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Dangerous myths – politicalbetting.com

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  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited January 2021

    Helpful reminder of one of our own depth-plumbing moments.

    https://twitter.com/katie_martin_fx/status/1347109193464107011?s=21

    True ... but what was the reaction when Milkshake Guy through his chocolate milkshake over Farage.

    "I'm thinking why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid." (Jo Brand).

    That was particularly irresponsible as acid attacks are deadly easy to carry out against politicians, who are out and about.
    I don’t remember that.
    But if true, Jo Brand was/is an irresponsible idiot.
    But if true !%^*$&^%f6cjing3&I

    https://tinyurl.com/y62dv6fr

    She did it on the BBC.

    I think I would class it as worse than "pick up a rife", as most nut-jobs (at least in the UK) haven't got a rifle to pick up.

    But, it is dead easy for a nut-job to get hold of acid.
    How often have rifle attacks been on the news in recent years in this country?
    How often have acid attacks been on the news in recent years in this country?
    "“don khaki, pick up a rifle and head for the front lines” " - if you watch the video of that, Farage is probably more embarrassed about namedropping Trump and the Whitehouse! Even the way he said it was such an obvious Dads Army style joke
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    tlg86 said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    I enjoyed waching all most all of yesterday's chaos but the Everton 'Pride of Merseyside' banner on the balcony of the Capitol was the kek cherry on the lmao cake.

    :lol:

    https://twitter.com/ballslikeThiago/status/1347144741671096326
    LOL that is funny
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,361

    TOPPING said:

    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    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
    Beyond breaking point this time, sadly.
    Yep that's it. Proving @isam's point - all you can do is ramp up the rhetoric.
    I took his point to be that the reason some people are not believing there's a massive NHS crisis due to Covid which could lead to the system collapsing is because in previous years there have been less serious NHS crises not due to Covid which did not lead to the system collapsing.

    Not sure my reply proves that point but, yes, I'm sure some people do think that way. Winter. NHS. Same old, same old.

    What can you do?
    Elect the LibDems who wanted an NHS hypothecated tax.

    But as I have said for now this is the third time, the country doesn't want to spend more on the NHS.
    We don't need to spend more on the NHS, we need to spend the money better. Running all of these trusts with the expensive management and IT and HR etc etc is wasteful. Paying GPs to run CCGs is wasteful. Cut out all of the "free market" overlays and spend the money on the front line.

    This is how the Tories have managed to both rightly claim they are spending record amounts on the NHS whilst presiding over front line cuts to services. All the money in the world just not going where its needed.
    Ah yes, the call to remove all management. I have actually been present in an organisation when that was done.....
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,441

    Dangerous myths indeed, we're seeing it here as well with Covid-19 deniers as Neil O'Brien has pointed out as a prime example.

    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

    When we talk about averages, we have mean, median, and mode, of course.

    Mean: add them all up and divide by how many "them" there were
    Median: Order "them" numerically and pick the one in the middle
    Mode: Most common one of "them."

    These each provide a valid perspective on "average" - the expected value, the value where you can expect as many above as below (and where if you shift from it, the other direction is now a majority), and the most common value.

    In 2016-2018, the mean age of death for males in the UK was 79.3.
    The median was 82.5.
    (primary cause of difference is that it's not symmetrical - someone who dies at 5 is never "balanced out" by someone who dies at 155)
    The modal age of death was 86.

    The last has changed the most. In 1966, and for every single year before that, the modal age of death in males in the UK was 0.
    Infant mortality claimed so many before their first birthday, that "zero" was the most common age of death.

    Bit of an eye-opener, that.

    In 1967, it jumped to 67, then 72, then 74, and has climbed ever since.

    (Thanks go to William Hartston and his book "Numb and Number")
    Superb bit of expert trivia. Ta
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,092
    edited January 2021
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/06/capitol-mob-police-trump-george-floyd-protests-photos

    This kind of analysis misses an important point. Initially the George Floyd protests were handled by the police taking a much lighter approach, they were also overrun by the mob, the police station was torched, and this spiralled into worse and worse violence over many days.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,914

    felix said:

    Helpful reminder of one of our own depth-plumbing moments.

    https://twitter.com/katie_martin_fx/status/1347109193464107011?s=21

    True ... but what was the reaction when Milkshake Guy through his chocolate milkshake over Farage.

    "I'm thinking why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid." (Jo Brand).

    That was particularly irresponsible as acid attacks are deadly easy to carry out against politicians, who are out and about.
    I don’t remember that.
    But if true, Jo Brand was/is an irresponsible idiot.
    She did - it may even have been on the BBC in what passes for comedy there.

    Lets not also forget the BBC most recently also thought "kill whitey" was a perfectly acceptable joke.
    Perhaps you should fill us in on the joke. A few words out of context are meaningless. If hyperbole is no longer allowed in humour we'd be in a sad place. You seldom get prejudice- if that's what you're suggesting -on the BBC.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    tlg86 said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    I enjoyed waching all most all of yesterday's chaos but the Everton 'Pride of Merseyside' banner on the balcony of the Capitol was the kek cherry on the lmao cake.

    :lol:

    https://twitter.com/ballslikeThiago/status/1347144741671096326
    LOL that is funny
    The Q Shaman was funny as well although apparently a possible glowie.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,213
    edited January 2021
    isam said:

    Helpful reminder of one of our own depth-plumbing moments.

    https://twitter.com/katie_martin_fx/status/1347109193464107011?s=21

    That is such a bad take, using a military analogy to describe not giving up is not an incitement to violence - there must be lots of examples of it from politicians. The same people who use this as ammo (not literally!) against Farage were happy to excuse George Osborne for saying he wanted to chop up Theresa May and put her in his freezer!
    Getting sick of this deflecting "both sides are the same" hokey. It's airbrushing the many people of integrity on the left - like me - out of existence. I was NOT happy with that comment from Osborne. I found it lurid and creepy. It was the sort of comment you'd expect from somebody who butchered the public realm for partisan political advantage and made the poor pay for the malfunction of a financial system that had nothing to do with them, not from George. He let him himself down with it.
  • kle4 said:

    Sean_F said:

    Cyclefree said:

    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...

    Minor? Really? https://twitter.com/satbirlsingh/status/1347101169777340416?s=21
    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.
    I really dont understand Nigels obsession here. People dont post hundreds of anti trump messages if they secretly like him, they say nothing or occasionally say they aren't a fan, though hes got good points etc.

