former Secretary of State and Senator.
There's many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton but to say she got the nomination down to nepotism is a bizarre reading of the facts, even more so when you consider she won the popular vote.
Heck you can say she was eminently more qualified to be POTUS than the GOP's last bit of nepotism, back in 2000 when they picked the son of a former President.
She was a shockingly bad candidate. She lost to Donald Trump. I rest my case.
.
Yep. She was appalling.
I have Democrat friends who preferred Donald Trump to win in 2016 than self-entitled haughty Hillary. They cite many examples but the one which really gets up their noses is that she refused to campaign in many down and out areas. Those weren't apparently her sort of people.
Everything that was so godawful about that 2010's Metropolitan Elitism. The kind which also led to Brexit.
Given that Biden only did slightly better, I guess that makes him just a terrible candidate rather than appalling.
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s? From 2010 to about 2017 is a similar line to this year
It's excess deaths compared to the 5-yr average.
So if you have a run of good years you then create a lower baseline against which to judge future years.
You could argue that we had some better years due to New Labour's spending on the NHS, and then austerity after the Financial Crash led to a deterioration.
I think it's simply that you eventually run out of ways to increase life expectancy at which point deaths appear to go up.
It now looks like Pence could even be the main moderate candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination primaries, assuming Trump or Trump Jnr and Cruz are his main rivals, quite the turn of events
Pence ain’t moderate.
He is by the standards of most of the current Republican Party.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
I think it unlikely. His natural base now considers him a Judas
Yes but many Corbynites still think Starmer is a Judas too
Fair point, and I guess it didn't hurt Blair too much
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s? From 2010 to about 2017 is a similar line to this year
You already posted the reason yourself: the lack of funding to the NHS by Conservative governments resulting in successive winter crises (in 2010 excess deaths were still negative, indicating an improving health system).
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s? From 2010 to about 2017 is a similar line to this year
It's excess deaths compared to the 5-yr average.
So if you have a run of good years you then create a lower baseline against which to judge future years.
You could argue that we had some better years due to New Labour's spending on the NHS, and then austerity after the Financial Crash led to a deterioration.
Just confirms that the Tories are bad for your health.
There is something exciting about watching a bubble bursting. That half the US couldn't see the insanity the rest of the world has been seeing for at least four years until yesterday is quite biblical.
I'm still hopeful that that the 50% who can't see the insanity that's engulfed this country over the last four years will face a similar lightening bolt.
The bubble hasn't burst. The problems are only just beginning. Initial polling suggests that most Republican voters believe that the election was stolen and storming of Congress was justified.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
Yes. It would be ridiculous for ministers to censor themselves from expressing legitimate political opinions on the off chance that a single unconnected nutter might commit a crime. Contrast the co-ordinated national campaign run by Trump and his allies that incited an armed insurrection by thousands of his political followers against the national Congress to halt the installation of his elected opponent.
Minor vs. major.
It is not ridiculous to expect Ministers to tell the truth about what lawyers do.
It is not ridiculous to expect Ministers to stop telling lies especially when specifically warned by the secret services about the risks of doing so.
It is not ridiculous to expect the Minister who is specifically entrusted with the maintenance of law and order in this country not to create a climate which leads others to try and kill those scapegoated by said Minister.
OK - are you going to apply this rule evenly to all sides? Will lefty politicians and activists be expressly forbidden from viciously attacking Tories, 'the rich', etc, in case someone who listens to them commits a crime? They called Boris a butcher and a murderer last year - should they face consequences for inciting violence against the Prime Minister?
I'm afraid your myopic special pleading doesn't cut much ice.
I'm not surprised because this seems to be their modus operandi. Ladbrokes in my experience are much quicker and I expect others too.
You may say, well it's only a matter of hours and it's only the networks etc. but we all know now that Jon Ossoff has won by a significantly indisputable margin.
Except Donald Trump. Obvs.
My Ossoff bets were settled an hour ago -- all the Senate bets were: Georgia run-offs (Ossoff & Warnock); numbers of seats; no overall majority. ETA that's the Exchange; perhaps Betfair Sportsbook is still waiting if that is where you bet.
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s?
Slowing down of the aging population. By then, the big wins from things like de-industrialisation are in the numbers so excess deaths suddenly increase as you begin to reach an equilibrium.
There's also the point that excess deaths (versus a 5 year average, as here) are not that good for assessing long term trends, because the baseline keeps moving (obviously). They are good for saying whether a particular year is bad compared to the recent norm.
For example, look at the patterns of the wars. First/early years have great numbers of excess deaths because they're compared to pre-war. Post-war/towards the end of war has lower than 'normal' excess deaths as they're compared to war years. 1920 was not, I expect, really a better year for deaths than 2019!