    Unless someone literally contradicts themselves it's just rude to claim they dont mean what they say.
    There is a certain type of psychology that would, yes. Some of it, I have to confess is a desire to troll Philip which I don't feel toward others on here, well maybe except the nationalists. I hope I am to be forgiven, but in his own way he gives as good as he gets.
    If you really want to troll him, and it is not a big or clever thing to do, keep it to Brexit and sovereignty. During BLM of all the posters on this site he put forward one of the best responses, possibly the best, to those who deliberately misunderstood and minimised BLM. He has an unorthodox and sometimes frustrating world view to debate with, but is in no way a MAGA.
  • Roger said:

    felix said:

    Helpful reminder of one of our own depth-plumbing moments.

    https://twitter.com/katie_martin_fx/status/1347109193464107011?s=21

    True ... but what was the reaction when Milkshake Guy through his chocolate milkshake over Farage.

    "I'm thinking why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid." (Jo Brand).

    That was particularly irresponsible as acid attacks are deadly easy to carry out against politicians, who are out and about.
    I don’t remember that.
    But if true, Jo Brand was/is an irresponsible idiot.
    She did - it may even have been on the BBC in what passes for comedy there.

    Lets not also forget the BBC most recently also thought "kill whitey" was a perfectly acceptable joke.
    Perhaps you should fill us in on the joke. A few words out of context are meaningless. If hyperbole is no longer allowed in humour we'd be in a sad place. You seldom get prejudice- if that's what you're suggesting -on the BBC.
    We all know what your humour is like, hang elected politicians....
  • glwglw Posts: 9,908

    I wonder if Trump's sort-of concession statement was forced out by Pence threatening the 25th amendment

    I think that might well be the case. There are several reports it has been discussed by the Cabinet, Pence and others bypassed Trump on deploying the National Guard, and then Trump conceded. It does seem a plausible explanation that he was told to "behave or else, we have the numbers".
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    Nigelb said:
    I'm fairly sure the likes of David Copeland, Timothy McVeigh and the IRA were given full credit for their actions.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,902
    edited January 2021
    deleted
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Dura_Ace said:

    tlg86 said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    I enjoyed waching all most all of yesterday's chaos but the Everton 'Pride of Merseyside' banner on the balcony of the Capitol was the kek cherry on the lmao cake.

    :lol:

    https://twitter.com/ballslikeThiago/status/1347144741671096326
    LOL that is funny
    The Q Shaman was funny as well although apparently a possible glowie.
    I am reminded of a story of the homesick Brit in Russia. Goes to the ballet one night, nips to the loo in the interval, and sure enough....

    Armitage Shanks
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    All getting a bit mealy-mouthed, isn't it? I can't contemplate the fates of Ceaușescu, Gaddafi or Mussolini without unalloyed satisfaction, and I can't get overexcited about reminders to any other political leader that Sic semper tyrannis.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486
    Dura_Ace said:

    I enjoyed waching all most all of yesterday's chaos but the Everton 'Pride of Merseyside' banner on the balcony of the Capitol was the kek cherry on the lmao cake.

    All for the lolz eh?
  • ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:
    I'm fairly sure the likes of David Copeland, Timothy McVeigh and the IRA were given full credit for their actions.
    Didn't a British newspaper use a photo of the Oklahoma City bombing with the headline 'In the name of Islam'
  • RH1992RH1992 Posts: 788
    edited January 2021
    Scott_xP said:
    Ayrshire Golf Club owner and Everton fans instigate Civil War in building designed by man from Pudsey, West Yorkshire.
  • HYUFD said:
    That is very good news for millions

    Long overdue
    When Jenrick’s involved the phrase is usually ‘very good news for his millions’.
    I doubt that it has anything to do with Scotland but it is an important issue in England and Wales
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,092
    edited January 2021
    https://twitter.com/PHE_uk/status/1347162591878148101?s=20

    The denial is careful tightrope walking...
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486

    In all the excitement, did we miss this piece of probable good news?

    Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine is likely to offer protection of up to a couple of years, its chief executive has said, even though more data is still needed to make a definitive assessment.
    ...
    “The nightmare scenario that was described in the media in the spring with a vaccine only working a month or two is, I think, out of the window,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said. “The antibody decay generated by the vaccine in humans goes down very slowly [...] We believe there will be protection potentially for a couple of years.”

    Bancel added his company was about to prove its vaccine would also be effective against variants of the coronavirus seen in Britain and South Africa.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jan/07/coronavirus-live-news-england-sees-record-hospitalisations-arizona-is-covid-hot-spot-of-the-world?page=with:block-5ff6c59c8f081f3586ba6721#block-5ff6c59c8f081f3586ba6721

    8:27

    Careful Richard, you will ruin the doom pornographers' day.
  • Dangerous myths indeed, we're seeing it here as well with Covid-19 deniers as Neil O'Brien has pointed out as a prime example.

    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

    That graph is showing volatility of excess deaths around the 5-year rolling average.
    Next year, this year's excess deaths will be baked into that average, meaning that next year the graph will likely (hopefully) show a big dip below the line. No doubt some will then claim next year that the government/NHS is performing miracles.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:
    I'm fairly sure the likes of David Copeland, Timothy McVeigh and the IRA were given full credit for their actions.
    The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the US every year are conducted by right wing White males.

    They barely get reported on.

    Like, the Christmas suicide bomber managed to last all of 2 days in the news.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,441

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Cyclefree said:

    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...

    Minor? Really? https://twitter.com/satbirlsingh/status/1347101169777340416?s=21
    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.
    Donald Trump spends less time on Twitter than Philip does on PB is a difference . The main element is that Philip is a populist nationalist. Also, he voted for Nigel Farage. He said he did not care that Putin was pleased with Brexit. He thinks Boris Johnson is a good leader (lol).That is pretty close to the views of Donald Trump at a top line level. Other than his claimed dislike of Trump, I can see very little lack of alignment to his often stated views on most things that he feels keen to share with us all.
    Philip despises white nationalism, is sympathetic to BLM, dislikes religion in politics, is a strong proponent of gay rights. Those are not Trumpian views.
    If they are his views and not a desperate attempt to seem more balanced then he is to be commended for those, though I haven't seen all his posts obviously - let us face it, who has?

    Fundamentally he is a divisive populist nationalist, i.e. very close to Trump. Furthermore, he makes very strong pronouncements on matters he clearly has very little understanding or experience of, much more so than most others on here. I have often responded to these which I must confess maybe a little too mocking, which is why he often attacks me so I respond in kind.

    Good of you to defend him though, credit to you.
    This is completely ridiculous. Phillip is a atheistic, antiracist, socially liberal economically rightwing libertarian. I strongly agree with him on about half of his views and vehemently disagree with him on the other half.

    To deem him a Trumpite Nationalist is however, a vicious, unfounded and deeply inaccurate slur.
    I don't think there are ANY regular commenters on PB who could be seen as "Trumpite Nationalists". Not one.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164

    kle4 said:

    felix said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    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...

    Minor? Really? https://twitter.com/satbirlsingh/status/1347101169777340416?s=21
    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.
    It's barely a fortnight since Roger on this very site said that most people thought Johnson should be hanged on Westminster bridge!
    He was both wrong and disgraceful, as I think most told him.
    He is also a nobody (sorry Roger) on the interweb. If I’m to be generous, his comment fits into a very broad definition of colloquial, rough-and-tumble grassroots political discourse.

    A bit like those rather awful people who seemed to welcome the death of Thatcher.

    But it’s different if it’s someone in the public eye. Whether that be Trump, Farage, Johnson or Patel. They just be rightly held to a higher standard.
    So like a Labour MP subsequently made Shadow Chancellor literally calling for the lynching of a female MP?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-42682854
    Yep. Awful. One of several episodes which collectively indicated the Corbynistas could not be trusted with government.
    Yet some prominent members of this site were happy to vote for them in 2019.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    felix said:

    kle4 said:

    felix said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    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...

    Minor? Really? https://twitter.com/satbirlsingh/status/1347101169777340416?s=21
    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.
    It's barely a fortnight since Roger on this very site said that most people thought Johnson should be hanged on Westminster bridge!
    He was both wrong and disgraceful, as I think most told him.
    He is also a nobody (sorry Roger) on the interweb. If I’m to be generous, his comment fits into a very broad definition of colloquial, rough-and-tumble grassroots political discourse.

    A bit like those rather awful people who seemed to welcome the death of Thatcher.

    But it’s different if it’s someone in the public eye. Whether that be Trump, Farage, Johnson or Patel. They just be rightly held to a higher standard.
    So like a Labour MP subsequently made Shadow Chancellor literally calling for the lynching of a female MP?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-42682854
    Yep. Awful. One of several episodes which collectively indicated the Corbynistas could not be trusted with government.
    Yet some prominent members of this site were happy to vote for them in 2019.
    and the current LotO campaigned with all his might for Corbyn to be PM
  • In all the excitement, did we miss this piece of probable good news?

    Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine is likely to offer protection of up to a couple of years, its chief executive has said, even though more data is still needed to make a definitive assessment.
    ...
    “The nightmare scenario that was described in the media in the spring with a vaccine only working a month or two is, I think, out of the window,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said. “The antibody decay generated by the vaccine in humans goes down very slowly [...] We believe there will be protection potentially for a couple of years.”

    Bancel added his company was about to prove its vaccine would also be effective against variants of the coronavirus seen in Britain and South Africa.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jan/07/coronavirus-live-news-england-sees-record-hospitalisations-arizona-is-covid-hot-spot-of-the-world?page=with:block-5ff6c59c8f081f3586ba6721#block-5ff6c59c8f081f3586ba6721

    8:27

    So we are going to have to do this again every 2-3 years.....
    We might well have to have routine booster shots. That really shouldn't be a problem once we've got the system going and can run the vaccinations all through the year.
    We do it for flu already! Perhaps we have to vaccinate two or three times as many but once the supply is flowing it wont even be a noticeable part of daily life.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Dura_Ace said:

    tlg86 said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    I enjoyed waching all most all of yesterday's chaos but the Everton 'Pride of Merseyside' banner on the balcony of the Capitol was the kek cherry on the lmao cake.

    :lol:

    https://twitter.com/ballslikeThiago/status/1347144741671096326
    LOL that is funny
    The Q Shaman was funny as well although apparently a possible glowie.
    I am reminded of a story of the homesick Brit in Russia. Goes to the ballet one night, nips to the loo in the interval, and sure enough....

    Armitage Shanks
    Is there a part 2 of this post coming where we get to hear a punchline?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,355
    edited January 2021
    Best pals

  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    At least he has the shame to delete his bollocks. Other Covid denial accounts still have up all their terrible, false staments about Covid being over in Texas/Georgia/Sweden/the world/mathematically burns out after 90 days etc.
  • kle4 said:

    Sean_F said:

    Cyclefree said:

    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...

    Minor? Really? https://twitter.com/satbirlsingh/status/1347101169777340416?s=21
    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.
    I really dont understand Nigels obsession here. People dont post hundreds of anti trump messages if they secretly like him, they say nothing or occasionally say they aren't a fan, though hes got good points etc.

    Unless someone literally contradicts themselves it's just rude to claim they dont mean what they say.
    Always good to have an example btl of the subject of the header though.
  • Tokyo 2020 organisers say they will be ready to host the Olympic Games - despite the city declaring a state of emergency over Covid-19.

    https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/55575450
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    Alistair said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:
    I'm fairly sure the likes of David Copeland, Timothy McVeigh and the IRA were given full credit for their actions.
    The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the US every year are conducted by right wing White males.

    They barely get reported on.

    Like, the Christmas suicide bomber managed to last all of 2 days in the news.
    There's this:

    https://news.sky.com/story/why-are-white-men-more-likely-to-carry-out-mass-shootings-11252808

    Also, although I'm no expert, aren't the vast majority of school shootings done by white men?
  • Tokyo 2020 organisers say they will be ready to host the Olympic Games - despite the city declaring a state of emergency over Covid-19.

    https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/55575450

    They said that about the actual 2020 Olympics as well.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    ydoethur said:

    Alistair said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:
    I'm fairly sure the likes of David Copeland, Timothy McVeigh and the IRA were given full credit for their actions.
    The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the US every year are conducted by right wing White males.

    They barely get reported on.

    Like, the Christmas suicide bomber managed to last all of 2 days in the news.
    There's this:

    https://news.sky.com/story/why-are-white-men-more-likely-to-carry-out-mass-shootings-11252808

    Also, although I'm no expert, aren't the vast majority of school shootings done by white men?
    I believe Mass shootings are mostly men but racially track American demographics pretty closely in proportion to the general population
  • Police officers have arrested two 'bungling burglars' after one accidentally sat on their phone and dialled 999 during a raid.

    https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/bungling-burglars-arrested-after-accidentally-4864326
  • TresTres Posts: 2,702
    If only the Free Speech Union could be deleted so swiftly.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,441

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,213
    isam said:

    Selebian said:

    tlg86 said:

    isam said:

    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.