The thinking behind my theory that the candidate with more personality has a big advantage that VI polls miss. Modern life is all about killer soundbites and image, and there are more people are fooled by them than bother to really think
America in 2016-2020: the Celebration of Ignorance. Sums up Trump and those who voted or him. Such a pity it was allowed to flourish by the Democrats and their Celebration of Nepotism.
Nepotism? She was a former Secretary of State and Senator.
There's many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton but to say she got the nomination down to nepotism is a bizarre reading of the facts, even more so when you consider she won the popular vote.
Heck you can say she was eminently more qualified to be POTUS than the GOP's last bit of nepotism, back in 2000 when they picked the son of a former President.
She was a shockingly bad candidate. She lost to Donald Trump. I rest my case.
The Democrats seem in thrall to family dynasties. Kennedy's, Clintons.... Not that the Republican are much better. The 2016 member of the Bush dynasty was also a shockingly bad candidate. He lost to Donald Trump.
Family dynasties are a problem in all parties on both sides of the Atlantic. Whether you are a Kinnock, Rees Mogg, Milliband, Johnson, Hurd, Benn or Gummer, the family connection is a huge advantage.
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s? From 2010 to about 2017 is a similar line to this year
You already posted the reason yourself: the lack of funding to the NHS by Conservative governments resulting in successive winter crises.
Doubt it's that, the increase actually starts at 2004 it seems
You're misunderstanding the graph. Anything negative is indicative of improving outcomes. The rate of improvement may have slowed until about 2012, but it was only after that that outcomes started to deteriorate.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
There's a difference between criticism and incitement to violence, yes.
Your desire Philip Thompson to desperately differentiate hard right politicians in the UK from those in the US is irrational and either fundamentally stupid or disingenuous. Priti Patel uses the same techniques as Trump, but has watered them down a little to suit British hard right taste. Your pretence to dislike Trump certainly doesn't fool me, and I doubt it fools anyone else on here who have read the right wing divisive drivel that you support and write. You are the most Trumpian poster on this site by some margin.
I can think of very little that Philip Thompson has in common with Trump.
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s? From 2010 to about 2017 is a similar line to this year
You already posted the reason yourself: the lack of funding to the NHS by Conservative governments resulting in successive winter crises (in 2010 excess deaths were still negative, indicating an improving health system).
I'm not surprised because this seems to be their modus operandi. Ladbrokes in my experience are much quicker and I expect others too.
You may say, well it's only a matter of hours and it's only the networks etc. but we all know now that Jon Ossoff has won by a significantly indisputable margin.
Except Donald Trump. Obvs.
I think Betfair are slower generally because they are an exchange so immediately cop flak from those on the other side of a bet if they pay out early. They also probably take a lot more money on these sorts of markets than conventional bookies. So it's fairly understandable, if a little annoying at times.
Paddy Power and Betfair are the same company, for example. The former is known for paying out sometimes recklessly early (as a PR thing) whereas the exchange part of the latter pays out very late.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
Yes. It would be ridiculous for ministers to censor themselves from expressing legitimate political opinions on the off chance that a single unconnected nutter might commit a crime. Contrast the co-ordinated national campaign run by Trump and his allies that incited an armed insurrection by thousands of his political followers against the national Congress to halt the installation of his elected opponent.
Minor vs. major.
It is not ridiculous to expect Ministers to tell the truth about what lawyers do.
It is not ridiculous to expect Ministers to stop telling lies especially when specifically warned by the secret services about the risks of doing so.
It is not ridiculous to expect the Minister who is specifically entrusted with the maintenance of law and order in this country not to create a climate which leads others to try and kill those scapegoated by said Minister.
OK - are you going to apply this rule evenly to all sides? Will lefty politicians and activists be expressly forbidden from viciously attacking Tories, 'the rich', etc, in case someone who listens to them commits a crime? They called Boris a butcher and a murderer last year - should they face consequences for inciting violence against the Prime Minister?
I'm afraid your myopic special pleading doesn't cut much ice.
Your examples are very weak, and while reprehensible are not even close to equivalence. Priti Patel is the Home Secretary. She is a disgrace.
Staff at Fullwell Cross Medical Centre in North London are working 14-hour days three days a week giving Covid-19 vaccinations, according to GP Dr Anil Mehta.
They deliver about 975 vaccinations in that time until the batch is gone and they wait for the next week's delivery. "This is the biggest piece of work we've done in our medical lives," he tells the BBC.
We need to be getting this up to 7 days a week, more than 14hrs a day.