    Um.
    I may be missing the point, but if a health service that can barely cope with a normal winter runs into a one-in-a-century pandemic reaching a crescendo over winter, surely "No big deal" is a genuinely deluded point of view?
    I think @isam is right here. They were crying wolf - we're seeing what a real crisis looks like - I suspect we not hear quite so much about winter health crises in future years.
    There have been crises every year, not in every hospital in every year, but certainly they have happened. I work with a number of medics at hospitals in Yorkshire and the issues are real - routine procedures cancelled or put back, shipping patients out to other hospitals long distances away, sending patients home knowing theyll be back shortly afterwards to not run out of beds (the last also costs the hospital money as they then don't get paid for that care if there's an emergency readmission, but is sometimes the only way of keeping afloat).

    Of course, it's a fine line - you also don't want, in the real world of other spending priorities, to have a big excess of facilities. The most efficient option is to have just enough to cope with peak demand and if you do that you sometimes won't have quite enough. It's also true that if there are more facilities/money then more things will get treated/get treated sooner to try and not waste those facilities. You'd need a massive funding increase to remove the crises completely. But the issues reported every winter are real.
    Do the NHS do seasonal hire? Staff from southern hemisphere countries boosting the numbers during our winter?I guess that wouldn't help with beds/equipment
    Yes. It's usually a big tool in the box. Unfortunately the supply of suitable temp resource has dropped off because of ...

    I'll leave it there since we're "moving on".
  • BBC staff have been told to wear 'social distancing devices' which will beep if they get too close to another person.

    In an email today, workers in 'key BBC locations' were told they will need to wear the technology which will alert them if they are less than two metres apart from someone else.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9121867/BBC-staff-wear-social-distancing-proximity-devices-office.html

    Is this real people or media types? they dont need devices if real people
  • Alistair said:

    At least he has the shame to delete his bollocks. Other Covid denial accounts still have up all their terrible, false staments about Covid being over in Texas/Georgia/Sweden/the world/mathematically burns out after 90 days etc.
    I'm blocked by Alistair Hames these days, what is he up to these days?

    I've noticed he hasn't been shared as much he used to be on PB.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,599

    Helpful reminder of one of our own depth-plumbing moments.

    https://twitter.com/katie_martin_fx/status/1347109193464107011?s=21

    True ... but what was the reaction when Milkshake Guy through his chocolate milkshake over Farage.

    "I'm thinking why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid." (Jo Brand).

    That was particularly irresponsible as acid attacks are deadly easy to carry out against politicians, who are out and about.
    I don’t remember that.
    But if true, Jo Brand was/is an irresponsible idiot.
    She did, in fairness, swiftly apologise.

    It was clearly out of order, but I don't think comparing comedy with politics is all that helpful. Laughter is a nervous reaction and a lot of comedy does get close to the line (in that case it was clearly over). Politics doesn't need to get anywhere near - it can afford to be somewhat bland very often, and should do as it matters more than comedy, frankly.
    To be fair to Jo Brand (yes, I know) it was a pre-recorded programme, so it was up to the editor which jokes made the cut and which stayed between the live audience and the participants.

    Anyone who’s ever attended a recording of HIGNFY or Mock The Week knows that there’s an awful lot of well-over-the-line jokes told in these settings, that no-one expects to actually be aired.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Surely that one with Salmond was before he was President?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,462
    edited January 2021

    Dangerous myths indeed, we're seeing it here as well with Covid-19 deniers as Neil O'Brien has pointed out as a prime example.

    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

    That graph is showing volatility of excess deaths around the 5-year rolling average.
    Next year, this year's excess deaths will be baked into that average, meaning that next year the graph will likely (hopefully) show a big dip below the line. No doubt some will then claim next year that the government/NHS is performing miracles.
    One of the more depressing activities in Family History is trailing through death records to find one''s ancestor. The number of children ( >5) who die in any given year before about 1940 is horrific to modern eyes.
  • Alistair said:

    At least he has the shame to delete his bollocks. Other Covid denial accounts still have up all their terrible, false staments about Covid being over in Texas/Georgia/Sweden/the world/mathematically burns out after 90 days etc.
    I'm blocked by Alistair Hames these days, what is he up to these days?

    I've noticed he hasn't been shared as much he used to be on PB.
    https://twitter.com/AlistairHaimes/status/1347165234881064961?s=20

    Reminds me of the Thick of It episode when the media gets hold of defence budget overspend....data, charts, confuse them....
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    ydoethur said:

    Alistair said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:
    I'm fairly sure the likes of David Copeland, Timothy McVeigh and the IRA were given full credit for their actions.
    The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the US every year are conducted by right wing White males.

    They barely get reported on.

    Like, the Christmas suicide bomber managed to last all of 2 days in the news.
    There's this:

    https://news.sky.com/story/why-are-white-men-more-likely-to-carry-out-mass-shootings-11252808

    Also, although I'm no expert, aren't the vast majority of school shootings done by white men?
    Its OK to refer to race when we're talking about shootings in America?

    Sorry I didn;t get the memo.
  • ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Surely that one with Salmond was before he was President?
    It was, as was the Gove one.

    As with the Salmond one, Gove was carrying out a job, in this instance as a writer for The Times.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421

    ydoethur said:

    Alistair said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:
    I'm fairly sure the likes of David Copeland, Timothy McVeigh and the IRA were given full credit for their actions.
    The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the US every year are conducted by right wing White males.

    They barely get reported on.

    Like, the Christmas suicide bomber managed to last all of 2 days in the news.
    There's this:

    https://news.sky.com/story/why-are-white-men-more-likely-to-carry-out-mass-shootings-11252808

    Also, although I'm no expert, aren't the vast majority of school shootings done by white men?
    Its OK to refer to race when we're talking about shootings in America?

    Sorry I didn;t get the memo.
    The discussion was about whether non-white groups attracted disproportionate attention for terrorism. So yes, it's kind of relevant.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,092
    edited January 2021
    Sir John Bell, regius professor at Oxford University and an adviser to the UK's Vaccine Taskforce, told The Telegraph he believes the vaccine will 'work well' and become available in time for the mid-February target.

    Britain has already struck a deal for 30million doses of the vaccine, with the option of ordering 22million more. It is hoped supplies could arrive in time to help the Government fulfill its ambitious promise of vaccinating 13million Brits by mid-February.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9122173/Single-dose-vaccine-Johnson-Johnson-rolled-Britain-month.html
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited January 2021
    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    Selebian said:

    tlg86 said:

    isam said:

    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.


    Um.
    I may be missing the point, but if a health service that can barely cope with a normal winter runs into a one-in-a-century pandemic reaching a crescendo over winter, surely "No big deal" is a genuinely deluded point of view?
    I think @isam is right here. They were crying wolf - we're seeing what a real crisis looks like - I suspect we not hear quite so much about winter health crises in future years.
    There have been crises every year, not in every hospital in every year, but certainly they have happened. I work with a number of medics at hospitals in Yorkshire and the issues are real - routine procedures cancelled or put back, shipping patients out to other hospitals long distances away, sending patients home knowing theyll be back shortly afterwards to not run out of beds (the last also costs the hospital money as they then don't get paid for that care if there's an emergency readmission, but is sometimes the only way of keeping afloat).

    Of course, it's a fine line - you also don't want, in the real world of other spending priorities, to have a big excess of facilities. The most efficient option is to have just enough to cope with peak demand and if you do that you sometimes won't have quite enough. It's also true that if there are more facilities/money then more things will get treated/get treated sooner to try and not waste those facilities. You'd need a massive funding increase to remove the crises completely. But the issues reported every winter are real.
    Do the NHS do seasonal hire? Staff from southern hemisphere countries boosting the numbers during our winter?I guess that wouldn't help with beds/equipment
    Yes. It's usually a big tool in the box. Unfortunately the supply of suitable temp resource has dropped off because of ...

    I'll leave it there since we're "moving on".
    From Southern hemisphere countries eh? And pre 2015 too - blimey
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,355
    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    the slowest moving, anti-vaxxer, state subsidised addicted member.

    Are we talking about @Dura_Ace on PB here? I don't think he'd like to be termed as slow moving.
    Or state subsidised
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    Alistair said:

    At least he has the shame to delete his bollocks. Other Covid denial accounts still have up all their terrible, false staments about Covid being over in Texas/Georgia/Sweden/the world/mathematically burns out after 90 days etc.
    I'm blocked by Alistair Hames these days, what is he up to these days?

    I've noticed he hasn't been shared as much he used to be on PB.
    He blocks everyone who uses the same words too often in a sentence!
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,478

    Scott_xP said:
    I am reminded of the sad and lonely death of Plato, of this parish.
    It is always sad when someone passes on, but not being intimately connected with Plato, I don't think we can be so patronisingly confident about the manner of her passing.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Alistair said:

    At least he has the shame to delete his bollocks. Other Covid denial accounts still have up all their terrible, false staments about Covid being over in Texas/Georgia/Sweden/the world/mathematically burns out after 90 days etc.
    I'm blocked by Alistair Hames these days, what is he up to these days?

    I've noticed he hasn't been shared as much he used to be on PB.
    https://twitter.com/AlistairHaimes/status/1347165234881064961?s=20

    Reminds me of the Thick of It episode when the media gets hold of defence budget overspend....data, charts, confuse them....
    What was the covid pandemic like, grandfather?

    The graphs, the endless graphs. They just wouldn't stop coming.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,092
    edited January 2021
    I have this feeling that with delay of supply and slowness of ramp up in vaccinations, government will again have overpromised and under-delivered and get absolutely smashed from pillar to post come March....then April will we will be swimming in vaccines, from Pfizer, AZN, J&J, Moderna...but a bit like testing, where capacity is now very good, the damage will have been done to the government reputation and all that people will remember is slow roll out (despite doing better than basically every other comparable countries, just like testing)
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,441
    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Surely that one with Salmond was before he was President?
    Indeed, which makes it even more mortifying perhaps.

    Also rather awkward, for the French President, is this bizarre encounter

    "Body politic: Trump puts personal 'touch' on diplomacy with Macron

    The public displays of affection between the powerful pair included cheek smooching, hand-holding and even a delicate dandruff dust-off."

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/body-politic-trump-puts-personal-touch-diplomacy-macron-n868771
  • isam said:

    Alistair said:

    At least he has the shame to delete his bollocks. Other Covid denial accounts still have up all their terrible, false staments about Covid being over in Texas/Georgia/Sweden/the world/mathematically burns out after 90 days etc.
    I'm blocked by Alistair Hames these days, what is he up to these days?

    I've noticed he hasn't been shared as much he used to be on PB.
    He blocks everyone who uses the same words too often in a sentence!
    Does he also block people who don't know how to use apostrophes correctly?
  • ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Surely that one with Salmond was before he was President?
    Doubt that Salmond will ever be prez of an Indy Scotland now.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,355
    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:
    That is very good news for millions

    Long overdue
    When Jenrick’s involved the phrase is usually ‘very good news for his millions’.
    Also took the Tories, and Westminster generally, rather too long. The Scots seem to have moved much more quickly once they got their parliament back open (both for leaseholds and for feudal superiorities which had some practical effects in common, including the scope for abuse).
    I thought Scotland was totally freehold apart from the land sold by MOD , where they chose to coin it in as they could avoid Scottish Government rules.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Surely that one with Salmond was before he was President?
    It was, as was the Gove one.

    As with the Salmond one, Gove was carrying out a job, in this instance as a writer for The Times.
    I could make such an unkind joke about creepy sex pests who are failed politicians...(and no, that's not a reference to Gove).
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited January 2021

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    At least he has the shame to delete his bollocks. Other Covid denial accounts still have up all their terrible, false staments about Covid being over in Texas/Georgia/Sweden/the world/mathematically burns out after 90 days etc.
    I'm blocked by Alistair Hames these days, what is he up to these days?

    I've noticed he hasn't been shared as much he used to be on PB.
    He blocks everyone who uses the same words too often in a sentence!
    Does he also block people who don't know how to use apostrophes correctly?
    To find out if he blocks people who dont know how to use apostrophes correctly Ill go on twitter and ask him if he blocks people who dont know how to use apostrophes correctly
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Just like all the small kids want to be the schoolyard bully's friend
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Surely that one with Salmond was before he was President?
    Doubt that Salmond will ever be prez of an Indy Scotland now.
    Has Johnson dashed your hopes of a second referendum to that extent?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,599

    Sir John Bell, regius professor at Oxford University and an adviser to the UK's Vaccine Taskforce, told The Telegraph he believes the vaccine will 'work well' and become available in time for the mid-February target.