Yep. If there’s one box of vaccines per day, in every Parliamentary constituency, that’s 5m a week - everyone done twice by June. That should be the target, glad to see today’s briefing is including the military commander in charge of logistics.
Agree. Not a political point as quite frankly this isn't really at Boris's level, but noticed both last night and this morning a TV GP having a rant about not having a sniff of any vaccine in her part of the world and none of her patients having been vaccinated. This chimes with my experience. As reported here previously my Dad is 94 and not heard a thing and that appears to be the case with others in his area in this age group. I was reluctant to chase because you don't want to waste time, but was concerned. Nothing has been scheduled for anyone.
Hopefully the logistics will get sorted quickly, or is it a case of supply?
My mother, in a block of flats of the elderly, is in the same position.
I think its geography. Looking up the Kent distribution arrangements, they are managing it from locations in a limited number of towns - Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone are the nearest to her - and I reckon these are starting with their own more local patients first. Whether the intention is for these same centres to then call in people over a wider area, or whether additional more local centres will be set up (which will be much easier with the AZN) I don't know.
Not sure it is. I know of two GPs locally, one of whom has vaccinated elderly patients. and one of which has not.
A Cyclefree piece with which to agree wholeheartedly (minus the bathetic barb at the end - the Trump calamity illustrates just how minor the peccadilloes of Priti Patel et al. really are).
The old saw has rarely seemed more apt: that America is the only great power to have gone from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilization...
Yes. It would be ridiculous for ministers to censor themselves from expressing legitimate political opinions on the off chance that a single unconnected nutter might commit a crime. Contrast the co-ordinated national campaign run by Trump and his allies that incited an armed insurrection by thousands of his political followers against the national Congress to halt the installation of his elected opponent.
Minor vs. major.
But the point is that if we don't stamp on the minors some of them become majors. Take Donald Trump. Day 1 of his presidency. He spends it furiously pumping out absurd lies about the size of his inauguration crowd. Bit bizarre for a man in his position. But no biggie. Let's move on. Cue a non-stop stream of similar episodes and 4 years later we're in a post truth hell. I exaggerate but you get my drift.
Why are they increasing so much yearly from the early 2000s? From 2010 to about 2017 is a similar line to this year
You already posted the reason yourself: the lack of funding to the NHS by Conservative governments resulting in successive winter crises (in 2010 excess deaths were still negative, indicating an improving health system).
This massive lack of funding?
Yup. Given the increasing cost of health provision and an ageing population, that graph should be curving upwards at the end, not slightly downwards, in order to maintain the same level of provision. It should be about £180bn, rather than c. £150bn.
Comments
Hopefully the logistics will get sorted quickly, or is it a case of supply?
No Albanians involved. Nothing so exotic. From what I could see from the back seat it was a stoutish chap in late middle age with a knowledgeable manner and a rosy hue. Possibly Irish? Not sure. I'm not good on accents.
What is most frightening about this whole slide into proto-fascism is that the checks and balances of the US, and the commitment to democracy and the rule of law, which we all thought were amongst the strongest in the world, have proved to be barely adequate. If, ten years ago, someone had told me that these events were going to happen in 2020/2021, I would have thought they were bonkers. That the US has ended up with president who is a cross between an authoritarian dictator and a particularly badly-behaved toddler is just about understandable, in the sense that it is just one individual. What is completely unnerving is the way in which such a large number of elected congressmen and officials have joined in with the toddler to try to make him the dictator he'd clearly like to be. It is just gobsmacking, totally beyond the bounds of the comprehensible.
The gold standard ONS produce some excellent stuff about excess deaths
https://twitter.com/NickStripe_ONS/status/1346862701910360065
and this is one of the replies
https://twitter.com/kinglerooy/status/1346863411213307905
I think its geography. Looking up the Kent distribution arrangements, they are managing it from locations in a limited number of towns - Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone are the nearest to her - and I reckon these are starting with their own more local patients first. Whether the intention is for these same centres to then call in people over a wider area, or whether additional more local centres will be set up (which will be much easier with the AZN) I don't know.
Is the issue seriously that people were watching too much Beavis and Butthead in the 1990s? The programme was a parody, by the way, and Sagan is falling into the Bush Snr "Americans should be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons" error. An educated person patronisingly believing the plebs don't get the joke (or possibly not getting the joke themselves).
It also paints an extraordinarily distorted picture of the standard of political discourse and public understanding in the America of the past. A US where, for example, marshals had to escort little black girls to recently desegregated schools due to threat of physical violence against them. A US where Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined lives and careers, contributing to suicides of good people.
I think recent events aren't about changes that occurred that have made Americans dumber (or indeed Brits or anyone else). They simply underscore a more general truth that democracy is fragile and the veneer of civilisation is thinner than we like to believe.