    Britain has already struck a deal for 30million doses of the vaccine, with the option of ordering 22million more. It is hoped supplies could arrive in time to help the Government fulfill its ambitious promise of vaccinating 13million Brits by mid-February.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9122173/Single-dose-vaccine-Johnson-Johnson-rolled-Britain-month.html

    Well 30m one-shot jabs is going help massively.

    What an awesome performance by the global pharmaceutical industry, there’s at least five vaccines out there around the world now, and a few more such as the J&J working through the approval process.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,092
    edited January 2021
    Sandpit said:

    Sir John Bell, regius professor at Oxford University and an adviser to the UK's Vaccine Taskforce, told The Telegraph he believes the vaccine will 'work well' and become available in time for the mid-February target.

    Britain has already struck a deal for 30million doses of the vaccine, with the option of ordering 22million more. It is hoped supplies could arrive in time to help the Government fulfill its ambitious promise of vaccinating 13million Brits by mid-February.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9122173/Single-dose-vaccine-Johnson-Johnson-rolled-Britain-month.html

    Well 30m one-shot jabs is going help massively.

    What an awesome performance by the global pharmaceutical industry, there’s at least five vaccines out there around the world now, and a few more such as the J&J working through the approval process.
    Jezza disagrees....they are absolute filth. The NHS should have made their own.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,410
    Here's an article of prescience worthy of Sion Simon or Dan Hannan.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-he-loses-trump-will-concede-gracefully-11604772109
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,755
    isam said:

    Selebian said:

    Sandpit said:

    kamski said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Floater said:

    BTW France really outdone themselves - up to 3 k vaccinations now........

    Is it literally one doctor for the whole of France doing vaccinations?
    Nope but there is a rule that a consultation is required to get consent 5 days before the vaccination is given.

    This results in a lot of paperwork and delays.
    The French demanding lots of paperwork, I'm shocked I tell you. How many extra people are dying because of this nonsense.
    While we are having arguments about paperwork imposed on doctors coming back to help out with the big V programme, in Europe they’re arguing about paperwork imposed on the general population who want to be vaccinated!

    If, as expected, the U.K. quickly starts rolling out 2m+ vaccines a week, there’s going to be all sorts of questions raised in Europe.
    France isn't all of Europe. But sure, if France doesn't want to use its doses they should pass them on to somewhere that does.

    Use em or lose em!
    Agreed. It’s not just France either. Germany and the U.K. appear to be the only European countries taking the rollout close to seriously.

    Pretty nuts that we've now overtaken Russia given all the fuss they made about starting vaccinations early.
    Imagine how far in the lead we'd be if we weren't hamstrung by Boris as PM!
    I'll concede that Johnson is better than Putin! :wink:
  • Sandpit said:

    Sir John Bell, regius professor at Oxford University and an adviser to the UK's Vaccine Taskforce, told The Telegraph he believes the vaccine will 'work well' and become available in time for the mid-February target.

    Britain has already struck a deal for 30million doses of the vaccine, with the option of ordering 22million more. It is hoped supplies could arrive in time to help the Government fulfill its ambitious promise of vaccinating 13million Brits by mid-February.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9122173/Single-dose-vaccine-Johnson-Johnson-rolled-Britain-month.html

    Well 30m one-shot jabs is going help massively.

    What an awesome performance by the global pharmaceutical industry, there’s at least five vaccines out there around the world now, and a few more such as the J&J working through the approval process.
    If it does work, it makes life dead easy, especially for the far less vulnerable. You just roll through some car park of a sporting venue, and your done.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,599
    edited January 2021

    Sandpit said:

    Sir John Bell, regius professor at Oxford University and an adviser to the UK's Vaccine Taskforce, told The Telegraph he believes the vaccine will 'work well' and become available in time for the mid-February target.

    Britain has already struck a deal for 30million doses of the vaccine, with the option of ordering 22million more. It is hoped supplies could arrive in time to help the Government fulfill its ambitious promise of vaccinating 13million Brits by mid-February.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9122173/Single-dose-vaccine-Johnson-Johnson-rolled-Britain-month.html

    Well 30m one-shot jabs is going help massively.

    What an awesome performance by the global pharmaceutical industry, there’s at least five vaccines out there around the world now, and a few more such as the J&J working through the approval process.
    Jezza disagrees....they are absolute filth. The NHS should have made their own.
    Capitalism always wins!

    (To be perfectly fair, China and Russia have made good vaccines too).
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,381

    I have this feeling that with delay of supply and slowness of ramp up in vaccinations, government will again have overpromised and under-delivered and get absolutely smashed from pillar to post come March....then April will we will be swimming in vaccines, from Pfizer, AZN, J&J, Moderna...but a bit like testing, where capacity is now very good, the damage will have been done to the government reputation and all that people will remember is slow roll out (despite doing better than basically every other comparable countries, just like testing)

    It is only the media that will mind if the target is missed by a few weeks or a few days. The public really don't care, so long as the job gets done reasonably efficiently. This is why I can't understand why Johnson has to make these bigger, better, hostage to fortune pledges that seldom succeed.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,165
    edited January 2021
    TimT said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Just like all the small kids want to be the schoolyard bully's friend
    No one shared the personal and backroom contacts with him of Boris Johnson's government, not the dictators of Brazil and the Philippines, or anyone else.

    That doesn't make them the same government, but if they're reasonable people it should give them pause for thought, about where they go in the future.
  • Looks like deleting tweets is all the rage today.

    https://twitter.com/NickCFarrer/status/1347123294915489792
  • ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Surely that one with Salmond was before he was President?
    Doubt that Salmond will ever be prez of an Indy Scotland now.
    Has Johnson dashed your hopes of a second referendum to that extent?
    Nope, a mild joke on your form of words, plus an accurate measure of how Salmond is currently perceived in Scotland. I know the PB Scotch experts need all the help they can get.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,213
    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    Selebian said:

    tlg86 said:

    isam said:

    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.


    Um.
    I may be missing the point, but if a health service that can barely cope with a normal winter runs into a one-in-a-century pandemic reaching a crescendo over winter, surely "No big deal" is a genuinely deluded point of view?
    I think @isam is right here. They were crying wolf - we're seeing what a real crisis looks like - I suspect we not hear quite so much about winter health crises in future years.
    There have been crises every year, not in every hospital in every year, but certainly they have happened. I work with a number of medics at hospitals in Yorkshire and the issues are real - routine procedures cancelled or put back, shipping patients out to other hospitals long distances away, sending patients home knowing theyll be back shortly afterwards to not run out of beds (the last also costs the hospital money as they then don't get paid for that care if there's an emergency readmission, but is sometimes the only way of keeping afloat).

    Of course, it's a fine line - you also don't want, in the real world of other spending priorities, to have a big excess of facilities. The most efficient option is to have just enough to cope with peak demand and if you do that you sometimes won't have quite enough. It's also true that if there are more facilities/money then more things will get treated/get treated sooner to try and not waste those facilities. You'd need a massive funding increase to remove the crises completely. But the issues reported every winter are real.
    Do the NHS do seasonal hire? Staff from southern hemisphere countries boosting the numbers during our winter?I guess that wouldn't help with beds/equipment
    Yes. It's usually a big tool in the box. Unfortunately the supply of suitable temp resource has dropped off because of ...

    I'll leave it there since we're "moving on".
    From Southern hemisphere countries eh? And pre 2015 too - blimey
    Well, no. The resource tended to pop over from Europe rather than long haul from Tierra Del Fuego. Guess this might change going forward but as yet it hasn't. Exciting times.
  • Looks like deleting tweets is all the rage today.

    https://twitter.com/NickCFarrer/status/1347123294915489792

    Fcuking hell.
    I see the Great Forgetting has started.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,092
    edited January 2021

    I have this feeling that with delay of supply and slowness of ramp up in vaccinations, government will again have overpromised and under-delivered and get absolutely smashed from pillar to post come March....then April will we will be swimming in vaccines, from Pfizer, AZN, J&J, Moderna...but a bit like testing, where capacity is now very good, the damage will have been done to the government reputation and all that people will remember is slow roll out (despite doing better than basically every other comparable countries, just like testing)

    It is only the media that will mind if the target is missed by a few weeks or a few days. The public really don't care, so long as the job gets done reasonably efficiently. This is why I can't understand why Johnson has to make these bigger, better, hostage to fortune pledges that seldom succeed.
    If he had said the target was end of March, rather than middle of Feb, only the really really partisan would have criticised him. And he could have still said with all honesty, this will still be faster than the most of the rest of Europe.

    This also wouldn't have stopped the government still pushing the rate as fast as possible to achieve it before then.

    The RyanAir of scheduling.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,355

    TOPPING said:

    kinabalu said:

    TOPPING said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    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
    Beyond breaking point this time, sadly.
    Yep that's it. Proving @isam's point - all you can do is ramp up the rhetoric.
    I took his point to be that the reason some people are not believing there's a massive NHS crisis due to Covid which could lead to the system collapsing is because in previous years there have been less serious NHS crises not due to Covid which did not lead to the system collapsing.

    Not sure my reply proves that point but, yes, I'm sure some people do think that way. Winter. NHS. Same old, same old.

    What can you do?
    Elect the LibDems who wanted an NHS hypothecated tax.

    But as I have said for now this is the third time, the country doesn't want to spend more on the NHS.
    We don't need to spend more on the NHS, we need to spend the money better. Running all of these trusts with the expensive management and IT and HR etc etc is wasteful. Paying GPs to run CCGs is wasteful. Cut out all of the "free market" overlays and spend the money on the front line.

    This is how the Tories have managed to both rightly claim they are spending record amounts on the NHS whilst presiding over front line cuts to services. All the money in the world just not going where its needed.
    I also bet the trusts are stuffed with their chums etc , sucking up bulk of the cash.
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,065
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    At least he has the shame to delete his bollocks. Other Covid denial accounts still have up all their terrible, false staments about Covid being over in Texas/Georgia/Sweden/the world/mathematically burns out after 90 days etc.
    I'm blocked by Alistair Hames these days, what is he up to these days?

    I've noticed he hasn't been shared as much he used to be on PB.
    He blocks everyone who uses the same words too often in a sentence!
    Does he also block people who don't know how to use apostrophes correctly?
    To find out if he blocks people who dont know how to use apostrophes correctly Ill go on twitter and ask him if he blocks people who dont know how to use apostrophes correctly
    You missed some apostrophe's out it shouldve been
    To find out if he block's people who dont know how to use apostrophe's correctly Ill go on twitter and ask him if he block's people who dont know how to use apo'strophe's correctly
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,755
    Sandpit said:

    Sir John Bell, regius professor at Oxford University and an adviser to the UK's Vaccine Taskforce, told The Telegraph he believes the vaccine will 'work well' and become available in time for the mid-February target.

    Britain has already struck a deal for 30million doses of the vaccine, with the option of ordering 22million more. It is hoped supplies could arrive in time to help the Government fulfill its ambitious promise of vaccinating 13million Brits by mid-February.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9122173/Single-dose-vaccine-Johnson-Johnson-rolled-Britain-month.html

    Well 30m one-shot jabs is going help massively.

    What an awesome performance by the global pharmaceutical industry, there’s at least five vaccines out there around the world now, and a few more such as the J&J working through the approval process.
    Are there any serious efforts (other than the Australian one*) that failed/look like they will fail? Remarkable if not.

    *Even that worked, IIRC, but was shelved for the unfortunate side effect of making HIV tests return positive. If there hadn't been alternatives I guess we'd be working on a new HIV test or a tweak to that vaccine to avoid that unfortunate side effect.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,599

    I have this feeling that with delay of supply and slowness of ramp up in vaccinations, government will again have overpromised and under-delivered and get absolutely smashed from pillar to post come March....then April will we will be swimming in vaccines, from Pfizer, AZN, J&J, Moderna...but a bit like testing, where capacity is now very good, the damage will have been done to the government reputation and all that people will remember is slow roll out (despite doing better than basically every other comparable countries, just like testing)

    It is only the media that will mind if the target is missed by a few weeks or a few days. The public really don't care, so long as the job gets done reasonably efficiently. This is why I can't understand why Johnson has to make these bigger, better, hostage to fortune pledges that seldom succeed.
    Because he’s more interested in getting the country back to normal, than he is in tomorrow’s headlines of an increasingly distrusted media?

    The targets focus the minds of those actually involved. Nothing else matters except getting jabs in arms.
  • RH1992RH1992 Posts: 788

    Looks like deleting tweets is all the rage today.

    https://twitter.com/NickCFarrer/status/1347123294915489792

    Reminds me of this perennial Tweet.

    https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1151669588808986624
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    Looks like deleting tweets is all the rage today.

    https://twitter.com/NickCFarrer/status/1347123294915489792

    To be fair, if one were inclined to be fair, Goodwin fessed up in the tweet the one you pasted was replying to didn't he?

    https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1347110031234379778?s=20
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    Sandpit said:

    kamski said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Floater said:

    BTW France really outdone themselves - up to 3 k vaccinations now........