Minor vs. major.
The real issue is health care capacity. That's the big problem. If the vaccines do enough to stop it being a problem then that will be that. COVID will just be another cause of death.
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1347130509466415111?s=19
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1347134411951779841?s=19
I'm still hopeful that that the 50% who can't see the insanity that's engulfed this country over the last four years will face a similar lightening bolt.
There's many reasons to criticise Hillary Clinton but to say she got the nomination down to nepotism is a bizarre reading of the facts, even more so when you consider she won the popular vote.
Heck you can say she was eminently more qualified to be POTUS than the GOP's last bit of nepotism, back in 2000 when they picked the son of a former President.
Still at least we now know what Contrarian's twitter handle is.
Just ask Benny Hill ....
Yet he painted this -
https://collection.nrm.org/#details=ecatalogue.47483
Even on the out of date numbers from last week, some 8% of all vaccines given worldwide have been in the UK- only USA, China and Israel are ahead in raw numbers. Hopefully those numbers should be updated today, and show over 2m vaccines given.
Declining educational levels are definitely part of their problem, and one of the reasons this chaos is a fair bit less likely to happen here (not saying it won't, we should not be complacent, but we are better positioned).
Who else can he pardon?
Who else can he sack?
Might I modestly remind you of these 2 articles from last March which describe the complacency which can allow the gobsmacking to occur -
1. https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/11/political-rights-and-wrongs/
and
2. https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/03/12/amber-warnings-what-might-be-the-signals-that-all-is-not-well-in-a-democracy/.
The Democrats seem in thrall to family dynasties. Kennedy's, Clintons.... Not that the Republican are much better. The 2016 member of the Bush dynasty was also a shockingly bad candidate. He lost to Donald Trump.
Mike Pence, the GOP Keir Starmer? You heard it here first
What some people in the system expected was that the distribution would be carefully levelled, rather than a drive to get the vaccine out there.
(See UK/US history books for details.)
https://twitter.com/georgepbush/status/1346920112771706881?s=20
Joe Kennedy III also still around
https://twitter.com/RepJoeKennedy/status/1346967450609451013?s=20
It is not ridiculous to expect Ministers to stop telling lies especially when specifically warned by the secret services about the risks of doing so.
It is not ridiculous to expect the Minister who is specifically entrusted with the maintenance of law and order in this country not to create a climate which leads others to try and kill those scapegoated by said Minister.
I'm not surprised because this seems to be their modus operandi. Ladbrokes in my experience are much quicker and I expect others too.
You may say, well it's only a matter of hours and it's only the networks etc. but we all know now that Jon Ossoff has won by a significantly indisputable margin.
Except Donald Trump. Obvs.
** Looks at Prediction no. 1 in 2021 Predictions List **
** Shudders ..... **
But he had four AGs in the space of two years towards the end.
As for Georgia that was also very close, Ossoff got 50.4% and Perdue 49.6%
I have Democrat friends who preferred Donald Trump to win in 2016 than self-entitled haughty Hillary. They cite many examples but the one which really gets up their noses is that she refused to campaign in many down and out areas. Those weren't apparently her sort of people.
Everything that was so godawful about that 2010's Metropolitan Elitism. The kind which also led to Brexit.
So if you have a run of good years you then create a lower baseline against which to judge future years.
You could argue that we had some better years due to New Labour's spending on the NHS, and then austerity after the Financial Crash led to a deterioration.
Andrew Johnson was also technically a Democratic President from 1865 to 1869 even though he was originally elected with Lincoln on a National Union ticket
To those who ask why he is so short on betfair? The most likely explanation, imo at least, is he is re-investing some of that £1m to generate publicity for 2021 fundraising by being the second favourite in the biggest UK election of 2021.
https://twitter.com/UKGovScotland/status/1347135895351119873?s=20
We need to be on more than double that figure by w/e 10th, at least 2.5-2.7m jabs done in England by then.
I'm afraid your myopic special pleading doesn't cut much ice.
What were 2017/ 18/ 19 so good? Theresa May?!
For example, look at the patterns of the wars. First/early years have great numbers of excess deaths because they're compared to pre-war. Post-war/towards the end of war has lower than 'normal' excess deaths as they're compared to war years. 1920 was not, I expect, really a better year for deaths than 2019!
To be fair the home he was in e mailed to say they had cases confirmed too yesterday so he would have been hard pressed to avoid it.
Paddy Power and Betfair are the same company, for example. The former is known for paying out sometimes recklessly early (as a PR thing) whereas the exchange part of the latter pays out very late.
I know of two GPs locally, one of whom has vaccinated elderly patients. and one of which has not.