    Is it literally one doctor for the whole of France doing vaccinations?
    Nope but there is a rule that a consultation is required to get consent 5 days before the vaccination is given.

    This results in a lot of paperwork and delays.
    The French demanding lots of paperwork, I'm shocked I tell you. How many extra people are dying because of this nonsense.
    While we are having arguments about paperwork imposed on doctors coming back to help out with the big V programme, in Europe they’re arguing about paperwork imposed on the general population who want to be vaccinated!

    If, as expected, the U.K. quickly starts rolling out 2m+ vaccines a week, there’s going to be all sorts of questions raised in Europe.
    France isn't all of Europe. But sure, if France doesn't want to use its doses they should pass them on to somewhere that does.

    Use em or lose em!
    Agreed. It’s not just France either. Germany and the U.K. appear to be the only European countries taking the rollout close to seriously.

    Italy seems to be doing as well as they can given supply.
    Italy is actually doing better than Germany as %. Denmark also. That particular chart isn't as useful as the % vaccine rate chart as comparing countries of very different sizes.
    So surely on those terms Israel is off the scale. It would be very interesting ( @Malmesbury looking at you here) to have daily Israeli case numbers.
    - Fire up Chrome
    - https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general
    - Select the option to translate into english
    Ah. Well yes there is that option also.

    :smile:
  • isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Dangerous myths indeed, we're seeing it here as well with Covid-19 deniers as Neil O'Brien has pointed out as a prime example.

    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

    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.
    2014-2019?
    These years are all above the x-axis, therefore indicative of increasing excess deaths. What you've got to grasp is that because of the moving baseline, the graph is already of a derivative, so things are getting worse all the while the graph is positive. The more positive, the faster the excess deaths are increasing. So excess deaths were still increasing from 2014 to 2019, though not as rapidly by 2019.
  • NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    Apologies if this point has been made, the Beer Hall Putsch was a semi-comic fiasco with a few deaths. The March on Rome was also less than sweeping and heroic.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486

    I have this feeling that with delay of supply and slowness of ramp up in vaccinations, government will again have overpromised and under-delivered and get absolutely smashed from pillar to post come March....then April will we will be swimming in vaccines, from Pfizer, AZN, J&J, Moderna...but a bit like testing, where capacity is now very good, the damage will have been done to the government reputation and all that people will remember is slow roll out (despite doing better than basically every other comparable countries, just like testing)

    Certainly we have started way, way too slowly. And those on PB that seek to absolve the government of any responsibility for a supply-line that it should have been absolutely on top of need to take a long, hard look at themselves.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,600
    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Just how massive is Salmond's head? Trump is 6' 3" and yet Salmond looks like Hagrid in that image.....
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited January 2021
    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    Selebian said:

    tlg86 said:

    isam said:

    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.


    Um.
    I may be missing the point, but if a health service that can barely cope with a normal winter runs into a one-in-a-century pandemic reaching a crescendo over winter, surely "No big deal" is a genuinely deluded point of view?
    I think @isam is right here. They were crying wolf - we're seeing what a real crisis looks like - I suspect we not hear quite so much about winter health crises in future years.
    There have been crises every year, not in every hospital in every year, but certainly they have happened. I work with a number of medics at hospitals in Yorkshire and the issues are real - routine procedures cancelled or put back, shipping patients out to other hospitals long distances away, sending patients home knowing theyll be back shortly afterwards to not run out of beds (the last also costs the hospital money as they then don't get paid for that care if there's an emergency readmission, but is sometimes the only way of keeping afloat).

    Of course, it's a fine line - you also don't want, in the real world of other spending priorities, to have a big excess of facilities. The most efficient option is to have just enough to cope with peak demand and if you do that you sometimes won't have quite enough. It's also true that if there are more facilities/money then more things will get treated/get treated sooner to try and not waste those facilities. You'd need a massive funding increase to remove the crises completely. But the issues reported every winter are real.
    Do the NHS do seasonal hire? Staff from southern hemisphere countries boosting the numbers during our winter?I guess that wouldn't help with beds/equipment
    Yes. It's usually a big tool in the box. Unfortunately the supply of suitable temp resource has dropped off because of ...

    I'll leave it there since we're "moving on".
    From Southern hemisphere countries eh? And pre 2015 too - blimey
    Well, no. The resource tended to pop over from Europe rather than long haul from Tierra Del Fuego. Guess this might change going forward but as yet it hasn't. Exciting times.
    Should have kept Freedom Of Movement for NHS staff in my opinion
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486
    Our thoughts with Matt Goodwin – one of the most ridiculous and unbearable figures of our time.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    Sandpit said:



    To be fair to Jo Brand (yes, I know) it was a pre-recorded programme, so it was up to the editor which jokes made the cut and which stayed between the live audience and the participants.

    Anyone who’s ever attended a recording of HIGNFY or Mock The Week knows that there’s an awful lot of well-over-the-line jokes told in these settings, that no-one expects to actually be aired.

    I prefer Jo Brand to the endless minor public school, Oxbridge wankers doing what passes for comedy on R4. And, of course, I don't think Jo was recommending it as a course of action. She was looking for a gag & did not think.

    There is a long tradition of throwing flour or eggs or rotting vegetables as political protest.

    And, of course, a well-aimed egg can cheer the hearts of millions.

    But, even joking about throwing acid takes the cheeriness away.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    edited January 2021

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Surely that one with Salmond was before he was President?
    Doubt that Salmond will ever be prez of an Indy Scotland now.
    Has Johnson dashed your hopes of a second referendum to that extent?
    Nope, a mild joke on your form of words, plus an accurate measure of how Salmond is currently perceived in Scotland. I know the PB Scotch experts need all the help they can get.
    I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as an expert, although I can tell a decent single malt from a blended brand.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Best pals

    Can I play this game as well?


    Surely every major global politician of the last four years will have a smiley photo of him or herself standing alongside Donald the Disgraced. He was the US Prez. They all wanted to be his friend, at least at first.
    Just how massive is Salmond's head? Trump is 6' 3" and yet Salmond looks like Hagrid in that image.....
    Odd, as it's Trump who was the GlobalScot at the time.
This discussion has been closed.